When it comes time to do their taxes, millions of educators have had the satisfaction of checking a box that saves them some money, and isn’t available to people in other professions. The tax bill proposed by House Republicans would eliminate the $250 deduction teachers can claim for classroom supplies—and educators aren’t taking to it kindly.
We spoke with Internal Revenue Service officials to try to get a handle on what exactly the tax law says and what it means for teachers. Here’s some of what you need to know about the “educator expense deduction.”
1. Who can take the tax deduction? And what can they take it for?
K-12 teachers, principals, counselors, and aides who worked in schools for at least 900 hours a year (or an average of about five hours a school day) can currently take the tax deduction.
They can deduct up to $250 annually for books, supplies, computer hardware and software, and “other supplementary materials” that they purchased for their classrooms and were not reimbursed for by their district. They can also deduct for any out-of-pocket professional-development expenses. Health and physical education teachers can also use the deduction for athletic supplies.
Two educators who are married and filing jointly can deduct up to $500 a year (though no more than $250 a person).
The deduction is somewhat unusual in that it’s “above the line,” meaning teachers don’t have to itemize to get it. It comes directly off of their taxable income…
Librarian Holly Peele contributed to this report.
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MEDIA CONTACT: Meghan Frick, GaDOE Communications Office, (404) 463-4246, mfrick@doe.k12.ga.us
November 8, 2017 — The Georgia Department of Education has named five local school systems as pilot participants in its new Economic Development Partnership (EDP) program. Pilot work will begin with Whitfield County, Marietta City, Newton County, Muscogee County, and Wayne County this school year, with plans to roll out to all interested school systems in the 2019-2020 school year.
The EDP program seeks to promote improved relationships between local school districts and business/industry. The program, which is loosely modeled on GaDOE’s STEM and STEAM certification for schools, aims to meet the workforce development needs of Georgia’s current and future employers and expand opportunities for students. The designation is endorsed by the Georgia Economic Developers Association (GEDA).
“We have been pleased to partner with the Georgia Department of Education in the development and rollout of the Economic Development Partnership,” GEDA President Kevin Shea said. “We are excited about the potential for an improved partnership with school districts and GEDA member economic development organizations throughout the state of Georgia, to enhance communication and opportunities for business and quality of life and place.”
Alignment of common priorities among education and industry leadership is a central tenet of the program. Pilot systems will work with Department staff to ensure smooth program delivery and broad applicability across the state.
“It’s our primary goal and responsibility to equip students with the tools they need to live successful, rewarding lives after they complete their K-12 education,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said. “As the primary emphasis for so many businesses has shifted from physical location to future talent, it’s critical that we facilitate a stronger connection between our educational system and the business/industry community. The EDP program will make that connection an ongoing reality in Georgia’s public schools.”
The Economic Development Partnership will include required leadership trainings and a review of local Career Pathway offerings, as well as components that can be scaled or modified to fit individual communities.
“The ability of CTAE to keep up with changes in technology and workforce trends is dependent on building and maintaining open lines of communication and lasting partnerships with business and industry,” said Dr. Barbara Wall, State Career, Technical, and Agricultural Education (CTAE) Director.
Opinion by Carol McCall — Much is written — especially nationally — about what is happening in education in Louisiana. We should be cheering for our students and teachers as we do for our athletes and their coaches. By critically important measures, Louisiana has experienced and continues to experience major wins in education.
For more than 20 years, the state has been moving for higher standards and accountability. Now led by state Superintendent John White and his staff at the Department of Education, Louisiana has been nationally recognized for progress in a number of key areas.
Teacher preparation: Recognized by the Council of Chief State School Officers, Louisiana has built a collaboration between PreK-12 and higher education institutions for teacher preparation programs that include a year-long teacher internship program, to increase competence prior to entering the classroom.
Curriculum-driven reform: According to an article by national education policy journal Education Next, Louisiana’s education administration “has quietly engineered a system of curriculum-driven reforms that have prompted Louisiana’s public school teachers to change the quality of their instruction in measurable and observable ways.” These advances are unmatched in other states.
High school graduation rate: In 2005, 54 percent of Louisiana students graduated from high school, and now that number has significantly increased to 77 percent. These results come amidst a five-year push by Louisiana’s Department of Education to increase the number of graduates earning employer-validated “Jump Start” credentials and early college credits…
Carol McCall is chairwoman of the Education Committee for Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans.
Wisconsin Department of Public Education An American Education Week Guest Editorial by State Superintendent Tony Evers
American Education Week, Nov. 13-17, focuses attention on the importance of educating our kids: the next generation and the future of our democracy.
