| Page 2 of 3 < > |
Kids Get Money-Smart
Participating in Finance Park, a financial education program for children, Maddie Vance holds up a card that lets her add to her budget for spending on basics such as utilities and food.
(By James A. Parcell -- The Washington Post)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
There are six permanent Finance Park facilities nationwide, according to Edward J. Grenier, chief executive of Junior Achievement of the National Capital Area. Maddie's class did its instruction at a new mobile Finance Park, built in two specially outfitted trailers (paid for by Capital One) and designed to travel.
Each student was assigned a scenario -- such as being an unmarried, 32-year-old mother earning $34,000 a year -- and had to budget income to cover housing, food, insurance, transportation, child care and, if possible, entertainment. Maddie, like most of the students in the day-long exercise, left with a greater appreciation of her parents -- and a slight fear of growing up.
"It was really hard to pick and choose what you spend your money on," she said. "Now I realize what they have to do in real life."
That doesn't always make it easier to resist the $50 jacket from the popular teen store Hollister, she said, but the JA program has made her think harder about such purchases, especially when her mother questions her spending decisions. It takes vigilance to reinforce those lessons.
"I'll definitely think about it -- if I buy this, I won't be able to buy that," Maddie said. "But sometimes, I don't know, something comes over me and I just really want to buy something."
A Way for Teens
The JA pilot program was tested on eighth-graders at Rocky Run Middle School in Chantilly last fall in part because of the interest of Jack Dale, superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools. He has made it a priority to get more financial education into the county's middle schools.
"Our school board, this past spring, was wrestling with the very issue of what should we expect of all our kids when they graduate," Dale said. "At 40 or 50 different public hearings, they repeatedly heard, 'we need to ensure that our kids have financial literacy and citizenship skills.' "
The JA experiment helped officials think differently about how to approach financial education. Financial literacy lessons are currently embedded in courses such as social studies and math. "What we realized is we'll be more effective if we pull them out of those content areas and teach them in a more project-based approach," he said.
The Fairfax school system will roll out a program for teaching financial literacy to middle-schoolers over the next two years, joining a growing number of other systems.
Only nine states have personal finance instruction as a high-school graduation requirement, but last year, seven more introduced legislation to require some kind of money management instruction in public schools, according to the National Association of State Boards of Education.
NASBE formed a commission last year to assess the need for such education in schools and concluded that financial literacy and investor education should be a "basic feature" of K-12 programs.
"The evidence shows that youth financial education can make a difference," the commission wrote. "Individuals graduating from high schools in states that mandate personal finance education courses have higher savings rates and net worth as a percentage of earnings than those who graduate from schools in states without such a mandate."
