Iowa - 2023

Final Grade

A

Projected Grade

A

Graduation Requirements

Is a high school course with personal finance concepts required to be taken as a graduation requirement? Yes, all students, beginning with the students in the 2020–2021 academic year graduating class, shall complete at least one half-unit of personal finance literacy as a condition of graduation. One half-unit is equal to a half-academic-year class. This requirement was the result of two laws passed by the legislature.

Projected Grade Narrative

No policy change is pending that would change Iowa's grade.

High School Education Standards

Iowa requires each high school to provide students with a very robust financial literacy curriculum that covers many specific topics that are consistent with national financial literacy education standards. State law allows one half-unit of personal finance literacy to count as one half-unit of social studies even if the teacher providing personal finance literacy coursework does not hold a social studies endorsement.

Extra Credit

The Iowa Department of Education has a site with financial literacy resources.

Caveat

It is unclear how the state will ensure that each local school district is, in fact, delivering the equivalent of a half-year course in personal finance, particularly in local school districts that do not offer a standalone personal finance course. A local school district could meet the half year requirement through any combination of classes that meet the statutory financial education requirements. This could be done through a combination of units of coursework in locally required social studies, mathematics, and career and technical education courses. Legally, the time allocated to financial literacy topics, using this combination method, must be the equivalent of a standalone half year course. This means that some local school district may be meeting this graduation requirement through a method other than a mandatory stand-alone personal finance course. Basically, how this requirement is met is entirely dependent on what course(s) each local school district decides to offer to meet the requirement. It is not clear how Iowa measures student achievement in financial literacy or how the state monitors local school district implementation of the financial literacy education requirement.

Year Of Projected Grade

2028