The National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) conducted multiple interviews with key stakeholders from states across the country at different stages of implementation of legislation on financial education requirements. From these interviews, NEFE determined the top four challenges and opportunities states face when transitioning from the enactment of law to practice. These policy papers analyze the current issues, best practices, challenges, and opportunities, and recommendations for improving the access, quality, and impact of financial education implementation for all. These papers focus on a few examples of implementation, and are not intended as a comprehensive review of all 26 states that have passed requirements as of the end of 2024. This paper looks specifically at the issue of teacher training and preparedness to deliver effective financial education.
Introduction
No two states share the same process and structure for offering teacher training. However, there are similarities across many states that provide insight for implementing financial education graduation requirements in the future. Though funding remains a challenge, innovative strategies to secure backing from financial institutions and the private sector offer viable alternatives. In place of a professional development program developed by the state, local organizations and nonprofits partner to tailor training to the needs of teachers. Organizations specializing in teacher certifications have stepped in to provide tools for evaluation and uniformity, and teachers themselves have helped train fellow educators. Local control of school districts can make consistency across the state difficult, yet teacher training is one area in which states, local officials and advocates have been working to achieve a level of uniformity that helps ensure equitable financial education statewide.
THIS PAPER analyzes why teacher training is so essential, highlighting the necessary considerations for effective teacher training, and examines multiple states’ methodology for their teacher training initiatives. It also reviews case studies that present challenges and opportunities and provides recommendations based on NEFE research that can guide policymakers and administrators facing the challenge of bringing equitable financial education to every high school student in the state.
Current State
Teachers from various backgrounds can confidently teach personal finance once trained, but they still require professional development to do so effectively. NEFE interviewees noted that teachers in their respective states identified their knowledge of the material as a barrier when teaching the course. These are anecdotes backed by research that indicate a sizable increase in educators’ knowledge and confidence teaching personal finance after undergoing professional development. Champlain College’s Center for Financial Literacy estimates that more than 22,000 trained personal finance teachers are needed by 2031 in the 26 states that have passed this requirement in order to teach the estimated 57 percent of all graduating students in the U.S. that year.
Additionally, research shows that teachers who complete personal finance training also feel more confident about their own finances, making this professional development a multifaceted intervention that benefits students and their teachers. Readily available options exist to support teachers, such as Next Gen Personal Finance’s certification courses and their digital badges, which are a fun way for teachers to set goals and track their professional development progress. States have a significant opportunity within their teacher training initiatives.
Students receive higher quality of personal finance instruction
Teachers learn new financial concepts that benefit their own financial lives
State Examples
TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAM AND CERTIFICATION
Two of the biggest decisions regarding teacher preparedness is how states choose to facilitate training institutes and whether or not certification is required to teach the course. Mississippi, North Carolina and Nebraska saw a variety of approaches, each with pros and cons. In each state, the local chapter of the Council on Economic Education (CEE) has been crucial in providing professional development for teachers.
UTAH: The state with the longest acting K-12 personal finance graduation requirement, Utah has seen multiple steps of evolution since the law was passed in 2003. After the first six years of the General Financial Literacy requirement being active in schools, the state received sizable feedback from teachers who were feeling underprepared to teach the course. The state responded to this feedback, and educators in Utah are now required to obtain a General Financial Literacy endorsement. Additionally, Utah established via legislation the Utah Council on Financial and Economic Education, chaired by the State Treasurer and tasked with “ensuring improved financial and economic education in Utah through the collaboration of private and public entities that engage in teaching financial principles and that share a commitment to empowering Utahns to achieve economic stability, opportunity, and upward mobility.” The Council includes public and private entities from across the state to evaluate, troubleshoot, and find funding. It has proven to be tremendously helpful in facilitating the improvements made to teacher training and endorsements.
State amends requirement to require a GFL endorsement, aiming to ensure teachers are prepared before teaching the course
State Passes
Teachers report feeling underprepared to teach the course
We spoke with Susan Speirs, a long-time advocate for financial education in Utah who has been directly involved in the evolution of the state’s requirement for over 16 years, about the GFL Endorsement:
Many people struggle with their own financial well-being. We learned early on that many teachers who were assigned to teach financial literacy courses had no training and couldn’t answer questions from students. [Utah] Jump$tart responded with creating an annual teacher summit that trains to the strands and standards the state requires students to understand. As part of the summit, teachers are able to take some personal financial literacy development workshops as well. Teachers come away more confident as they are able to apply financial principles to their own lives, and in turn, teach them to their students using personal examples. We have a financial literacy commission that is tasked with meeting every three years to review the current strands and standards and provide recommendations for improvements based on what our partners are experiencing on the economic front as well as what to expect based on policy in the future. Outside partners are crucial for the instructors, the students and the economy as a whole.
An interesting part of this endorsement is that teachers have a multitude of pathways to acquire it. Through the endorsement requirement, a small amount of funding from the state, and partnerships with Jump$tart and NextGen Personal Finance, Utah has been able to elevate the overall level of teacher preparedness. Improvements to the process are still possible, but this example shows how teacher endorsement/certification was one of the first major positive changes made.
