USA Today: San Diego Teacher Sells Ads on Tests to Make up Shortfall

Another 2.5% rally in the last hour... the casino lives on. This last hour action has really jumped the shark. After a few hours of "bearish" stance I suppose we now return to "neutral" as we sit in between S&P 840 and 870. Things change by the hour around here. (especially the last hour of each day)

We mentioned a few weeks ago this story about a teacher selling ads on his tests to make up for the shortfall between what the district funded and what he needed to spend. Here is the full story from USA Today. Expect more innovative solutions such as this as our states funding needs are unmet (or perhaps as part of New Deal 2.0 we will throw a few billion at each state)

• Tom Farber gives a lot of tests. He's a calculus teacher, after all. So when administrators at Rancho Bernardo, his suburban San Diego high school, announced the district was cutting spending on supplies by nearly a third, Farber had a problem. At 3 cents a page, his tests would cost more than $500 a year. His copying budget: $316. But he wanted to give students enough practice for the big tests they'll face in the spring, such as the Advanced Placement exam.
• "Tough times call for tough actions," he says. So he started selling ads on his test papers: $10 for a quiz, $20 for a chapter test, $30 for a semester final.
• That worries Robert Weissman, managing director of Commercial Alert, a Washington-based non-profit that fights commercialization in school and elsewhere. If test-papers-as-billboards catches on, he says, schools in the grip of tough economic times could start relying on them to help the bottom line. "The advertisers are paying for something, and it's access to kids," he says.
• Principal Paul Robinson says reaction has been "mixed," but he notes, "It's not like, 'This test is brought to you by McDonald's or Nike.' " To Farber, 47, it's a logical solution: "We're expected to do more with less."
• The National Education Association says teachers spend about $430 out of their pockets each year for school supplies.