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NSSEA Action Alert: Teacher Tax Deduction Legislation

The Internal Revenue Code of 1986 includes a provision that allows elementary and secondary school teachers the opportunity to take a tax deduction of up to $250 annually on their federal income tax, if they have spent their own out-of-pocket funds to purchase school supplies and/or equipment for their classrooms, if there is no reimbursement of this expenditure, and if the teachers have worked in their schools for up to 900 hours in a one-year period - such teachers are eligible. This federal tax law provision will expire on December 31, 2009, along with a total of about 40 other federal tax provisions, unless Congress takes legislative action to extend, expand, modify, strengthen or continue the Educator Expense Deduction for another year or longer.

In recent years, Congress has chosen to pass a large package of federal tax bills set to expire, by bundling them together into a single piece of legislation, known as a "tax extenders" bill, and passing the package before the expiration date, at the end of the calendar year. However, in other years, Congress has not acted until after the group of tax provisions officially has expired. Then Congress included legislative language to make continuation of the federal tax provisions retroactive to the first of the relevant calendar year, so the Teacher Tax Deduction remains available for eligible teachers to use. Members are encouraged to contact their own Member of Congress along with those on the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committee to request their support and pass legislation to continue the present Teacher Tax Deduction provisions, or to take action to strengthen these provisions by making the tax deduction permanent, increasing the tax deduction amount allowable from $250 annually to a sum greater than that, extending a Teacher Tax Deduction in some form. NSSEA has provided sample letters to help you get started. Read More.

U.S. Education Secretary Seeks Public Input and Experts' Views on Race to the Top Assessment Program Competition

Education Secretary Duncan seeks ideas on a preliminary basis to "inform the design" of his Race to the Top Assessment Program Competition for one or more consortia of States that are working jointly to develop and implement "common high-quality assessments," that are aligned to a consortium's common set of K-12 internationally bench-marked standards, built toward career and college readiness upon high school completion. Three meetings are scheduled for input. Two will be held during November, 2009, and one in early December, 2009, to seek views of invited panelists, experts and members of the public in designated portions of these meetings, to be held in Boston, Atlanta and Denver. Essentially, the U.S. Department of Education is seeking information on specific K-12 assessment issues, requirements, and questions that will help them to develop, by March, 2010, and publish, a notice inviting applications for a Race to the Top Assessment Program Competition, from States and consortia of States. The Executive Summary is useful for its "clues" to the questions and issues of interest to the Department, desired assessment characteristics, activities, and approaches, which could become recommended components of an upcoming ESEA reauthorization bill. Members who live or have company locations in or near the cities where these Departmental meetings on Assessment will be held may be interested in attending the events or have ideas to share that relate to the questions and issues requested in this notice. Read more.

NSSEA Endorses Common Core State Standards Initiative

After meeting with the Staff of of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) on June 10 following the Capitol Hill Event in Washington DC, NSSEA agreed to become an endorsing partner by offering input, expertise, support, and guidance to the development and adoption of a common core of state standards through the Common Core State Standards Initiative led by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the CCSSO. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a significant and historic opportunity for states to collectively develop and adopt a core set of academic standards in mathematics and English language arts. Forty-six states and three territories have joined the Common Core State Standards Initiative. The initiative is being jointly led by the NGA Center for Best Practices and the CCSSO in partnership with Achieve, ACT, and the College Board. It builds directly on recent efforts of leading organizations and states that have focused on developing college-and career-ready standards and ensures these standards are evidence- and research-based and internationally benchmarked to top performing countries. Click here for a summary of the initiative: http://www.ccsso.org/content/pdfs/CCSSIOnePage.pdf.

ESEA/NCLB Hearings Begin

The House Education and Labor Committee and U.S. Department of Education have begun a series of hearings related to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA/NCLB). Both are focusing on first teacher/leader effectiveness (Great Teachers and Leaders) and the equitable distribution of accomplished teachers/leaders so that schools with significant enrollment of high poverty and minority students have similar access to well qualified teachers/leaders as more affluent students and schools do to succeed. National Education Association (NEA) President, Dennis Van Roekel, testified at a recent House Education and Labor Committee hearing on Teacher Effectiveness and Equity. He outlined several strategies to ensure that high poverty schools are high performing and introduced a new NEA report on Children of Poverty. Read more.

Economic Stimulus ARRA Education Funds Update

Education Secretary Arne Duncan provides more details on use of a proposed $500 million investment over the next 10 years to develop free online high school and college courses "that will be available 24/7/365." This provision is included in the House-passed college student financial aid reform bill, the "Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act." The Senate has not yet put forward its own student financial aid improvement bill. An update is provided on the GAO report about States' and local school districts' use of ARRA economic stimulus funds for education. Several States (CA, IL, MI, TX) are designated for technical assistance from U.S. Department of Education officials. Another 12 States are designated as "at risk" related to ARRA Recovery Act ESEA Title I, Part A dollars use, accountability, and transparency. Read More.

