Is a high school course with personal finance concepts required to be taken as a graduation requirement? No, personal finance is not included in the graduation requirements, either as a stand-alone course or embedded in another course, and schools are not required to offer financial literacy courses. Graduation from high school in California requires students to take three years of social science, including U.S. history and geography, world history, culture and geography, one semester of American government, and one semester of economics. See: California State Minimum High School Graduation Requirements.
California educational content standards were adopted by the State Board of Education and were designed to encourage the highest achievement of every student by defining the knowledge, concepts and skills that students should acquire at each grade. These content standards do not include personal finance concepts that high school students must learn. See: California Content Standards. Curriculum frameworks provide school administrators guidance for implementing the content standards adopted by the State Board of Education. These frameworks are tools that local school districts may use, but they are not required. Economics and mathematics curriculum frameworks include financial literacy content. See: California Curriculum Frameworks; see: California Financial Literacy and Mathematics Frameworks (Appendix A); also see: California History-Social Science Framework, Chapter 18: Grade Twelve-Principals of Economics (One Semester). California passed laws that require or request personal finance instructional content to be included in future revisions of certain curriculum frameworks and textbooks. See: California Laws 2013 and 2016. The California 2013 law requires the next revision or update of curriculum frameworks (but not the content standards) and textbooks in social sciences, health and mathematics to include financial literacy concepts, but such concepts are not required to be taught by local school districts. Because of this law, revisions to high school mathematics and economics curriculum frameworks now include personal finance concepts. The 2013 law also requires that textbook updates in social sciences, health and mathematics include personal finance concepts. California does not mandate specific textbooks to be used at high schools but does for grades Kindergarten through eighth. So, new updates of certain K-8 textbooks should include personal finance content. The California Education Code requires that local districts adopt high school textbooks aligned to the state content standards but not to curriculum frameworks. See: California Education Code Related to Text Books. California's 2016 law requires the Instructional Quality Commission (IQC) to consider the inclusion of a robust list of personal finance topics on financial literacy in the next revision of the history-social science curriculum frameworks. Since these frameworks were last updated in 2016, a bill analysis indicated that the next update of these frameworks may not occur until 2024. The bill also requires the IQC to consider including information on financial literacy in six different grade levels during Kindergarten through Grade 12 (twice each in the following grade spans: Kindergarten through fifth, sixth through eighth and ninth through Grade 12). Currently, the California Department of Education recommends that a ninth grade elective course in personal finance be offered, but local districts are not required to offer such a course. See: California Ninth Grade Electives. Recommending that students take a course of this nature in ninth grade is not optimal, since knowledge will fade over time. The ninth grade students will not use much of what they learn until many years after the instruction is completed.
The California Department of Education offers educators a robust list of financial literacy resources. See: California Grades K-12 Financial Literacy Resources.