We may not be on the same page about this one though.
I'm not sure I completely agree w. your premise that because schools are forever "desperate for funding"... or say they are.... that this is necessarily the case.
I'm retired, but my recollection is not so much we didn't have $$$ available... it was that the cash was misallocated. Esp. in the last few years when the big $$$$$ started flowing in from the Foundations and the like.
I found it easier to teach, frankly, in the days when we had to create our own materials from scratch. I was a better teacher then also; I could more directly match the learning task to the individual kid. When the $$$ started to flow, the admins started buying all these dumbass commercial online curricula that were supposed to mimic the CCSS. ( Our kids were severely and profoundly handicapped... and the CCSS were an insult to their... and OUR... intelligence.)
The educrats don't care though: it keeps the $$$ flowing. Plus one has to wonder how much of this google $$$ is going to actually make it into the classroom after the upper echelon bureaucrats and the local admins get finished deciding how to ... you know.... *allocate*it.
I wonder who's really watching the store. Probably no one... in many districts.
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