Why Money Matters in Education, Volume 1

It is very stylish nowadays, even for liberals, to admit that "money isn't the only solution" to problems in education. That is such an insult to professional teachers working with completely inadequate resources that it makes me want to cuss, and I often do.

Here is a quick demonstration of a very simple way that funding impacts the quality of teaching. If Iadd up the time I've spent on getting adequate supplies into my classroom--tasks that I wouldn't have to do at a school with more funds--it's clear that money has a made a direct impact on my ability to prepare for actual teaching.

45 minutes: Ordering basic supplies (posterboard, chalk, etc) for my classroom. (Well-run/adequately-staffed schools have someone to do this for teachers.)
30 minutes: Cutting out stupid little letters for my mandated bulletin boards. Teachers in some schools just order these pre-made, but at $6 a set, they're not in the budget here. Teachers in even better schools don't have to deal with bulletin boards at all because they have aides to do them.
45 minutes: Repairing damaged books in classroom library. (With more money, I could either order replacements for badly damaged books and ask the librarian to deal with minor repairs. Here, no budget for books, no librarian...so it's up to me and my trusty roll of book tape.)
45 minutes: Researching printer for my classroom and ordering online.
35 minutes: Setting up printer once it arrived.
15 minutes: Quick trip to Staples to procure printer cable; does not include travel time.
2 hours: Round-trip travel time for extra trip to school on a Saturday to be present to greet and thank community volunteers who were painting my classroom and other rooms in the school.
1 hour: Painting dirty, old teacher's desk and bookshelves so they were fit for classroom use.
2 hours: Sorting through hundreds of donated books to find grade-level texts for my room.

I'm sure there were dozens of similar tasks that I can't even think of at this point--but the running total so far is about eight hours. Every minute (or in this case, each hour) I spend on mundane tasks is time taken away from my main purpose: Designing and delivering high-quality learning experiences for children. So, even though school has been in session for less than a week, already my students are saddled with a teacher who has had one day's less time to plan than kids at schools with more funding. It's easy to see how that could add up over time...and translate, in the long run, to large disparities in teacher effectiveness, just through the simple 'time is money' equation.

Not Fair!