As a former teacher and school administrator, I can tell you there’s something magical that happens in a classroom. The special and rewarding “click” when a child reads aloud for the first time, grasps a new math concept, or keeps at a research project even when it’s difficult. But, it’s not magic. The business of education is hard work.
Teachers need to master their subject area, understand child development, and know how to teach. To really be successful, they must get to know their students and form personal, trusting relationships. Sometimes reaching a kid takes toughness. Sometimes the child needs tenderness. And, sometimes an educator doesn’t know until years later that they had just the right balance for a particular student.
But it’s not just the teacher and the students that make education what it is today. Our schools are centers of their neighborhoods. Often times in Wisconsin, the school is what holds a small rural community together. It’s school-community involvement that can truly bring success for our kids. That interest from the neighbor without kids in school, the business owner, the civic leader — these relationships cement the importance of education in our communities and bring local solutions to strengthen our school systems.
So we observe American Education Week to remind ourselves that preparing kids to graduate ready for college and careers is a community effort that takes time, takes money, and takes the passion of educators who devote their lives to teaching kids. Support your local schools. They are building the future.
It’s not a required course or an exam, but Louisiana’s estimated 40,000 public high school seniors won’t be allowed to graduate without completing it.
“It” is the FAFSA – the free application for federal student aid – and the graduating class of 2018 is the first to be affected by the policy approved by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education in 2015.
The form is used to determine student eligibility for financial aid, such as Pell grants, work study programs and federal student loans.
BESE, the governing and policymaking board for K-12 public schools, tethered completion of the federal application as a requirement for getting a high school diploma because of the historically low number of Louisiana students using the form. The state department of education officials said when students didn’t fill out the form, it created unnecessary financial barriers to postsecondary schools or training.
“We wanted to ensure equitable access to all students,” state education department spokeswoman Sydni Dunn said. “Too few students take advantage of state and federal aid.”
Although the state’s number of submissions is improving, Louisiana’s rank near the bottom among states for submission of the FAFSA form was the impetus for the policy two years ago, Dunn said. The amount of money left on the table is “staggering,” she said.
“By not completing the FAFSA, Louisiana students forego millions of dollars each year in federal grants, state opportunities and other post-secondary funding,” Dunn said. “This year, for example, it is estimated the 25 percent of students who did not submit the FAFSA, to date, may be missing out on more than $150 million in aid…
Republican lawmakers’ proposed changes to the federal tax code are causing a stir in the education community. Teachers and others are zeroing in on the bill’s repeal of the $250 tax deduction teachers and principals can take for spending their own money on classroom supplies. But, aside from that, how could the bill impact an individual teacher’s tax bill?
Let’s examine how a couple of hypothetical teachers would fare under the legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives last week and try to tease out an answer.
The following scenarios are in a world where the GOP tax bill is approved as released. Will it pass? Will lawmakers amend it? If so, how? Nobody knows the answers to those questions. Right now, House lawmakers are vigorously debating it. But let’s figure things out based on what we know is in the bill. For this analysis, we’re leaving out a lot of factors that could affect these hypothetical teachers’ taxes. We’ve also tried to keep it relatively simple, in order to get a basic idea of how the proposed tax changes could work for many teachers.
By Dr. Elizabeth Primas (Program Manager, NNPA/ESSA Public Awareness Campaign)
While education officials in Ohio have identified six components for rating schools on their school report cards, they are giving more attention to making sure students don’t fall behind to begin with. Over the last four years, education leaders in Ohio have tripled their investments in the “K-3 Literacy component” and its corresponding preschool program. Ohio has also increased access to high-quality education programs for children living in poverty and low-income families. This investment is aligned with the state’s birth to third grade support system that is designed to ensure that students enter school with the skills necessary to be successful and reach third grade with skills needed to read proficiently.
In December 2011, Ohio began using Early Learning and Development Standards that address five essential domains of school readiness for children from birth to five years-old. Those same standards will continue with the state’s ESSA plan. The five domains include: social and emotional development; physical well-being and motor development; approaches toward learning; language and literacy development; and cognition and general knowledge. These standards have been expanded to provide a continuum of learning for children from birth to five years of age; that implies that there are different expectations for children depending on their age and development. Once parents and caregivers understand that children develop on a continuum, or with skills built upon what was previously learned, educators and parents can begin to work in tandem with each other; ensuring that children are learning and developing appropriately.
