Introduction

The Center for Financial Literacy at Champlain College was established in 2010. At that time, we were trying to understand the requirements for personal finance education in public high schools in each state and the District of Columbia. As our Center gathered information on each state, we decided that we should share it with the public, and we issued our inaugural National Report Card on State Efforts to Improve Financial Literacy in High Schools™ in the summer of 2013.

This interim report is the fifth issued by our Center on this topic over the last twelve years. We hope that grading each state on how well it teaches high school personal finance is playing a part in moving America closer to guaranteeing equitable access to financial literacy education for all public high school students.

Since our last report was issued, six states have passed laws that will require public high schools to take personal finance to graduate by or before 2031: California, Colorado, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. These six states represent nearly 5 million public high school students which is equal to 32 percent of the entire public high school population in the nation.

Generally, our Center updates this report every two to five years, or when significant changes warrant an update. Our last report was issued on December 1, 2023. We are issuing this shorter interim update to our 2023 report because something truly extraordinary has happened in the past few years.

About 20 months ago, our Center projected that by 2028, twenty-three states would require a personal finance course for graduation. That is 45 percent of all states and the District of Columbia. We also estimated that 41 percent of the Class of 2028 graduates would live in states with such a graduation requirement.