Massachusetts students advocated for financial education – Fast Lane
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Massachusetts students advocated for financial education

A group of students in Massachusetts that noticed the lack of financial know-how among their peers and in the community formed a group called Project Finance that included mentors from their school and area universities. In order to demonstrate the need for financial education, Project Finance surveyed school principals throughout the state. They presented the survey results to the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, asking them to recommend that districts voluntarily implement the Council for Economic Education’s (CEE) standards. The education commissioner’s response was that the state did not need to adopt CEE standards, but that the current standards were already in alignment. While this presentation did not have the outcome that students wanted, it built momentum in the community and helped to raise awareness of the importance of financial education. One of the students in the group wrote an article titled Financial Ignorance Is Not an Option, which was published by the Council for Economic Education.

Massachusetts continues to move forward. In early 2019, it passed f legislation allowing schools to incorporate financial literacy standards into existing curricula; the National Conference of State Legislatures provides a summary of this legislation.