Is a high school course with personal finance concepts required to be taken as a graduation requirement? No, a specifically identified course with personal finance concepts is not a graduation requirement. Oklahoma requires students to demonstrate competency in 14 areas of personal finance. Local school districts determine when these topics are taught and whether these topics are integrated into existing courses or taught as a separate course. See: Oklahoma High School Graduation Requirements 2018.
Oklahoma has a passport approach to graduation requirements, which applies to students in grades seven through 12. The passport method allows school districts to determine which grades and which courses they will embed the personal finance standards in. They could be embedded in a variety of courses from grades seven through 12. See Oklahoma Passport and Oklahoma Code Requiring Financial Literacy. For personal financial literacy standards for grades seven through 12, see Oklahoma Financial Literacy Standards.
Oklahoma provides resources online for districts and teachers to refer to. See: Oklahoma Personal Financial Literacy Resource and Standards and Oklahoma Personal Finance Literacy Teacher and Student Materials.
Since the passport requirements apply to grades seven through 12, local districts could include personal finance concepts in middle school and/or the early years of high school. Personal finance concepts are most relevant after a student graduates from high school, when they are thrust into situations in which they must manage their daily living expenses and are considering student debt. Recommending that students take a course of this nature earlier than Grades 11-12 is not optimal, since knowledge obtained will fade over time. Additionally, it is not clear how Oklahoma measures student achievement in financial literacy or how the state monitors local school district implementation of the financial literacy education requirement.