With states
in America growing lower by the numbers of students requiring high school
students to complete an economic course and a bludgeoned personal finance
education course seeing a huge list of failures, the biennial Survey of the
States by the US Council for Economic Education publishes some troubling
figures.
About 20
states have mandatory high school economic courses. About 16 states require
testing, which was down from 25 in 1988.
The COEE
President Nan Morrison said:
"We
were disappointed to see that no additional states require courses in personal
finance to be taught."
Financial
education varies depending on state. Some states require economic education to
be a requirement in primary school. Some merely offer the programs, which the
students and parents can easily ignore.
Morisson
added:
"To be
successful, most kids don't need to learn about collateralized debt
instruments, but they do need to know how to open a bank account, how much they
need to save each month to reach their goals and, if they borrow this amount of
money, how much money they will need to earn to pay it back."
The US
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's Investor Education Foundation said
that high school students taking personal finance courses have received better
average credit scores in their young adult age.
