As students of Government, Public Administration, or Public Policy know well, the job isn’t finished when the bill becomes law. Government programs and initiatives need to be monitored and adjusted to ensure efficacy. This can include protecting existing programs from new laws that might impact them in harmful ways. Education policy is full of competing initiatives and goals, meaning policymakers and educators must always stay vigilant in supporting their respective programs. Although fewer than half of all U.S. states have met the “gold standard” of financial literacy education, the ones that have will likely see challenges to implementation.
Iowa, for example, has reversed course and dropped the requirement that high school students must complete a standalone Personal Financial Literacy (PFL) class to graduate. A less severe, but more common, setback would be the dilution of education standards within a required PFL class. Senate Bill 17 in Ohio seeks to require the state’s new PFL courses to teach students about “free market capitalism.” Although some critics pointed out that the bill would significantly increase the amount of material taught in the course, likely overcrowding the curriculum, a majority of the state senate education committee voted to send the bill onward.
PFL Classes Should be Distinct From Economics and Government Classes
In the United States, it is important for high school students to understand basic economic theories about capitalism and socialism. However, these topics should be covered in a standalone Economics class or a Government class. Unfortunately, some states may try to merge financial literacy education and economics education into a single one-semester course. This risks making the curriculum too crowded for many standards to be taught with sufficient rigor. As a result, students actually end up learning less than usual – they don’t have time to absorb important concepts.
Economic and government theories should be kept separate from the important nuts and bolts of budgeting, investing, borrowing, and making complex consumer decisions. Students need the entire semester to learn important financial concepts; taking a week here and a week there to teach other things may result in less knowledge about how to budget, understand one’s credit score, or compare the per-dollar benefits of various options when shopping.
“Mission Creep” Can Reduce the Effectiveness of any Program
Adding extra tasks or requirements to a program or initiative is often known as “mission creep,” and it can effectively scuttle the mission. Teachers of Personal Financial Literacy (PFL) classes should do their best to cover the core material effectively and not allow their class periods to become overrun with other stuff. This can include school requests to host guest speakers, seminars, class meetings, and other extracurricular events. Unfortunately, a required PFL class that hosts all seniors in a high school will likely be seen by school administrators as a good class to “catch” seniors for all manner of meetings and bureaucratic necessities.
Although it may be awkward, PFL teachers should try to protect their teaching time and not freely allow their classes to be used for study hall, meetings, school photos, etc. These necessary burdens should be spread evenly among all core classes, including Personal Financial Literacy.
