“Handling money and managing finances is a critical skill that is woefully underemphasized in our schools. Representative Gallagher’s bill would provide a jumpstart to schools looking to create or supplement existing courses to ensure students have the opportunity to learn the basics of financial literacy,” said Libby Sobic, Director of Education Policy at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
2017 Wisconsin Act 94, which became effective on December 2, 2017, made Wisconsin one of 45 states to include personal finance education in their K-12 standards. Despite these requirements, some schools struggle to implement programs due to the cost of training hours or inability to pay institutions that provide financial literacy education. The Student Empowerment and Financial Literacy Act provides schools with an opportunity to design a program that best fits their needs, be it through training or partnering with another institution.
The Wisconsin Credit Union League President and CEO Brett Thompson, whose membership has offered in-school, student-run branches to help promote financial literacy, today
wrote a letter to Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader McCarthy endorsing the bill.
In part, Thompson wrote: “Enactment of this bill would offer schools resources for superior financial education programming to help enhance the financial health, habits, and knowledge of the next generation…Wisconsin credit unions’ longstanding tradition of providing meaningful financial education stems from their mission to provide opportunities for members to improve their economic and social condition, as the Student Empowerment and Financial Literacy Act similarly empowers schools and communities to do.”
This year, research completed by the
Council for Economic Education indicated that students who are required to learn financial education “exhibit more informed behavior around college financing, in particular those from lower-income families.”
