Pennsylvania standards alignment

• 17.3.9-12.J

  Covered

  Analyze a housing decision, including comparing renting and buying, upfront and ongoing costs, and the process of obtaining a mortgage or a lease.

  Covered by

  • Housing: the Lease, the Loan Estimate, and the Map

  • · 13 · What each payment actually buys
  • · 14 · The costs of getting in, and the costs of getting out
  • · 15 · Build the comparison yourself, and change one assumption at a time
  • · 5 · A mortgage is two documents, and only one of them is the loan
  • · 6 · Amortisation, and why the early payments are almost all interest
  • · 7 · The three numbers the form is required to print, and what each one means
  • · 9 · Six pieces of information, and the clock they start
  • · 10 · Reading the Loan Estimate, box by box
  • · 11 · The Closing Disclosure, and the rules that make an estimate mean something
  • · 1 · Two contracts, and a question asked badly
  • · 2 · The lease is the document, and the state supplies the rest
  • · 3 · The deposit, the clock, and where recourse actually lives

  Note: Full, and each of the standard's three named components has a section of the course behind it. COMPARING RENTING AND BUYING: built in the same units over a stated horizon, with the slogan version taken apart first (what a rent payment actually buys, including the risk transfer, against the single component of a mortgage payment that accrues to the payer), then rebuilt as a seven-line procedure the learner runs with their own assumptions and a sensitivity step. UPFRONT AND ONGOING COSTS: the upfront side is counted from the Closing Disclosure's own prescribed sections rather than estimated, with the down payment separated from closing costs because it is a transfer into the asset and not a cost; the ongoing side is property tax, lender-required insurance, maintenance and association dues on the owning side against rent and its term on the renting side. THE PROCESS OF OBTAINING A MORTGAGE OR A LEASE: the mortgage side is taught from the rules that time it, including the closed six-item definition of an application at 12 CFR § 1026.2(a)(3)(ii), the Loan Estimate deadlines at § 1026.19(e)(1)(iii), the three-business-day Closing Disclosure receipt rule at § 1026.19(f)(1)(ii)(A) and the good faith tolerances at § 1026.19(e)(3). The standard's verb is analyze rather than decide, which matters here: the course analyses the decision in full and deliberately answers no rent-or-buy question, so it meets the standard as written. On the lease side the course teaches the lease as the governing contract and the method for finding the state statute behind it, worked on one labelled state, rather than a tenant screening and application walkthrough; since Pennsylvania writes the clause disjunctively, the mortgage side carries the obtaining verb on its own.

• 17.6.9-12.D

  Partially covered

  Analyze the use of loans to finance higher education and home purchases, how they are obtained, and options for paying them back.

  Covered by

  • Housing: the Lease, the Loan Estimate, and the Map

  • · 5 · A mortgage is two documents, and only one of them is the loan
  • · 6 · Amortisation, and why the early payments are almost all interest
  • · 7 · The three numbers the form is required to print, and what each one means
  • · 9 · Six pieces of information, and the clock they start
  • · 10 · Reading the Loan Estimate, box by box
  • · 11 · The Closing Disclosure, and the rules that make an estimate mean something

  What we do and don't cover: Partial, and the gap is one of the standard's two purposes rather than one of its verbs. HOME PURCHASES, taught in full: a mortgage separated into the note and the security instrument that secures it, recording, term and escrow named from RESPA's own purposes at 12 U.S.C. § 2601(b)(3). HOW THEY ARE OBTAINED, taught in full: the six pieces of information that constitute an application at 12 CFR § 1026.2(a)(3)(ii) and the clock they start, the Loan Estimate's prescribed contents at § 1026.37 read heading by heading, and the Closing Disclosure with the three-business-day rule and the tolerances that make an estimate mean something. OPTIONS FOR PAYING THEM BACK, taught in part: the four steps that generate an amortisation schedule are run by hand, the term is shown to move the payment one way and the total interest the other, and prepayment is taught as a disclosed term rather than a courtesy, with the prepayment penalty and balloon payment statements the Loan Estimate must print. What the course does NOT teach on that clause is refinancing, or what happens when repayment goes wrong. HIGHER EDUCATION IS THE REAL GAP AND IT IS TOTAL: this catalog teaches nothing about student loans, tuition, aid or repayment plans, so half of what Pennsylvania names here has no course behind it. A teacher planning against 17.6.9-12.D gets the home-purchase half and must supply the education half from elsewhere.

