Most States Don’t Require Specific Financial Literacy Classes

Most States Don’t Require Specific Financial Literacy Classes
“We find that if a rigorous financial education program is carefully implemented,” the report concluded, “it can improve the credit scores
and lower the probability of delinquency for young adults.”
Lauren Willis, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who has argued for stronger consumer financial protections, said she saw more promise in “consumer self-defense classes,” which focus on “spotting
and avoiding scams, spotting manipulative advertising, and the like.”
Professor Willis is advising the FoolProof Foundation, a Florida nonprofit group
that creates free courses that teach high school students (and now middle school students) the importance of a “healthy skepticism” when evaluating various forms of debt.
The report card gave Bs to 19 states that require students to receive personal finance instruction
to graduate from high school, but may devote less time to it than A states.
The report card, an update of an assessment done in 2015, is based on the premise
that all high school students should, at a minimum, be required to take a course that includes personal finance topics, even if the topics are just a “modest” part of the overall course.
Most states take a scattershot approach to teaching personal finance concepts to high school students,
a newly released financial literacy report card finds, with just a handful of exceptions.