Short Piece on Financial Education in Texas

This is a short article I wrote for the local newspaper about a study that I conducted at the local university:

As Financial Literacy Month comes to a close, the value of savings, credit, and budgeting have become more salient to the average American. Responsible money management affects a household’s ability to secure employment, to pay taxes, and to raise a family. While many parts of the country struggle to promote this subject, Texas stands out as one of the few states that require public high schools to include financial literacy lessons in their curriculum.

Unfortunately, there has been speculation that this standard is not being upheld at every school. Last month, North Texas Area United Way conducted a focus group study at Midwestern State University to investigate these claims. Undergraduates who attended public high school in Texas were questioned about the financial education they had received as well as their attitudes towards money and other financial issues.

Shockingly, the majority of participants reported that they had received little to no education regarding personal financial literacy during high school. The deterioration from state mandate to local implementation can be explained by a shortcoming in the legislation. In 2003, Governor Perry signed House Concurrent Resolution 15, which instructed the State Board of Education “to implement the inclusion of elements relating to personal finance among the essential knowledge and skills in the required public school curriculum, and to adopt and promote a personal finance education program that provides public school districts with textbook selections to assist in the program’s implementation.”

Despite this strong language, the resolution failed to include any system of measurement. To this day, there is no statewide evaluation of financial literacy teachers in Texas, nor is there a statewide examination of high school students’ financial capabilities. Until these assessments are in place, the state’s so-called requirement is effectively meaningless.

State and local statistics verify this legislation’s inadequacy. Texas ranks 39^th in financial literacy among states and 44^th in financial behavior. In Wichita Falls, 43% of consumers have a subprime credit score. Confronted with this evidence, Texan families must decide if they are satisfied with a public school curriculum in which financial education is prescribed, but not standardized.