What we don't claim

A standards page is only worth reading if the omissions are honest too. We looked at these and left them out:

• Mathematics — nothing. This catalog does no mathematics instruction, so it meets no Pennsylvania Core mathematics standard.
• Science — nothing, and here is exactly why. Pennsylvania did NOT adopt the NGSS. Its standards in force are the STEELS standards (Science, Technology & Engineering, Environmental Literacy & Sustainability, effective July 2025), which are Pennsylvania's own — so, unlike California, New York, and D.C., there is no shared NGSS performance expectation to adopt here. This is also not a science course (no lab work, no investigation, no modelling). The catalog's resource-availability and climate-change content is claimed instead under Pennsylvania's Geography standard 7.4.12.A, where it honestly belongs.
• The Pennsylvania Civics flagship's distinctive structure has mostly no code to cite. Pennsylvania Civics: How Your State Government Works teaches the nation's largest full-time state legislature (a 203-member House and 50-member Senate), the elected-then-retained judiciary (partisan election to 10-year terms, then nonpartisan yes/no retention, with the Superior and Commonwealth intermediate courts), how a bill becomes a Pennsylvania law (the three-considerations rule, the two-thirds override, and the Governor's line-item veto on appropriations), and Pennsylvania's 67 counties with their ACTIVE township layer — Pennsylvania does NOT abolish townships — under home-rule and code municipalities. Pennsylvania's 2009 Civics standards reach the Commonwealth's own constitution and rights (5.1.12.D, 5.1.12.E) and general electoral processes (5.3.12.E), which the course backs, but the legislature's size, the elected judiciary, the state lawmaking process, and the township layer have no Pennsylvania-specific code. The gap is in the standards, not the course.
• Act 77 mail-in voting and Pennsylvania's other election specifics. The flagship teaches Act 77 no-excuse mail-in voting (struck down then upheld in McLinko v. Department of State, 2022), closed primaries, first-time-voter ID, and the 15-day registration deadline with no same-day registration. Pennsylvania's Civics standards name only “United States electoral processes” (5.3.12.E), with no Pennsylvania-specific election standard, so we claim Pennsylvania's own rules only through that general standard and the flagship. The specifics have no code.
• The Opium Wars and the Haitian Revolution — Pennsylvania's history standards are too abstract to name them. The catalog teaches both in depth. Pennsylvania's 2009 History standards are analytical standards organized by broad categories (“conflict and cooperation,” “continuity and change”) rather than by specific events, so — unlike Washington, D.C., whose standards name them explicitly — there is no Pennsylvania standard that names the Opium Wars or the Haitian Revolution to cite. We claim the world-history content only through the broad 8.4 categories, and mark those partial.
• Personal finance — this heading has been superseded, and here is what replaced it. Until 2026-08-29 the Economics rejection below was headed "Personal finance and most of the Economics framework", which was accurate when it was written and is not any more. Two things changed. Pennsylvania now HAS personal finance standards: the State Board approved 22 Pa. Code Chapter 4, Appendix F on 12 September 2024, six areas numbered 17.1 through 17.6, which did not exist when the 2009 Economics framework was mapped. And this catalog now teaches MONEY-06 (`housing-decisions`), which meets 17.3.9-12.J in full and part of 17.6.9-12.D; both are claimed above. The rest of Appendix F is still not claimed, and the areas are named so the gap stays visible: 17.1 Personal Finance Fundamentals (goal setting, decision making, financial institutions), 17.2 Income (careers, wages, benefits, payroll deductions), 17.4 Saving and Investing, 17.5 Risk and Insurance, and the rest of 17.6 Credit beyond the home-loan clause. Within 17.3 Spending, only the Major life purchases housing expectation is claimed; the budgeting, payment method, bill paying, vehicle, sales and property tax and charitable giving expectations are not taught. Courses in the same money series reach some of this and are mapped onto other states' personal-finance frameworks, but Appendix F has not been read against them, so nothing is claimed before it is checked.
• Most of the Grade 12 Economics framework. Scarcity and opportunity cost as named concepts (6.1), market competition and economic indicators (6.2.A-C, E, F), public goods and taxation policy (6.3.A, C), and the multinational-corporation and technology standards (6.4.C, D) were checked against the Grade 12 Economics framework and are not genuinely taught by these courses. We claim only the economic-systems, government-in-trade, labor-regulation, comparative-advantage, and supply-and-demand standards the catalog actually reaches.
• The general-ELA rhetoric standard, and the science/technical literacy strand. Pennsylvania revised Common Core's RI.11-12.6 (rhetoric) in its general Core ELA (CC.1.2.11-12.D reads differently), so we do not claim it — the catalog's honest, verbatim literacy home is the History/Social-Studies strand (8.5/8.6) mapped above. Pennsylvania's Reading and Writing in Science and Technical Subjects (3.5/3.6) strand is likewise not claimed by this history-and-economics catalog.
• The AI-literacy ladder, the language courses, and Learning How to Learn — deferred, not denied. Pennsylvania's relevant frameworks for these (Business, Computer and Information Technology; World Languages) have not been fetched and verified yet. Our rule is fetch-or-don't-cite, so these courses carry no Pennsylvania claims this pass.