Is a high school course with personal finance concepts required to be taken as a graduation requirement? Yes, New York state requires students to take a half-year course in economics to graduate.
No policy change is pending that would change New York's grade.
To graduate from high school, New York high school students must take 4 credits in social studies, including a half-credit in economics. The standards for this course are set forth in the New York State K–12 Social Studies Framework. These standards serve as a set of expectations for what students should learn and be able to do. Schools are encouraged to administer the economics requirement through a course titled Economics, the Enterprise System and Finance in grade 12. This course has four key ideas and 16 conceptual understandings, and a quarter of these include personal finance content. Based on this information, we estimate that students receive approximately 15 hours of personal finance instruction. According to the Office of Curriculum and Instruction at the Department of Public Instruction, educators are required to use the social studies framework standards when teaching the economics course required for high school graduation.
In 2023, 11 financial literacy education bills were introduced in the New York State Legislature. Some of these bills, if passed, would require a stand-alone course (or its equivalent) in personal finance as a graduation requirement.
It is not clear how New York measures student achievement in financial literacy or how the state will monitor the local school district implementation of the new financial literacy education requirement.
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