Twenty-five states introduce personal finance education in 2021 |
So far in 2021, 25 states in the U.S. have introduced legislation that would add personal finance education to their high school curriculum. Bills in Arkansas, Hawaii and Nebraska have been passed this year and signed into law, while measures in four more states, Colorado, Nevada, Rhode Island and Texas, have passed and are awaiting governors’ signatures. Seven states - Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, Utah, North Carolina and Mississippi - have what Next Gen Personal Finance, which carried out the review, refers to as the gold standard of personal finance education: a standalone half-semester course that focuses on only personal finance. Beyond that, some 21 states require some personal finance education, but say it can be incorporated into another course. “In recent years, I haven’t seen this many [bills] that have been significant and that have made it to the governor’s desk,” Next Gen co-founder Tim Ranzetta said. “There’s a sense that some folks are being left behind, and the pandemic kind of exacerbated some of those structural issues,” he added. “And while financial education isn’t the silver bullet, or isn’t the panacea for those issues, it’s an important skill for young people to develop.”