Three Alternative Policy Summaries:

 

1st Summary

 

Osborne High School in Georgia started a tax club in 2014. Every year many students are enrolling in this class. They are being taught on how to do their taxes and as their final exam they have to find a person in their community with a low income (earning less than $54.000 a year) and they have to do their taxes for free. The principal said that this is a special way to get engaged with their community and to give something back. On average 40% of the Americans spend each year $150 - $250 for a tax preparer just for filling out a single form. The statistic shows that this program is highly effective. Students got their clients $800.000 back in tax returns since the program started and all their clients saved about $200 not paying a tax preparer. There is so much money saved in their community that also goes back to their local economy because these people have more money to spend. Besides saving a lot of money students also gain a lot of knowledge with taxes and a lot of practical experience. The club started 4 years ago as a Seniors Capstone project.

 

2nd Summary:

 

The name of this alternative policy is “Children are learning Financial Literacy from k-12.” This policy was first established in British Columbia and in Canada. The level of government that is involved in this policy is the Province Education Department. This policy makes sure to introduce the concept of money management to young kids. It starts with kindergarten kids, on how to manage your monthly allowance the proper way, and goes all the way up to High School Seniors, on how to get loans and how to invest your money in stocks. Some parents argue that this program costs way too much money but in our opinion, it is a right to get the best education possible. Everyone should be interested in their kid receiving the best education no matter how much it costs. This policy is definitely one of the most effective ones but it is way to expensive and it has a lot of support.

 

3rd Summary:

 

The name of this alternative policy is “The Tennessee Financial Literacy Commission.” This policy was first introduced by a local high school in Franklin Tennessee. The branch of government that is involved in this policy is the state government because it is a state issue. The treasury department created this policy in order to help students further their knowledge in personal finances and to help improve their life skills. An advantage of this policy is that it allows many young kids to get a financial education. By getting a financial education, the students will learn how to manage their money and stay out of debt. This policy helps address the problem of having debt for the rest of your life because it focuses on how to stay away from it and how to avoid bad credit.  People who don’t like the idea of funding a financial program may oppose this policy because they might think that most students won't actually care for the program. The disadvantage of this policy is that young people are required to take this financial literacy course, even if it is something that they are not interested in. This policy states that this specific program does not include many or no costs at all due to the fact that the state of Tennessee gets offered 1.7 million dollars in funds for financial education. In the end, this policy is effective because it gets students involved with how the real world works, in terms of finances.