My granddaughter goes to a public school in NYC. Every year, she is given a supplies list of items to bring in, pencils, pens, paper, crayons, report covers, scissors, rulers, tissues, etc. etc. Each year the list costs about $50 to fill for her Mom. Yet when my granddaughter forgot to bring her own pencils to school, she couldn't get one from the teacher. WTF did the 3 dozen pencils she gave to the teacher at the beginning of the year go???
Now maybe, in some schools, teachers are picking up the bill for the students who can not afford to buy this list of supplies, but here in NY the students who do not bring in their supplies are using the supplies brought in by kids whose parents went thru the time and expense to fill these lists. That's not right.
As for Common Core, I can not figure out how that is supposed to work...I will continue to do my math the old school way, it's worked for me for fifty something years. The kids today can't even figure out how to give you your change when the register TELLS them how much change to give you. And forget about it if you give them $10.75 for a $5.74 purchase, their fuckin heads explode...last one gave me back my three quarters, saying I gave her too much, and then four 1$ bills, two dimes and six pennies...