The state of K–12 economic and financial education in the United States.
Key Findings
- Since 2016, no additional states have added personal finance to their K-12 standards or requirements.
- Only 1/3 of states require their students to graduate having taken a personal finance class.
- Rhetoric is not meeting action: while policy makers and the public regularly call for us to do better as a nation, those calls are not translating into real legislative change.
- •“If it’s not tested it’s not taught”, and a few states are ensuring that robust testing accompanies classroom instruction – only 16 states for economics and a mere 7 for personal finance.
About Survey of the States
Every two years, the Council for Economic Education (CEE) conducts a comprehensive look into the state of K-12 economic and financial education in the United States, collecting data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The biennial Survey of the States serves as an important benchmark for our progress, revealing both how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go. There has been notable progress since the first survey was published in 1998, yet the pace of change has slowed.
