Financial education to be graduation requirement starting in 2026
Financial literacy is one of the core skills needed to succeed in the 21st century.
Data recently released by the nonprofit Investor Education Foundation shows high school students who passed mandatory personal finance courses have better-than-average credit scores and lower debt delinquency rates as young adults.
High schools in Butler County have increasingly provided real-world financial lessons to students, and starting in 2026, students will be required to pass a personal finance course before graduation.
In December 2023, Pennsylvania became the 25th state to require a personal finance course for high school students when Gov. Josh Shapiro signed into law Senate Bill 843.
Momentum for financial education in schools has been picking up in Butler County during the past few years, and the Pennsylvania Board of Education is drafting new proposed standards that will be implemented in the fall of 2026.
“The Department of Education strongly believes that personal financial literacy is a critical life skill for any learner,” said Taj Magruder, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Education. “The standards cover grades K-12 and are organized under the areas of study such as personal finance fundamentals, income, spending, saving and investing, risk and insurance, and credit.”
Magruder said the standards have not been finalized and will undergo regulatory review in the coming months by the Office of the Attorney General, the Independent Regulatory Review Commission and the House and Senate Committees on Education.
Once a final draft of the financial education standards is adopted by the department’s board, it will again be reviewed by the House and Senate education committees, Magruder said.
The standards would again be reviewed by the Independent Regulatory Review Commission and if approved would then go before the Office of Attorney General and then the state Department of Education board for final approval, Magruder said.
Mike Stimac, prinicpal for grades 10 through 12 at Karns City Area Jr./Sr. High School, said he and representatives from other local schools meet virtually once a month as the Department of Education’s Intermediate Unit, which serves as an intermediary between the department and the school districts in the state.
“We receive updates from the Intermediate Unit and it seems each month they add something new,” Stimac said. “The general topics the standards will cover are budgeting, financial savings, loans and investing.”
Other local schools Stimac said he has seen participate in these meetings include Moniteau, Mars, Butler, Knoch and Seneca Valley.
“There is a lot of brain power in those meetings,” Stimac said. “We like to bounce ideas off of those folks because they have great experience and perspectives.”
Financial education courses have already been implemented at Karns City, Stimac said, such as its career readiness course, which is a graduation requirement and is typically taken by students in 10th grade.
“When it was made a requirement we felt there was a need for soft skills,” Stimac said. “We want to prepare students for a career after high school. Student loans are one of the driving forces and the lack of overall financial literacy.”
According to Nicole Duncan, a mathematics teacher at Seneca Valley, there is no personal finance requirement from the district for students to graduate, but it does offer two classes that could be used as an elective or as a math credit.
“Personal Finance semester courses count as half of a math credit,” Duncan said. “At Seneca Valley, students are required to take four math credits. Some students take Personal Finance as a half-math credit while others take it as an elective.”
There is Personal Finance 1 and Personal Finance 2, each worth a half-credit.
Personal Finance 2 simply expands upon what was taught in the previous course.
David Reichard, a special education teacher at Seneca Valley, said the Personal Finance courses cover 10 units ranging from behavioral economics, banking, investing, types of credit, managing credit, paying for college, insurance, taxes, budgeting and consumer skills and, lastly, careers.
“All students will use and apply at least 90% of the content,” Reichard said. “The only unit that doesn’t necessarily apply to all students is paying for college. Some students might be going directly into the workforce. However, we feel it’s important for students to understand the process of the financial application and filling out the FASFA along with resources to apply for scholarships and process, calculations, and repayments of student loans.”
Students seem to enjoy the unit on investing and learning about the stock market Duncan said, and they have also expressed that they think it should be a graduation requirement because it’s information they know they can use in the future.
“Financial education can both save and earn people money,” Duncan said. “It’s vital that students understand that a high interest rate on a credit card, auto, or home loan makes the purchase extremely more expensive. On the other hand, the power of compound interest with investing can multiply your money exponentially.”
Reichard said there are usually no major changes to the curriculum, however each year they update the information to make sure it is relevant to today’s economic climate, such as updates to federal distribution, tax dollars, tax brackets, investment interest rates and banking apps.
“There surely is room for improvement for financial literacy, but that’s not necessarily limited to just young adults,” Reichard said. “We both say ‘we wish we had this class in high school.’ Knowledge is power, and financial literacy can be a lifelong game changer.”
Jeremy Borkowski, a ninth- and 12th-grade history and economics teacher at Moniteau Jr./Sr. High School, said he does a lot of hands-on activities in his senior level government and civic economics course with what he calls “Financial Fitness Fridays.”
“Every Friday we go through and we try to replicate real-life skills,” Borkowski said. “At the beginning of the term I gave them a list of apartments to chose from, cellphone plans, insurance and car payment plans. Then we created our own little bank accounts and then we pay bills digitally online.
“We want to emulate how people would pay bills when they go out on their own.”
Also during the activity, when students walk into class they pick out a card that will present them with an unexpected expenditure, and then the students have to budget for that based on where they are financially.
“Maybe they got a flat tire or you need to get your oil changed,” Borkowski said. “It's to account for the things that happen in life that you can’t budget for. You adjust your budget on the fly to do that.”
Overall, Borkowski’s economics class entails a lot of seemingly mundane skills that sometimes get skipped over or never talked about at all in a school setting, such as the difference between W-2 and W-4 tax forms.
“We talk about payroll and taxes,” Borkowski said. “Each of those lessons supplement what we are doing on Fridays.
“You would rather fail in a little activity rather than having a situation where they will actually do poorly in life.”
Teaching students about saving money and how to do it is a top goal of the course Borkowski said, and he does that by talking about how savings accounts work, but also in just making wiser financial decisions once they leave high school.
“Throughout the year we talk about the economics of working in the labor force,” Borkowski said. “Going to trade school versus college and what is the opportunity and cost associated. Every student is going to do something different, so we try to look at it from their perspective.”
Borkowski said he believes the students are doing “pretty well” with the course material, but he hopes they will keep an open mind when it comes to making hard financial decisions.
“The tough part is knowing how much money you need to make those choices and make sure you are living a decent life,” he said.
This article originally appeared in the March edition of Butler County Business Matters.
