Charita Goshay: Financial literacy law is a good idea - Yahoo News

In the raft of bills being proposed in Columbus, one likely to be passed by the Ohio Legislature is Senate Bill 1. State Sen. Steve Wilson's law, if approved, would require students to take 60 hours of instruction in financial literacy to graduate, starting in 2022.

Ohio schools have offered financial literacy courses on an elective basis for decades, but the bill would make it mandatory to take a half-credit of financial literacy to meet graduation requirements.

Wilson, who works as a banker, has said the goal of the bill is to demystify how money works.

Ray Martinez, president EVERFI, a financial education company, has been pushing for states to add financial education requirements for 20 years. Martinez said 135,219 students in Ohio have used EVERFI Financial Literacy since the 2016-2017 school year. Last year, 437 schools offered an EVERFI course taken by 46,344 students

"The core educational curriculum in our country was designed to teach students reading, writing, and math," he said. "Subjects like science and social studies were deemed critical and added as well but the curriculum has never been focused on critical topic areas like the importance of your credit score, the power of compounding interest, identity protection, how a mortgage works, and other pocketbook issues."

Martinez said the number of school systems that have added financial education has increased since the financial crisis of 2008, noting that nearly 45 states have made it a requirement or recommended it as part of their learning standards.

Martinez said financial literacy tends to be entrusted to parents, but not everyone is equipped to offer their children advice on money.

"Instead of incorporating this critical education into schools, we’ve relied on parents to take on the responsibility of teaching this content to their children," he said. "Unfortunately, there is an economic divide in this country and when you expect parents to take care of teaching this material at home, you only widen that divide between those who are equipped to have the conversation and those who are not.

source: https://news.yahoo.com/charita-goshay-financial-literacy-law-095705235.html

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