Illinois - 2017

Final Grade

B

Graduation Requirements

Is a high school course with personal finance concepts required to be taken as a graduation requirement? Yes, Illinois requires high school students to take a nine-week course in consumer education. See: Illinois High School Graduation Requirements (page 7, see footnote 3).

High School Education Standards

Specifically, the graduation requirements state that each student shall be required to take consumer education for 50 minutes per day for a period of nine weeks in any of grades nine through 12. According to Illinois graduation requirements, nine weeks is equal to one-quarter of a full academic year. Based on this information, we estimate that students receive approximately 30-38 hours of instruction in personal finance. See: Illinois Consumer Education Law and see: Illinois Consumer Education Standards. Illinois recently aligned its social studies standards to the C3 framework. Personal finance standards for Illinois are also embedded in the new social science standards. These were revised and adopted by the Illinois State Board of Education in 2015 and include personal finance standards for grades one through 12. The standards are in effect beginning in the 2017-2018 academic year. For grades nine through 12, personal finance standards are six of the 16 total standards for economics, but economics is not a graduation requirement. See: Illinois High School Social Sciences Standards.

Caveat

It is not clear how Illinois measures student achievement in financial literacy.