MISSISSIPPI: In Mississippi, any licensed teacher can teach personal finance, a decision that was made to provide more flexibility. The Mississippi CEE has developed an intensive 75-hour Master Teacher Institute to support teachers. However, teachers are not required to participate. Additionally teachers can only join the Master Teacher cohort with approval from their principal indicating that they are chosen to teach the College and Career Readiness (CCR) course at their school, meaning that dozens of interested teachers are unable to take the training every year because they have not yet been chosen to teach CCR.
NORTH CAROLINA: In North Carolina, the law uniquely identifies the North Carolina Council on Economic Education (NCCEE) as the state’s sole provider of professional development. The legislation requires that teachers take NCCEE’s professional development program and pass a teacher certification exam, either through CEE’s Test of Economic Literacy (TEL), or Working In Support of Education’s teacher exam (W!SE). However, the law
has a loophole permitting teachers to teach the course before completing their professional development due to the state’s short implementation timeline. Additionally, W!SE does not release teacher score results without their consent. Therefore, while the NCCEE has developed strong professional development utilized by teachers across the state, there is a lack of accountability in verifying that teachers instructing the personal finance course have completed this training and passed their W!SE certification. This close tie between the new requirement and NCCEE is uncommon and has some benefits (e.g., funding match) and drawbacks (e.g., heightened need for communication between NCCEE and the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction).
NEBRASKA: The Nebraska Council on Economic Education (NCEE) has conducted teacher professional development institutes each summer since 2010. The NCEE partnered with the Nebraska Department of Education to ensure that its institute opportunities were being disseminated effectively to teachers, which has demonstrated great success. The institute partners with W!SE to provide teachers with certifications if they pass the exam. Because NCEE has teachers’ consent to share their test scores, the Council has data on pass rates. However, this reporting does not automatically go to school districts unless the teacher chooses to share the information. State law requires schools to submit annual reports to their school board, though it does not require reporting to the state.
SCALING AND TIMELINE
The average timeline between the passing of financial education legislation—or administrative rule—and the first students required to take the class is typically about 4–5 years. North Carolina and Nebraska had shorter implementation timelines worth noting.
NEBRASKA: The state already offered a substantial amount of personal finance instruction. Jennifer Davidson, Ph.D., president of the NCEE, estimated that 60 percent of students across the state had personal finance education available at their school before the requirement passed (Davidson, 2018). Despite this, NCEE saw a huge demand for its training institutes and resources. It has since developed an online personal finance institute to keep up with teacher demand, utilizing the Nebraska Department of Education to recruit interested teachers.
NORTH CAROLINA: In North Carolina, the shorter timeline was partially responsible for the compromise allowing educators to teach the course before completing professional development. NCCEE’s professional development is comprehensive, and its contract with the state requires quarterly reports sent to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Yet even with their successes, the trade-offs that stem from a shorter implementation timeline still have lasting effects. While this compromise was meant to grant flexibility to teachers, it means educators may be teaching the course without adequate preparation. At this time, it is unclear to what extent this is prevalent.
Across multiple states, the presence of Master Teacher Institutes has been a significant solution to scaling efforts. Mississippi and North Carolina exhibited this with great success. The capacity to train teachers was expanded by utilizing and empowering previously trained cohorts of teachers to run trainings themselves.
FUNDING AND ONGOING TRAINING
Sustainable funding has consistently been an issue for all of these states due to the need to train new cohorts in the future as well as the need for continuous training materials for previously trained teachers.
NEBRASKA: The state included an amendment allocating $25,000 to the Nebraska Department of Education to help fund staff to organize professional development efforts, but much more was needed. The NCEE leveraged the momentum behind its newly passed requirement to go to financial institutions for grants and found this successful. Through this funding, the NCEE was able to provide teachers with a $150 daily stipend to attend the training institute. Utilizing the momentum of a newly passed requirement in order to fundraise is an effective strategy, and it is worth noting that many organizations are likely already funding other financial education efforts in the state, providing existing efforts that can be integrated or built out.
MISSISSIPPI: The MCEE has secured teacher training funding via a workforce development angle, which has been successful but inconsistent. Employers are realizing increasingly that their employees’ financial well-being has immense benefits. When the MCEE can secure full funding, it will provide $500 stipends for teachers who complete the 75-hour institute. When this funding is partial, it will still offer a $250 stipend. Framing this investment to potential funders as a means of investing in the financial well-being of the future workforce can be effective in the right setting.
NORTH CAROLINA: As part of the state’s contract with the NCCEE, North Carolina matches NCCEE funding up to $1 million, primarily for teacher training. This has been helpful as the state implemented their requirement in a short window. While the NCCEE still has to fundraise to get this match, the state match alleviates some of that burden. This reliable model means the NCCEE can offer teachers a full $500 stipend to complete their 40-hour training institute. The funding match contract with the NC DPI now requires the reports from NCCEE on this initiative, meaning the state is receiving valuable data about teacher knowledge and sentiment from their trainings to help refine implementation.