Ohio’s Early Learning and Development Standards provide parents with information and expectations for each of the five domains; allowing them to get a jumpstart in preparing their child for school readiness. Standards are organized by topic and age: Infants (birth to around 8 months); young toddlers (6 months to around 18 months); and older toddlers (16 months to around 36 months). The guides are organized to allow parents to easily identify where their children should be, developmentally. For instance, the Social and Emotional Development Domain chart for awareness and expression of emotion, states that infants should express sadness, fear or distress by crying, kicking legs and stiffening the body; by pre-K, children should be able to recognize and identify their own emotions, as well as the emotions of others.
In 2003, Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, two researchers at the University of Kansas, published a report titled, “The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3.” They found that exposure to a rich vocabulary in a child’s early years is critical and the disparities in that exposure result in an achievement gap. It is important for parents to speak to their children, all of the time, using “standard” English. Parents can introduce their children to new words by explaining things in the child’s environment. Reviewing the names of items in the grocery store, the names of animals they see in the neighborhood, and the style and color of their clothes are simple ways to make a big impact. If we are to close the achievement gap, we must start before the child arrives at the schoolhouse doors. From birth, parents should sing songs and repeat nursery rhymes. Reading rhyming books and alphabet stories promote language acquisition and literacy. Parents are a child’s first teachers. It is up to us to give our children the exposure necessary to close the achievement gap.
To find out more about ESSA and its opportunities in literacy visit www.nnpa.org/essa.
Dr. Elizabeth Primas is an educator, who spent more than 40 years working towards improving education for children of diverse ethnicities and backgrounds. Dr. Primas is the program manager for the NNPA’s Every Student Succeeds Act Public Awareness Campaign. Follow Dr. Primas on Twitter @ElizabethPrima3.
Dr. Elizabeth Primas talks about the Every Student Succeeds Act, the “30 Million Word Gap,” and Ohio’s ESSA state plan.
Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia’s 4th congressional district welcomes attendees to the Region II NNPA/ESSA Black Parent’s Town Hall Meeting on Educational Excellence at the Ebenezer Baptist Church.
The congressman invited parents to join him in his efforts to ensure children receive the education they deserve by getting involved and staying engaged in their child’s school.
According to a recent report by Education Week, states have largely ignored a critical mandate of the Every Student Succeeds Act that calls for schools to measure the social and emotional competencies of their students.
“Not a single state’s plan to comply with the federal education law—and its broader vision for judging school performance—calls for inclusion of such measures in its school accountability system,” according to Education Week.
However, advocates for measuring social-emotional learning have said that the current tools need more refinement, before the U.S. Department of Education weighs in.
“Existing measures of social and emotional development, which largely rely on students’ responses to surveys about their own character traits, are not sophisticated and consistent enough to be used for such purposes, they have long argued,” the Education Week article said.
Even as school districts in Anchorage, Alaska; Austin, Texas; Chicago, Ill.; Nashville, Tenn.; Oakland, Calif.; and Sacramento, Calif., are actively engaged in incorporating social and emotional learning into their curriculums, civil rights leaders continue to encourage Black parents to get involved with the implementation of ESSA.
“We have noticed that, under the Trump administration, there has been a shift in priorities concerning the implementation of some practices of ESSA, since its inception in 2015,” said Elizabeth Olsson, a senior policy associate for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “However, state and district officials still have to comply with the law.”
Olsson continued: “The U.S. Department of Education needs to make sure that it continues to scrutinize state programs to ensure that states are recruiting effective educational strategies, reducing practices that push students of color out of school systems, and identifying support programs, including professional teacher development and funding for alternative classes, like restorative justice.”
Olsson said that restorative justice programs really help get to the root of student behavior.
Liz King, the senior policy analyst and director of Education Policy for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said that there are still a lot of open questions about how Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is going to implement ESSA.
Earlier this year, after a hearing with a House Appropriations subcommittee, DeVos was roundly criticized by the civil rights community, when she seemed to endorse a state’s right to discriminate against children.
During the hearing, when Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) asked DeVos, if her Education Department would require states, like Indiana, to end the practice of funding schools that openly discriminate against LGBTQ students and families, “DeVos didn’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” Slate.com reported. “She just smiled and stuck to the generations-old cover for violent oppression in America. ‘The states set up the rules,’ she said. ‘I believe states continue to have flexibility in putting together programs.’”
King called those comments “deeply concerning.”
King continued: “What we need to hear from the president and the secretary of education is a commitment to the law, the Constitution, and the rights of all children in the United States, focusing particularly on historically marginalized students.”
