When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s (Illinois, Florida, Alabama) I remember teachers buying supplies out of their own pocket. I suspect it's a perennial is

When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s (Illinois, Florida, Alabama) I remember teachers buying supplies out of their own pocket. I suspect it's a perennial issue. Expenditure increases usually go straight to salaries--ideally to teachers but these days increasingly to administrative staff. Living in California and observing (but soon to be participant) in how parent participation works here it seems to me, pretense and motivations notwithstanding, that the sociologic function is really about keeping parents engaged with their children's school. Private schools are even worse in this regard, both the cheaper Catholic ones and the expensive ones drowning in cash. My point is that we should stop looking to these things as agents of change. Among other things, it causes us to cyclically attempt to disrupt and revolutionize the system, when what such systems need most are stability and consistency. But education in particular sits at this wierd nexus of public policy where everybody thinks they're an expert, everybody has direct experience with the system, everybody thinks it can do more than it can, and it's a politically neutral subject. And for all our supposed expertise and concern, we invariably have the same ideas--more money, more accountability, etc. Given what we know empirically, the feverish focus seems very counter productive.