Dive Brief:
- Reaching students early and often is the mantra of financial literacy educators who have become increasingly popular on K-12 campuses.
- According to District Administration, there has been a surge in the number of high schools requiring financial literacy courses for graduation, as well as the number of middle and elementary schools offering suggestions for how teachers can integrate the subject into their curriculum.
- More may be on the horizon: MIND Research Institute is using a multi-million dollar grant from PwC Charitable Foundation to create game-software that teaches students how to be smart with their money.
Dive Insight:
In February, PwC Charitable Foundation announced a partnership with Time for Kids to launch a new money management magazine for fifth and sixth graders. 'Your $,' which is run by Jean Chatzky, the financial editor of NBC’s “Today," is four pages long and deals with subjects such as budgeting, investing, and taxes.
The need for financial literacy courses became very clear when the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) exam results came out, finding that over a sixth of U.S. 15-year-olds failed to meet the basic proficiency benchmarks in the financial literacy section. This fact is exacerbated when considering only 19 U.S. states require high schools to offer courses in personal finance in 2014.