FY 2010 BUDGET

On May 7, President Obama released his Fiscal Year 2010 budget request, including $46.7 billion in discretionary funding for the U.S. Department of Education. The request (an increase of $1.3 billion over last year's regular appropriation) builds on the investments already made in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to give preschoolers the skills they need to prepare for kindergarten, turn-around under-performing schools, and improve teacher effectiveness. It also significantly increases the federal government's commitment to make college accessible and affordable to all students. Among the highlights:

• $500 million for a new program of Title I Early Childhood Grants, which would encourage school districts to use Title I funds under the ARRA to start or expand Title I preschool programs.
• $300 million for a new Early Learning Challenge Fund, a central component of the President's Zero-to-Five initiative, to help states develop or refine systems for rating and improving the quality of early learning programs.
• $10 million for the Promise Neighborhoods initiative, to provide one-year planning grants to non-profit, community-based organizations to develop comprehensive neighborhood programs that supply the necessary support for children and youth from preschool through college.
• $162.5 million for Early Reading First, an increase of $50 million to expand support for high-quality, research-based early literacy services for preschool children.
• $370.4 million for an expanded Striving Readers program, with a $35 million increase for adolescent literacy demonstration grants and $300 million for a new initiative to help districts implement comprehensive and coherent programs of reading instruction for elementary school children.
• $517.3 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund, an increase of $420 million to stimulate state and local efforts to strengthen the educator workforce, in particular by providing financial rewards for teachers, principals, and other personnel who raise student achievement, close achievement gaps, and work in hard-to-staff schools.
• $1.5 billion for Title I Improvement Grants, an increase of $1 billion to help ensure that states and districts have the resources to develop and implement improvement plans for the growing numbers of schools (including middle and high schools) identified for improvement, corrective action, or restructuring.
• $50 million for a High School Graduation Initiative, to promote innovative strategies for increasing high school graduation rates, particularly in the "dropout factories" that graduate 60% or fewer of their students.
• Raising the maximum Pell Grant award to $5,550, an increase of $200 over the 2009 level, indexing the maximum Pell Grant to grow faster than inflation in future years, and making Pell Grant funding mandatory, to eliminate the perennial uncertainty created for students and parents.
• Saving $21 billion over five years by making all new higher education student loans through the Direct Loan program and saving $3.2 billion over five years by restructuring and expanding the Federal Perkins Loans program to serve five times as many students.

The request supports these priorities while proposing significant savings -- abolishing 12 ineffective programs and cutting unnecessary personnel -- that are essential to meeting the President's goal of reducing the annual federal deficit in half over the next five years.

Read more about the budget summary. View the state-by-state tables on allocations.

New ED Resource Available on ARRA

Additional ARRA Hotlinks:

• The U.S. Department of Education released charts and interpretive perspectives on expectations for and uses of the federal economic stimulus funds for education titled "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Saving and Creating Jobs and Reforming Education."
• For FAQs and the latest news from the Department of Education: www.ed.gov and www.recovery.gov
• Information on school construction: www.ncef.org
• Preliminary estimates of Title I, Part A recovery allocations to each State and LEA are available at: http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/news.html#ARRA
• Complete stimulus coverage from Ed Money Watch can be found here: http://www.newamerica.net/blog/topics/education-stimulus-0
• The ESEA Title I LEA Allocations of AARA funds: http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/titlei/fy09recovery/index.html.
• Web resource page for states and LEAs on the best ideas on school modernization: http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/leg/recovery/modernization
• White House information on the stimulus package: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/White-House-Releases-State-by-State-Numbers-American-Recovery-and-Reinvestment-Act-to-Save-or-Create-35-Million-Jobs/

Legislative Scope

NSSEA is interested in influencing pro-small business and pro-education legislation/regulatory policy that does the following:

• Encourages innovation and teacher choice in educational materials;
• Increases funding for educational products;
• Reduces interference with our members’ ability to provide their products;
• Discourages threats to the dealer channel;
• Has overall positive commercial impact on our members.

Legislative Priorities

NSSEA’s main priorities are to:

• CPSIA Compliance: Reduce the burden on our members in complying with the new labeling and testing requirements of the CPSIA.
  
• NCLB: Ensure NCLB reauthorization does not negatively affect supplemental materials by removing any language barriers that impact product selection or limit teacher choice.
  
• Teacher Tax Deduction: Expand the Teacher Tax deduction/credit to support teacher with their out-of-pocket expenses related to classroom materials purchases.

Legislative Partners

In our pursuit of alliances with organizations that have common interests, shares in a government relations partnership with The Association of Educational Publishers (AEP). The AEP Government Relations initiative is designed to add legislative and public policy issues directly impacting the supplemental publishing industry.

In addition, NSSEA is actively involved with the National Association of Wholesalers-Distributors’ (NAW) legislative affairs group. NAW specializes in small business issues that impact distribution.