King said that the biggest difference between the way that ESSA was handled during President Obama’s administration versus the way the law is being handled now is the commitment to protect the civil rights, dignity, safety and respect for all children in this country. King added that children feel less safe and feel like their rights are being taken away, under the Trump Administration.
In a letter to Senator Patty Murray (D-Was.), DeVos claimed that the way that the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) handled “individual complaints as evidence of systematic institutional violations,” under the Obama Administration, “harmed students.” DeVos also promised to return OCR to a “neutral, impartial investigative agency.”
The Education Department has approved ESSA state plans from Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont.
As minorities continue to enroll in schools across the country at higher rates than their White peers, King said that parents and community members need to act now to make sure that the myriad needs of students of color are fully addressed in ESSA state plans, that includes access to advanced English and math courses and addressing the disparities that exist between how Black students are disciplined compared to White students.
“We have to address the issue of ESSA now, because decisions that are being made will have consequences for years to come,” King said. “One thing that is important to remember is that the implementation of ESSA does not happen in a vacuum.”
King continued: “ESSA is the opportunity for parents to work together with various coalitions, the press and grassroots organizations to shape the way the educational system will look for their children and for their futures in their own states.”
After decades of desegregation efforts, federal civil rights laws, and other attempts to close the achievement gap, a high quality education remains an elusive goal for most Black children.
In an effort to engage Black parents around reaching that elusive goal, educators and community stakeholders tackled leadership, educational equity and policy in urban schools, during a recent panel discussion.
Led by moderator Linda Tillman, professor emeritus of education leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the panel discussed the challenges faced by African American teachers and leaders, as they work to educate Black children and young adults in urban communities.
“We are here to revisit old discussions and bring fresh ideas,” Tillman said. “Jim Crow has affected Blacks in so many ways. Black education is a right [that’s] not solely based on White norms.”
Panelist Terri Watson, a City College of New York (CCNY) educator and co-creator of the CCNY-based “Growing Our Own Doctor’s Project,” said that there’s not only a need for better education, but that there’s also a need for safer communities for Black students.
“We have to focus on creating space where kids are informed and active, that’s important,” Watson said. “We have to let the kids know that the world is waiting for them, they’re up next and we have to change their mindset that the world views them as disposable.”
Rodney Hopson, a professor and associate dean of education psychology at George Mason University, Sonya Douglass Horsford, an associate professor of education leadership at the Teachers College at Columbia University, and M. Christopher Brown II, the president of Kentucky State University also participated in the panel that took place during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual legislative conference.
Both Brown and Horsford, longtime friends, said the majority of public schools are now non-White. The proliferation of charter and alternative schools has also chipped away at the effectiveness of public schools.
The federal government has played such a major role in shaping education policy and schools now mostly prepare African Americans for prison, not college, Brown said.
“The school’s structure that’s used is that they teach our kids how to stand in a straight line, to raise their hands when they have to go to the bathroom…you do that in prison, so that’s the training they’re getting,” Brown said.
He then quoted what he said was a prophetic statement made by W.E.B. Du Bois 57 years ago.
“[African American] teachers will become rarer and in many cases will disappear,” Brown said quoting Du Bois, noting that the prediction has come to pass.
Brown continued, quoting Du Bois: “[African American] children will be instructed in public schools and taught under unpleasant if not discouraging circumstances. Even more largely than today, they will fall out of school, cease to enter high school, and fewer and fewer will go to college.”
Horsford, like the other panelists, said no one should be surprised, because, after all, resegregation has occurred and education is the “new civil rights in the new Jim Crow.”
“We shouldn’t operate from the assumption that our schools are broken,” she said. “They are doing exactly what they were designed to do, which is to sift and sort children into different categories for economic reasons.”
Horsford added that African Americans must tap the potential, possibilities and gifts of the young people who truly hold the answers to society’s pressing problems.
Even educators have suffered and are poorly valued in a system guided by high-stakes testing and performance-based accountability, Horsford said.
“We have to engage in parallel efforts…we need to reimagine schools and school systems that support everyone,” said Horsford. “We also have to make sure that, in the meantime, we are preparing students to not only survive, but also thrive in an era of extreme inequality.”
November 8, 2017
Republican lawmakers’ proposed changes to the federal tax code are causing a stir in the education community. Teachers and others are zeroing in on the bill’s repeal of the $250 tax deduction teachers and principals can take for spending their own money on classroom supplies. But, aside from that, how could the bill impact an individual teacher’s tax bill?
By Stacy M. Brown (NNPA Newswire Contributor)