This Test Brought to You By ...

Driven by state budget woes, one high school teacher found a provocative way to pay for classroom supplies: ads on test papers

ANYBODY HAVE a remarkable memory of taking a high school math test? They’re important scholastic benchmarks, sure. But memorable? Hardly. High school hallmarks more readily occur on the football field, upon the theater stage or among the locker commons, when your first crush agrees to go to the prom.

No one goes to a class reunion and spins reminiscences about a 10th-grade geometry quiz. There are students at Rancho Bernardo High, however, who may have lasting impressions of their 2008 advanced-placement calculus tests. Due to a state budget not keeping pace with rising costs, calculus teacher Tom Farber was finding the cost of paper prohibitive. So on Back to School Night, he asked if parents could “sponsor” a test or quiz.

It’s come to this: selling ad space on school tests.

Farber collected checks for $270 that night. It might seem like a nominal haul, but the teacher was ecstatic. “It’s pretty standard that we don’t have enough money from the state for supplies every year,” says Farber, a 17-year veteran of the Poway Unified School District, one of the more affluent districts in the county. “But this year was the worst ever. This is the first time I’ve ever addressed the budget with parents. It’s outrageous. Something has to give.”

Farber says Rancho Bernardo parents have the means and the motivation to step forward. “Hey, I’ve got smart kids — and good kids — and the parents don’t generally have to worry about these kids studying hard and getting good grades,” he says. “But when I look at the budget situation and how it hits here, I can’t help but be concerned about how this affects schools where the parents don’t have the means to step in.”

Look at the numbers. Farber has 167 students. He teaches seven chapters to his classes each semester. He gives a quiz (three pages) and a test (four pages) for each chapter. And a five-page final exam. That’s 9,018 test pages each semester. Each sheet of printed, collated test paper costs 3 cents. That means his total paper cost is $270.54 per semester.

His semester allotment for “publications” (including paper) is $158.10. So forget the practice sheets Farber used to pass out. And even if you add the $62.50 a teacher gets for all other supplies (markers, overheads, lightbulbs, etc.) the paper cost alone still isn’t covered.

So Farber took a cue from the corporate world: sponsorships. The going rate to sponsor a quiz is $10; $20 for a chapter test. The semester final exam is a premium buy, at $30.

Sponsors/parents get one line at the bottom of the first test page. They may pick an inspirational quote, such as this from the chapter-five quiz: “Good luck, but remember knowledge is more important than luck.” This sponsor remained anonymous.

Another went for inspiration mixed with promotion: “Brace Yourself for a Great Semester!” Braces by Henry, Stephen P. Henry, D.M.D.”

What hath been wrought?

WHEN GOVERNOR Arnold Schwarzenegger finally signed the state’s 2008-2009 budget on September 23 — 85 days late — it included an education allocation school officials say is roughly $3 billion short.

The state will spend about $8,800 per student. That’s up $300 from last year, but doesn’t cover increased operational costs. By comparison, $8,800 is about $2,000 less than the national average, and $5,000 behind states like New York and New Jersey, according to Education Week.

“That’s frustrating — and demoralizing, as teachers work so hard to help kids, and as parents want the best for them,” says Poway Unified School District superintendent Don Phillips. “California has some of the highest school standards, and one of the lowest investments.”

School districts in the state have had to cut back further than ever this year. In Poway Unified, for example, increased fuel costs forced officials to eliminate bus service for about 2,000 students. And student-athletes are being asked to pay a $90 fee for transportation to and from sporting events (coaches are encouraged to get 100 percent participation in this “voluntary” fee).

Remember the threatened layoffs of teachers earlier this year? A mass issuance of pink slips was avoided, to the detriment of school programs. Phillips says his district opted for a 30 percent reduction in supplies — from $272,000 to $190,000.

“Keeping teachers and support staff was a priority for us,” he says. “We hoped we could weather one year of this if contributions from parents came through. We reasoned it would be better to have teachers there to teach, even if we didn’t have all the supplies we needed. We’ll continue to look at this baseline ... maybe we did cut too deep.”

Informed of Farber’s test sponsorship idea, Phillips extends high praise. “That’s great, just great,” he says. “Some teachers are comfortable doing that, and some aren’t. We didn’t hire them to be salespeople, after all. We hired them to teach.”

There are guidelines for advertisements on school football fields and for banners in the libraries. Test papers are uncharted territory. Is this a healthy encroachment?

“This is new ground,” says Rancho Bernardo High vice principal Keith Koelzer. “The rules of the game are still being written as we are playing them.”

Phillips isn’t exactly sure what’s out of bounds, either. Spurred to gallows humor, he adds: “At least we’re not wrapping school buses in ads — yet.”

Test sponsorships currently are not a problem — they are one man’s solution, a pragmatic but slippery-slope approach to an unwieldy fiscal problem. If you need paper to teach kids, is it okay to sell ads on their tests? If your family is starving, is it immoral to steal a loaf of bread to feed them?

Sorry. Is there money in the budget to keep philosophy in the curriculum?

FARBER’S STUDENTS have a refreshingly informed take on their commercially tinged calculus test papers.

“Academically, it didn’t affect me,” says Alex Flood, a 16-year-old junior. “But it was weird to know someone had paid to advertise on a math test. I wouldn’t like it if huge companies started doing this in public schools. I’m okay with local stores doing it.”

Friends Ena Hodzic and Kristy Foss are 17-year-old seniors. Foss is here in Farber’s tidy classroom to take her quiz; Hodzic is waiting to see if Farber has graded hers, taken in an earlier period.

“If it’s necessary to provide the test, I guess I don’t mind ads,” says Hodzic. (She scored an 80.)

“It made me sad when this happened,” says Foss. “In an ideal situation, society — the state — would provide enough funds for schools. This just shows something needs to be done about education. What’s next? Ads in our textbooks? That would really be a distraction to learning. I hope this isn’t the beginning of something like that.”

Foss says this economic crisis “makes me want to do something. Maybe go into politics or something, and do education reform.”

She’s got my vote.

Meanwhile, sympathy goes out to all our teachers, personified by Farber. His intention is to raise awareness, not just to bridge a gap in a fiscal system that shouldn’t need a bailout. (Yes, there’s a lot of that going around.)

“It’s a disappointing thing to resort to,” he says with a sigh. “The state spends so much money on standardized tests that kids don’t take very seriously, and it can’t give us money to buy paper. I don’t want to sell ads. I want to teach kids.”

Let’s never forget to teach our students that education — which represents our collective future — should always be considered a meaningful budget expense. And now, I fear for the day our kids turn over their test papers to find a golden arches logo and a “Want to Supersize That?” tagline.

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