Education Policy, Business and Technology

Report: Teachers Spend Up to $5,000 Out of Pocket on Classroom Supplies

THE Journal: Classroom teachers spent an average of $468 out of pocket on classroom supplies and equipment in the last year — amounting to nearly 1 percent of an average teacher's salary in the United States. Nearly eight in 10 teachers — 77 percent — spent "at least" $200, with some as high as $5,000, according to the latest results of an annual survey from SheerID and Agile Education Marketing . The results were based on responses from 674 educators.

Extrapolating those figures out, in public K–12 schools alone, teachers spent a total of nearly $1.5 billion last year.

As high as that figure sounds though, it's actually down slightly from previous years — $20 less than in 2016's survey and more than $40 down from 2014.

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