President Barack Obama has vowed to spend more money on education, but the promised dollars have not yet trickled down to schools across the United States. In the meantime, one high school teacher in Pocatello, Idaho, has come up with a creative, although controversial, way to keep his classes afloat. When local voters rejected a tax increase last month, the school district servicing Pocatello and surrounding areas was forced to stop field trips and teacher training and even freeze spending on school supplies…including paper. So Jeb Harrison, a social studies teacher, cut a deal with Molto Caldo Pizzeria, which is located about a mile from Pocatello High School. The pizzeria agreed to provide Harrison with 10,000 sheets of paper (valued at $315), but with a pizza ad printed on the bottom of each page. Although some observers are alarmed by this commercialization of education, the experiment sometimes seems part of the lesson, such as when Harrison used the paper to print an economics test…about the Great Depression.

-David Wallechinsky

 

Idaho Teacher Sells Advertising Space on Tests (by Jessie L. Bonner, Associated Press)

Teacher Using Ads On Test to Pay for Paper (by Michelle Costa, KIFI Idaho Falls-Pocatello-Jackson)