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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2018/07/19/targets-latest-sale-is-aimed-at-underpaid-teachers-forced-to-buy-their-own-classroom-supplies/
July 19, 2018
Underpaid teachers who buy their own classroom supplies
Target’s sale is a nice idea, education advocates say. But the need for a discount also reveals the systemic problem of classrooms buoyed by the personal finances of teachers who say they are already vastly underpaid — an issue that has triggered teacher walkouts and demands for wage increases across the country.
According to federal data, nearly all public school teachers use their own money to gather school supplies, at an average cost of $479 a year, The Washington Post’s Moriah Balingit reported in May. About 7 percent of educators spend more than $1,000 a year on supplies.
“The wave of teacher walkouts this spring made it clear that educators don’t get paid appropriately for the job they do,” Weingarten told The Post, adding that many teachers take second and even third jobs.
Elementary and secondary teachers are about 30 percent more likely to work at a second job, compared with workers in other professions, according to the Brookings Institution, citing Labor Department data.
… teachers in 38 states make less on average now than they did nine years ago, Weingarten said.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has said she supports higher wages for teachers, though she has criticized walkouts and protests demanding such increases. DeVos referred to a teacher strike in West Virginia as “adult squabbles” in February.
That state ranks 48th in teacher salary among all 50 states and the District of Columbia, The Post’s Sarah Larimer reported.
The effects of buying supplies on a modest salary are felt more sharply in areas racked by poverty. The May report prepared by the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics found that teachers spent $554 a year in schools where most children qualified for free lunch.
Schools in poor areas or with high concentrations of low-wage earners — such as Fresno, which has some of the most pronounced areas of poverty in the nation — are already underfunded, meaning teachers have to dig deeper from smaller salaries, compared with teachers at more affluent schools, said Bonilla, president of the Fresno Teachers Association.
Bonilla said teachers often pay for their own supplies as a result of inadequate funding as well a disconnect between what they say they need and what is provided at the local, state and federal level.
Teachers qualify for a $250 tax credit when they buy their own supplies, but that doesn’t go nearly far enough, Weingarten and Bonilla said.
Some educators have gone to extreme lengths to fund their classrooms.
Teresa Danks, a teacher in Tulsa, resorted to panhandling to help raise money for her classroom. She said she spends $2,000 a year on supplies.


https://www.npr.org/2018/08/27/642199524/student-loan-watchdog-quits-blames-trump-administration
Aug. 27, 2018
The federal official in charge of protecting student borrowers from predatory lending practices has stepped down.
In a scathing resignation letter, Seth Frotman, who until now was the student loan ombudsman at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, says current leadership "has turned its back on young people and their financial futures." The letter was addressed to Mick Mulvaney, the bureau's acting director.
In the letter, obtained by NPR, Frotman accuses Mulvaney and the Trump administration of undermining the CFPB and its ability to protect student borrowers.
"Unfortunately, under your leadership, the Bureau has abandoned the very consumers it is tasked by Congress with protecting," it read. "Instead, you have used the Bureau to serve the wishes of the most powerful financial companies in America."


https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/27/640323347/the-school-shootings-that-werent
Aug. 27, 2018
This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, "nearly 240 schools ... reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting." The number is far higher than most other estimates.
But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government's Civil Rights Data Collection.
We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.
In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn't confirm one. In at least four cases, we found, something did happen, but it didn't meet the government's parameters for a shooting. About a quarter of schools didn't respond to our inquiries.
A separate investigation by the ACLU of Southern California also was able to confirm fewer than a dozen of the incidents in the government's report, while 59 percent were confirmed errors.
The biggest discrepancy in sheer numbers was the 37 incidents listed in the CRDC for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Roseann Canfora, the district's chief communications officer, told us that, in fact, 37 schools reported "possession of a knife or a firearm," which is the previous question on the form.
The number 37, then, was apparently entered on the wrong line.