A Look Back: In No Surprise, Another Survey Shows We Teachers Spend A Lot Of Our Money On Students – It’s Past Time For Foundations To Fund A Related Experiment

(I’m republishing my finest posts from the second half of 2024. You’ll be able to see your complete listing of them right here)

Training Week experiences on yet one more survey discovering that we academics spend our private cash on college students – Educators Put together Early, Spend Their Personal Money for New Faculty Yr.

That’s not new information, as I’ve documented in The Greatest Knowledge On How A lot Money Teachers Pay Out Of Their Personal Pocket – What Do You Spend?

However this survey is one other alternative for me to plug what I feel can be an incredible experiment for a basis to fund.

Right here’s what I’ve written earlier than:

Perhaps it’s time for the feds, or a state, to begin an schooling equal to the more and more profitable assured money grant packages to household offering no-strings connected monies.

In different phrases, as a substitute of blowing their bucks on non-teacher initiated tasks, give a big group of academics $10,000 every to spend on their college students anyway they deemed match – books, discipline journeys, snacks, bean bag chairs, and so forth. Actually, is there any draw back to doing one thing like that?

It wouldn’t appear honest, however I assume you will have a management group of academics who didn’t get something (although, come on, they must get one thing for collaborating!), after which use a number of measures to evaluate success (like we did in our Lengthy Time period English Language Learners pilot program) – not simply standardized check scores.

Since most ed analysis experiments usually are not profitable (see Feds Discover In New Report That Most Of Their Funded “Improvements” Didn’t Work – Maybe Its Time To Fund Instructor Initiatives?), what have they got to lose?

And, if it really works (as I assume it should), maybe we academics would have the ability to cease shelling out our personal money for scholar books, meals, tissues, band aids, and so forth….