Budget & Finance

Teachers Use Crowdsourcing for Education Triage, Not Extras

By Sarah D. Sparks — February 05, 2021 3 min read
Digital image showing figures connected by circles and lines to a large dollar sign in the middle.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

More than 1 in 3 teachers now use online crowdfunding to support their classrooms—overwhelmingly for core education supplies. But as the popularity of online funding continues to rise, the disconnect between what teachers need and how donors choose could exacerbate funding inequities in schools.

A new study in the journal Educational Researcher looks at more than 220,000 projects teachers submitted through DonorsChoose, the largest education-related crowdfunding site in the United States, in 2015-16.

More than half of the more than 220,000 projects teachers submitted in 2015-16 focused on math and reading materials, particularly books and supplies, co-authors Sarah Wolff and Deven Carlson found. Schools where a majority of students lived in poverty or that served only Black or Latino students were about 24 percentage points more likely to focus on requests for math and reading materials than schools that were wealthier or served only white students.

See Also

BRIC ARCHIVE
Getty/Getty

“You suspect, looking at projects, that the main requests are going to be for things like bouncy seats so kids can keep their attention, those types of little extras. They’re not. They’re asking for books and math manipulatives,” said Celine Coggins, the executive director of Grantmakers for Education, which represents education philanthropies but was not associated with the study. “This is problematic. This means schools don’t have what they need.”

Chart shows requests submitted to DonorsChoose, by subject

By and large, the Oklahoma researchers found crowdfunding effective: About 70 percent of requests met their funding goals. (DonorsChoose uses an “all-or-nothing” model, in which it does not pay for any of the project until the full goal is met.)

That aligns with other recent studies finding teachers use crowdfunding sites to make up for shortfalls in their own district budgets. The University of Oklahoma study found teachers were more likely to submit crowdfunding proposals in states with low total per-student spending from federal, state, and local money.

“It really drove home just how unequal things are both across states and within them,” said Carlson, an associate professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma. “When you have 40 percent of low-income schools submitting a project that asks for basic math and reading materials, you know, maybe we have a funding issue.”

Public favored trips, lectures

However, relying on individual philanthropy left teachers open to public whims.

For example, while the study looked at requests submitted before the start of the pandemic, it did show that technology requests were the least likely to be fulfilled, with only about 65 percent being funded.

Once researchers took the cost of teachers’ projects into account, they found donors were significantly less likely to support math and reading requests than those in science, arts, or extracurricular activities, and they paid for field trips and speakers at disproportionately higher rates than they did for technology or supplies.

Chart shows rates of Funding for DonorsChoose Projects, by Type (Unconditional on Cost)
Chart shows rates of Funding for DonorsChoose Projects, by Type (Conditional on Cost)

Wolff, a research assistant at Oklahoma Human Services, said the sheer volume of math and reading projects may hurt their chances, as DonorsChoose only pays for projects that meet their funding goals. “More distinct projects might have an easier time reaching full funding,” Wolff said. “It might be hard for donors to distinguish in their mind between two similar reading programs at similar schools, but when a school is trying to take their kids on a trip to Washington, D.C., to see the sights or attend a conference, it may stand out in their minds and be something that they’d be really interested in funding.”

DonorsChoose allows funders to search projects by the poverty level of their students, and the study found teachers in high-poverty schools submitted more requests and were fully funded more often than their peers in wealthier schools. However, donors were more likely to support a more expensive request—say, $1,000 of new technology equipment—if it came from a wealthy school, rather than a high-poverty one.

A 2020 analysis by Grantmakers for Education found that as child poverty and homelessness has skyrocketed in the past decade, teachers are also increasingly asking for even more basic supplies. The “warmth, care, and hunger” categories, which include proposals for things like warm clothes and personal hygiene products, have been the fastest-growing category since added in 2016. (The current study did not look at this category of requests.)

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Reading & Literacy Webinar
The Future of the Science of Reading
Join us for a discussion on the future of the Science of Reading and how to support every student’s path to literacy.
Content provided by HMH
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
College & Workforce Readiness Webinar
From Classrooms to Careers: How Schools and Districts Can Prepare Students for a Changing Workforce
Real careers start in school. Learn how Alton High built student-centered, job-aligned pathways.
Content provided by TNTP
Student Well-Being Live Online Discussion A Seat at the Table: The Power of Emotion Regulation to Drive K-12 Academic Performance and Wellbeing
Wish you could handle emotions better? Learn practical strategies with researcher Marc Brackett and host Peter DeWitt.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Budget & Finance Opinion Title I and IDEA Have Transformed Schools. What Comes Next?
Keeping the focus on children most in need will demand political chops from local leaders, write two researchers.
Paul T. Hill & Ashley Jochim
5 min read
Home is people. Concept of love, support and care. Family supports each other.
Aigul Garaeva/iStock + Education Week
Budget & Finance Trump's Tariffs Are Already Affecting Schools. Here's How
Higher prices due to tariffs are no longer theoretical for schools replacing technology—or even buying copy paper.
2 min read
A triptych photograph of a stack of papers against a blue background, a school bus against a blue sky, and an excavator on a pile of dirt. There is yellow tape covering the entire 3 photos with the word TARIFFS and the American flag repeated on the tape.
Getty
Budget & Finance Schools Are Already Seeing Higher Prices Due to Trump's Tariffs
Supplies that schools rely on are already becoming more expensive in some cases as a result of tariffs. They also cause broader uncertainty.
7 min read
Benjamin Franklin face from USD dollar banknote behind of torn paper with wording tariffs revealed.
Education Week and iStock/Getty