Financial Education Gets a Refreshed Set of Guidelines

Each year, for decades, millions of Americans have made it through the entirety of their K-12 educational experience without ever having touched the topic of economics or personal finances.

And unfortunately, it shows.

Consider the 2025 TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index (mercifully shortened to the "P-Fin Index"), which shows that even today, financial literacy among adults has remained stagnant for years. To assess an adult's financial literacy, the P-Fin Index uses 28 questions covering eight areas in which individuals routinely function.

In 2025, U.S. adults correctly answered less than half (49%) of those questions.

That percentage is unchanged from 2017.

And that percentage never topped 52% for any year in between.

That said, it's not for lack of trying. We've previously highlighted policies, organizations, and movements designed to advance financial education among America's youth, and today, we're going to look at one of the broadest such efforts—a set of nationwide standards that has recently received a long-awaited upgrade.

The National Content Standards in K-12 Economics

Recently, the Council for Economic Education (CEE) released its new third edition of National Content Standards in K-12 Economics. 

These standards—meant to influence state departments of education, school boards, teachers, and curriculum publishers—include 260 benchmarks grouped into 18 economic pillars including topics such as income, labor, inflation, business structure, market structure, the role of government, and (new in this edition) technology. 

Young and the Invested Tip: Check out our own guidelines on teaching children about money management skills such as budgeting, saving, and spending.

The concepts are then segmented not into specific grade levels, but broader levels. For instance:

• Elementary school students are taught the concept of scarcity through relatable examples, such as all the kids wanting to use a new swing set at the same time.
• Middle schoolers will dive into market economy principles, such as why ride-share apps can hike prices during peak hours.
• High school students will be exposed to more complex economic terms and ideas, such as how a minimum-wage increase might affect their interest in after-school jobs as well as employers' hiring decisions.

"Economics helps students develop critical thinking and analytical skills, which are essential for making informed decisions in personal and professional lives," says Raphael W. Bostic, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and a member of CEE's board of directors. "We're not trying to make everyone into an economist; our goal is to help students grow and thrive in whatever they choose to pursue."

Updated Financial Educational Standards: A Q&A

Today, we're talking to Chris Caltabiano, Interim Chief Executive Officer & Chief Program Officer of the CEE, to answer a host of questions, including how these standards impact learning at the school level, what has changed, why it changed, and the most core tenets of these standards.

And if you're curious about what the roadmap for financial education looks like, you can download it for free at the CEE's website.

Young and the Invested: How are these standards generally put into practice? Do education departments implement them directly, or are they more of guidance to work from?

Caltabiano: We see it as a framework for states to draw from. 

There's no national education policy [in the U.S.], per se—policy is really made at the state level, sometimes even lower than that, at the district or school-building level.

Young and the Invested Tip: There's a lot that parents can do at home, too. These tips, for instance, show parents how to teach their children about investing.

So we see it as guidance: the best thinking of those who really spend their lives doing economic education, the best thinking that we can provide as far as what we feel should be in economic courses at the K-12 level. Some states will take it whole cloth and just use it; other states will use it as a benchmark and develop their own standards and benchmarks from it. And again, sometimes it starts further down from the state level. 

Researchers use it … and we know textbook writers often draw from the standards as well. So it's voluntary guidance, but it has a pretty broad set of uses.

Young and the Invested: The last update of standards was last released in 2010. Was this just a few tweaks to those standards, or an overhaul of the whole thing?

Caltabiano: We thoroughly reviewed the existing set of standards. 

We put together a team of writers, I think there were six in total, some from academia, one from the Federal Reserve System, one from the College Board … and there was input from teachers on the front end, then reviews from teachers afterwards. Even the beginning work of looking at the last standards to say "What do we think is missing?" "What do we think people are talking about now that's happening in the classroom and in the world that … either isn't in these standards now or needs to be elevated in some way?"

Comparing the [changes from the] first edition to the second edition, versus the second edition to the third, this is a little more heavy of an update.

Young and the Invested: What are some of the most important updates and/or additions to the standards?

Caltabiano: A couple major things changed: We added one brand-new standard, and then there was one standard that was elevated in importance. That elevated standard is on international trade, which I think if the last year says anything, it's that international trade was probably worthy of its own standard. I think the very fact that we highlighted international trade was very prescient on our part, and just a sign that's the way the world was moving.