Sustainable funding is essential because of the need to teach future cohorts and provide consistent training opportunities and updates on materials for teachers. The NCEE has been considering this specifically and has received feedback about the desire for ongoing webinars to help teachers stay updated on the material.
North Carolina and the NCCEE have recently developed webinars that aim to provide this for teachers. This requires consistent and sustainable funding, and without it, the ability to provide ongoing touchpoints like this is jeopardized.
Challenges/Opportunities
TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAM AND CERTIFICATION: Teachers require training to teach personal finance effectively, but there is no uniform certification process across states; this can even differ within a single state. Due to local control, this can lead to situations in which educators teach personal finance before completing their professional development or without exhibiting that the training was successful. While other subjects require teachers to be certified to teach, this is not nearly as common with personal finance. The cost of certifying/credentialing varies depending on the organization, which is also a consideration.
’Local Control’ is the concept that local government and authorities, such as school boards, should retain control over certain operations and decisions. In financial education, this often manifests in school districts and school boards maintaining oversight of many key areas of implementation.
SCALING AND TIMELINE: School districts in many states already offered a personal finance course before a requirement was passed through legislation. For example, in Nebraska, personal finance was an elective course in more than half of the schools in the state. Even in these states, offering enough training sessions to meet the needed supply for teachers is challenging. The two key considerations of this issue are the timeline and the ability to build out and fund teacher training in order to increase capacity.
If a state has too short an implementation timeline, properly preparing teachers becomes a greater challenge, which may result in compromises that can undermine the effectiveness of the course. Assuming an appropriate timeline, meeting this demand can still be a potential challenge. Early in the process of training teachers, the capacity of teacher training institutes (“institute,” in this context, meaning a training session or course) can be quickly met, and many teachers may find themselves on the waitlist or unable to join the training at all—a challenge many states face during their implementation process.
FUNDING
AND
ONGOING TRAINING:
The work needed to properly train educators to teach personal finance comes at a cost. NEFE maintains that, ideally, legislation passing a K-12 personal finance graduation requirement should have funding attached to it. In states without funding from the legislature, the onus falls on school districts and their private or nonprofit partners to find the needed backing. Even in states that pass funding, it is typically short-term, requiring supplemental fundraising. Recognizing that teachers are already stretched thin financially, an important piece of this is avoiding teachers from paying out of pocket for this training and preferably providing a stipend for their time. Alternatively, some
states pay for substitute teachers to allow future personal finance educators to receive their training during school hours. Because of the need to consistently train new teachers, funding must be sustainable, which has proven to be a challenge.
Another reason sustainable funding is so critical is because teachers must have ongoing training during their tenure instructing the course. The financial world, especially with the continuous evolution of financial services, products and technologies, is ever-changing, as are the perceptions and needs of new generations of students. Teachers are attesting to new ways their students engage with financial systems, ways in which students in the same grade would not have needed instruction just five years ago. During their time educating students, teachers may also realize that they need to refine their own understanding of certain topics their students are engaging with the most. Providing teachers with sources of ongoing training also requires sustainable funding, which is another barrier states face.
Recommendations
TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAM AND CERTIFICATION
For thorough teacher training, look to supporting organizations, such as the Council for Economic Education’s state affiliates and Next Gen Personal Finance. Local organizations with established relationships in their districts can also help in similar ways.
Consider how higher education institutions can help prepare future teachers to deliver personal finance instruction and support educators with training and credentialing.
Ensure teachers have completed training and sufficiently retained knowledge of the material through a certification or endorsement process. There are multiple approaches and considerations here, but accountability through the certification process is key.
SCALING AND TIMELINE
Allow a sufficient timeline for school districts and teachers across the state to prepare, leaving at least 4–5 years for teacher training and other aspects of implementation to progress.
Implement Master Teacher Institutes, utilizing previously trained teachers, to scale out the process and ensure enough teachers have completed training before the end of the implementation window.
FUNDING AND ONGOING TRAINING
Secure sustainable funding from the state to support the implementation of new graduation requirements. This is the surest way for the state to support implementation. If guaranteed funds are unavailable, a funding match with an established financial education nonprofit will provide some needed support.
Establish a body, such as a council (e.g., the UCFEE), to bring public and private partners together to cover funding needs. Many players like banks, foundations and universities can support this work so long as they receive the request.
Consider details around sustainability with the understanding that the new personal finance course will require future and ongoing teacher training.
Summary
Ensuring that K-12 educators are prepared to teach personal finance is a critical component of effective instruction. If a financial education graduation requirement is put into effect, but teachers are left to their own devices and unsupported, the goal of providing all students with this important knowledge is diminished. Taking an intentional approach to prepare teachers, while working with existing organizations that specialize in training and certification, will strengthen the new requirement. The intention of these requirements is to better prepare students for their adult lives, and ensuring teachers are adequately equipped to provide this education confidently is a vital step towards this end goal.
