Students’ lack of financial empowerment cause for alarm

As high school educators entrusted with teaching students about personal finance, we have a message: We’re not doing enough to prepare our youth for their financial futures.

The need to bring financial empowerment to every K-12 classroom is the driving force behind our joining more than 130 teachers nationwide in signing up to participate in the nonprofit Jump$tart Coalition’s Teen Teach-In this April. We are bringing together high school students, elementary students, teachers and parents to raise awareness about the serious knowledge gap that endangers this generation’s future.

Generation Z, which includes all high school students across America, has the lowest level of financial literacy among the five generations of American adults, according to the TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index.

Students recognize this deficit and are themselves asking for instruction in finance; a 2021 survey of Gen Z teenagers found that 74% of teens didn’t feel confident about finances, and 73% of them wanted more personal finance education. It’s no wonder. Many young people are interacting with complex finances from an early age thanks to gaming, peer-to-peer payments, digital currencies and online purchasing.

Parents are the natural resource for learning about money, but too many of our students’ parents lack the comfort and/or knowledge to teach their children about personal finance. That’s where school comes in. As the great leveler, the classroom helps ensure that all students get a grounding in money management — which is particularly important in underserved communities.

The public agrees that school is the right place for learning about personal finance. A 2022 survey by the National Endowment for Financial Education found that 88% of adults thought that personal finance education should be required for high school graduation, with 80% wishing they had been required to take a course while they were in high school.

And research shows that classroom-based financial education works, finding that K-12 personal finance mandates result in higher credit scores, smarter borrowing decisions, lower default rates and reduced use of payday lending, among many other positive outcomes.

Moreover, financial education can be a great way to contextualize math and reading in realworld situations. Even students who struggle with math can get excited about compound interest! And we’ve seen how the empowerment of learning how to handle finances can change young lives and, sometimes, those of their families. Starting early and being consistent in the instruction of personal finance will yield even more comprehensive and deepseated financial savvy.

This urgent need to expand our state’s financial education has led us to join fellow teachers nationwide in taking our students to local elementary schools as a part of the Jump$tart Teen Teach-In. We are harnessing the power of peer-to-peer learning by empowering our high school students to teach financial lessons to their younger counterparts.

This benefits everyone involved: Our students thoroughly master the topic as they rehearse and plan their lessons; elementary school students are introduced to financial concepts (perhaps for the first time) via engaging lessons from “the big kids”; elementary school teachers get inspired by the way their students react to the lessons, hopefully sparking an interest in further incorporating financial education into their lessons; and perhaps most importantly, parents and the public learn about the need for financial education starting in elementary school.

It’s been our privilege to help educate thousands of young people about how they can take charge of their finances and their futures, avoiding the expensive mistakes so many of us adults have made. We hope you’ll join us in calling on the educational system to incorporate this critical information earlier, so that future generations can benefit from a thorough grounding in personal finance.

Tiffanie Smith is the business and information technology teacher at Heritage High School. Kimberly Grant is the career and technical education lead teacher at Warwick High School. Both schools are in Newport News.