The brand-new standard is about technology. There have been bits and pieces of technology in the previous standards, but we really felt technology—as a tool for economic growth—needed its own set of benchmarks and its own statement. And in fact, the week we officially launched the new standards was the same week that the Nobel Prize was awarded to three economists studying how technology accelerates growth. So again, we felt like, OK, we are in the right place about technology … having its own standard. 

Another thing that's become more prominent in the last dozen years is behavioral economics. There is not a standard for behavioral economics, but distributed throughout the standards is a notion that people's behavior can affect decision making—something that 12, 15 years ago hadn't really risen to the level of prominence [it has now].

Underneath all that, we combined or updated other things, such as monetary policy. I don't think it'll come as any shock to you that economic policy and the tools of the Fed have changed significantly since the last standard. So we made some pretty meaningful updates to that.

Many of the changes were really thinking about how classroom learning looks like in economics.

Young and the Invested: And is there anything different about how educators should get this message through to students?

Caltabiano: Underneath the standards are these benchmarks. They're statements of what students should be able to understand, and then there is a demonstration—examples of how students should be able to demonstrate that knowledge. 

These demonstrations can change significantly because of changes in the world. Even dumb things like mentioning a Walkman back then, versus, say, Spotify today. We don't use specific product names, but I'm talking about the notion that the sorts of activities a young child might do to demonstrate something may have changed from 15 years ago to now. We really made sure there's a clear picture for teachers as to "if a student can do this, it's a clear indication they understand the underlying context."

Young and the Invested Tip: Debit cards are among the best practical tools for teaching kids and teens how money works. These are some of the best free options.

There's one other change that may be important to consider talking about. Previous standards were benchmarked at the fourth-, eighth-, and 12th-grade levels, and what we were seeing, and actually in usage, is people were saying, "This is what I need to teach in fourth grade, this is what I need to teach in eighth grade, and this is what I need to teach in 12th grade," which was not the intent. The intent was to teach those subjects by the time the student reaches that point.

Young and the Invested: If you had to narrow down all of the standards to just a few core concepts, what are the most important aspects of them that children should learn?

Caltabiano: We don't officially say in a document, "This is the most important thing and if you only get to this, you're golden."

But I'd say, what are the fundamentals of economics? 

A lot of people say it's all about money, and that's completely wrong. Economics is about understanding how to make decisions in a world with scarce resources. 

There are three things in that sentence that we start with: scarcity, decision making, resources.

If you start there, those tools are applicable across your entire life. Understanding how inflation works builds off of that, certainly, but understanding that you can't have everything you want, and you need to learn how to make informed decisions, that is fundamental.

If you look at the way that the standards and then the benchmarks under them progress, you'll see at the elementary level, there's a very heavy emphasis on that notion of scarcity, of decision making, of allocating resources. And I think the fact that it's very heavy at the elementary level then leads you to say, well, that's when children are beginning their learning, and that's where you want to start that.

Young and the Invested: Why is it so crucial for kids to have a foundation in financial and economic concepts?

Caltabiano: The reason it's so fundamental goes back to what it's a study of: the notion of choice and decision making and scarcity. People make choices every single day about any number of different things, and understanding how to maximize your ability to make those decisions is just a critical tool. 

That's what economics is about: How do you make choices? How do you figure out, you know, given your particular situation and the things you are trying to accomplish, which choice is going to be the most optimal to you? 

And I'll tell you, that choice is not always going to be the same. That's one of the important things about the standards: They don't tell you "this is the right way to do things." They tell you "here are the pros and cons," and you have to assess your situation and make the decision that makes the most sense.

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A second special shoutout in consecutive weekends to our Hoosier readers. If you're an Indiana University fan, we absolutely don't want to congratulate you on beating Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship Game, but for the sake of good manners, we still will. Here's hoping for a rematch in the CFP final!

But all good things must come to an end.

Riley (D-III undergrad, Fired James Franklin U grad) & Kyle (Ohio State, Class of '04)

Young and the Invested

Disclaimer: This article does not constitute individualized investment advice. Securities, funds, and/or other investments appear for your consideration and not as personalized investment recommendations. Act at your own discretion.

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