Fairfax high schools debut financial literacy course

By Holly Hobbs,

Oakton High School freshman Madelynne Norton, 14, took a test Oct. 3 to determine which careers might suit her.

Sitting at a computer lab in their economics and personal finance class, Madelynne and 27 other students clicked through the questionnaire, which included 35 questions on skills and 72 on interests. Students also were asked to rank a list of 25 “value” subjects, ranging from job security to being treated fairly by their employer.

“This shows us what we might be interested in career-wise,” Madelynne said, adding that being a nurse was among her top picks.

The test marked the beginning of a unit on finding jobs that is part of the course’s goal of preparing students for life after high school. The unit will end with students having searched for jobs within their chosen field, researched the company from which they are seeking employment, prepared résumés and sat for a mock job interview conducted by a teacher.

Learning about buying a car, renting an apartment, handling student loans, understanding the stock market and more are part of the curriculum for the course, which is a requirement the Virginia General Assembly mandated in 2009.

In the wake of financial problems within the banking and housing industries, some state legislators called financial literacy a basic life skill that should be taught before students leave secondary school. Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) recommended to the General Assembly that financial literacy be added to the high school curriculum.

The legislature waived implementation of the requirement for a school year because school systems were facing budget shortfalls.

Virginia students who entered high school as freshmen this fall must complete the required course before graduating. However, the state did not stipulate a start date for the course to be implemented in individual schools.

Thus far, 24 of the 27 regular and alternative public high schools in Fairfax County have implemented the economics and personal finance course.

“Some principals — because we recommended that it be taken junior or senior year — decided to hold off on offering it,” said Beth Downey, the school system’s manager of Business and Information Technology. Schools that chose to delay offering the course this year are Falls Church, Lee and Madison high schools and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

The Fairfax school system has offered a similar financial literacy course, as an elective, for years, Downey said.

Many school systems took their finance course, which offered similar competencies and frameworks, and tweaked it for the new economics and personal finance class, according to the Department of Education. The course is 36 weeks, with 18 weeks devoted to finance and 18 focused on economics, with units on history and social sciences, such as the stock market crash of 1929.

The guidelines for the curriculum were drafted by the Virginia Department of Education.

“I think it’s kind of cool because it simulates real life,” Madelynne said of the class. “It teaches you how to buy a car and rent an apartment . . . things we’ll be doing after high school.”

Much of the course curriculum is delivered through an online textbook, which, for a unit on buying a car, allowed students to pick from a selection of vehicles ranging from the safe and economic to the luxurious and high-priced.

“I liked working on the car loan project,” said freshman Julia Bruce, 14. She chose a 2005 Toyota Prius. “We went on a Web site that showed a bunch of cars and we had to pick one and calculate how we were going to pay for it.”

Several students said they chose the more expensive, sporty cars first, but soon learned that such dream purchases might have to wait until later in life.

Oakton teacher Brandon McCulla taught economics and personal finance for the first time last year and is teaching it again this year. This year’s class has more freshmen because of the new requirement, he said. In his class of 28 students, 16 are freshmen, five are sophomores, one is a junior and six are seniors.

“For the upperclassmen that take this, it’s really about the money management,” McCulla said. “It focuses a lot on the personal finance element. Budgeting is a big part of that. Balancing a checkbook, savings accounts . . . we do a stock market simulation, the kids get really excited about that.”

The class probably is more appropriately aimed at upperclassmen, fellow teacher Luke Haen said.

“It’s more relevant to them,” he said. “They grasp it easier because they think, ‘I have bills to pay,’ or whatever.”

Senior Gabriel Torres, 17, said he took the class because he wants to be a responsible college spender.

“[Because of] the feeling of independence and being away from home, I think, I would be more prone to spending money,” Torres said.

McCulla said he could have benefited from the course in high school.

“My school did not offer a personal finance course,” he said. “I tell [students] all the time they’re lucky. . . . We do a great thing with credit cards where we teach them the dangers of debt and the benefits [of having cards].”

The goal of the course is to send students into the world financially literate so that parents “know that their students are going to be okay and they don’t have to worry so much,” he added.