The Cost of Excluding Finance from Literacy in State Standards: Who Suffers?

In 2009, what was the single most important goal of implementing Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in K-12 education? To ensure students receive the preparation they need to be successful in the “real world”. This short body of work evaluates the Common Core State Standards in context with the high school student’s transition from the classroom into the “real world”. The challenge amid this conversation will be for parents, teachers, students, mentors, community leaders/partners and policy makers, to find a collective way to take action to ensure that Personal Finance is among those mandatory subjects used for “real world” preparation (in every high school across the nation).

Over the past 10 years, I have dedicated much of my time to becoming educated about how increasingly high debt levels impact a households' financial stability over a lifetime. The common theme that I have identified is the rarity of money management education in formal classroom learning. Although there may be many resources utilized to address the topic of money management education, I have concluded that those resources prove to be most valuable when used in conjunction with a formal classroom curriculum. A curriculum outlined to educate and empower students to apply best practices in spending. My life's work is now spent raising awareness about the cost associated with excluding finance from state literacy standards (i.e financial literacy). Every student deserves to learn how to apply best practices in money management while in the classroom. After all, the classroom is a space reserved for teaching, testing, and skills development. I hope that with this book, I am able to influence stakeholders in the area of education to include financial literacy in state standards all across the nation, as a requirement for high school graduation.