Can your teenager balance a checkbook?

When it comes to teaching high school students the financial facts of life, Pennsylvania gets an F. The failing grade comes from a scorecard compiled by Champlain College, a private Burlington, Vt., institution that has been measuring how well high schools incorporate financial literacy into their curriculum since 2013.

Last week, Champlain gave Pennsylvania and 10 other states Fs for not requiring financial education. While some of Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts offer courses that teach high school students about budgeting and related concepts, there is no statewide mandate that students must receive a measure of financial literacy education in order to graduate.

Only 75 Pennsylvania school districts impose such a requirement, according to a report compiled last year by the Pennsylvania departments of Education and Banking and Securities.

John Pelletier, director of Champlain’s Center for Financial Literacy, said what is so frustrating about the lack of financial education is that there is plenty of evidence that teaching the topic makes students better money managers and better citizens.

For example, a 2014 study showed that recent graduates who lived in states that mandated financial literacy education at the high school level had higher credit scores and lower loan default rates than graduates from states that didn’t require high school students to take financial literacy courses.

“We know this education actually works. We can see it in behavior. We can see it in knowledge,” Mr. Pelletier said.

Mr. Pelletier said the survey started because he and other financial literacy advocates wanted to see how Vermont, which received a D, stacked up with other states. One problem they discovered was the misconception that adding this

vital topic to the curriculum is too difficult and costly.

“When you go up against some of the education infrastructure out there, they always tell you ‘We can’t do this, nobody’s doing this,’ “he said.

The report cards, issued every two years, have spurred efforts in some states, Mr. Pelletier said. Alabama and Washington went from Fs to As, while Florida and Maine improved from Ds to Bs.

This year, 10 states received A grades because their high school graduation requirements include a one semester course with a minimum of 60 class hours of instruction in personal finance. Ohio, West Virginia and 17 other states earned Bs because of requiring school districts to include personal finance instruction as a standalone course requirement or by incorporating it in other required courses.

The grades can be misleading because some districts in states receiving poor grades are aggressively addressing the issue. Pennsylvania is a case in point.

Apollo Ridge, Avonworth, Belle Vernon, Freeport, Montour, Northgate and South Park are among the districts offering standalone, required courses that provide financial literacy instruction. The courses cover concepts such as money management, the proper use of credit, investing, managing bank accounts and entrepreneurship.

Gene Natali Jr. has been active in the CFA Society of Pittsburgh’s effort to bring financial literacy to the classroom. Mr. Natali, senior vice president of C.S. McKee, a Downtown investment firm, is the coauthor of the Missing Semester, a 65-page book that shows high school and college students how to manage a paycheck, save and use credit responsibly. Using that as a textbook and working with the Allegheny Intermediate Unit, which provides services to suburban schools, the CFAs have helped 63 Western Pennsylvania schools and 24 in West Virginia incorporate financial literacy into their curriculum.

The CFA group’s work proves excellent, low-cost resources are available to help schools provide this valuable education. Vanguard’s classroom economy program and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School’s high school program are just two of the similar resources cited in the Pennsylvania report.

Too often, lawmakers and those aspiring to elected office cast aspersions on public schools, lamenting their poor performance and promoting the false prophet of privatization.

If they really had student interests in mind, they would give schools the resources they need, including what it takes to promote financial literacy.

“We can’t expect teachers to teach this if they haven’t been trained to teach it,” Mr. Pelletier said.