Coggins: When Teachers Have to Be CFOs — Online Classroom Fundraising Speaks Volumes About Inequitable Resources in Our Nation’s Schools

The nationwide misalignment between the science of how to teach children to read and how reading is actually taught in most schools has been in the news for more than a year. The sustained attention of the pundit class to this issue raises a question: Why is this urgency to change practice not trickling into every teachers lounge in America? What might teachers be discussing instead?

A new report from Grantmakers for Education on the use of the crowdfunding site DonorsChoose offers an explanation. Teachers aren’t talking about the reading wars because they’re too busy trying to solve the resource wars.

The report chronicles the meteoric rise in the use of crowdfunding by teachers, particularly in low-income schools, over the past decade. Aggregated across almost 2 million teacher requests, a picture of widening systemic inequity comes into view. Submissions from high- and low-poverty schools differ greatly in terms of the volume of requests, what supports are requested and the likelihood that they get funded. It is a call to action for those in power, from philanthropy to policy, to use their influence to reconsider the meaning of resource equity in the era of a shrinking social safety net.

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Source: The 74 Million