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Western’s Center for Economics & Financial Education is leading the state’s first major study to find the most effective way to teach financial education in high school.

Financial education will probably become a high school graduation requirement within the next few years, and the State Legislature recently appropriated $200,000 for the CBE center to evaluate the different ways to teach students the basics of personal finance, said Adam Wright, director of the Center for Economics & Financial Education. 

“What we want to know is, what are the best practices for teaching it,” Wright said. 

Incorporating financial education into an existing course, such as mathematics or civics, might be more feasible for schools than creating a whole new class, Wright said, particularly if a new state requirement comes without additional funding. 

“But what are the learning trade-offs when you embed this content with another subject?” he said. “For teachers who embed it — who get good student learning outcomes — what are they doing that we can copy?” 

The center is partnering with the nonprofit Washington Council for Economic and Financial Education to interview about 38 teachers across the state to learn what they’re teaching, and what curricular resources they’re using. 

The group will also survey those teachers’ 1,500 or so students to see how much they’ve actually learned about creating budgets, planning for retirement, and adeptly managing credit card debt. 

High school graduation requirements in financial education are part of a national trend. A decade ago, Wright said, only about 10 states required high school graduates learn about personal finance; now more than half do. 

Wright predicts personal finance education will be a Washington state graduation requirement in five years or sooner. And the topic attracts bipartisan interest, he added.

In some ways, the growing interest in financial education pairs with the declining economic prospects of the middle class. In the 1940s and 1950s, most 30-year-olds were better off financially than their parents had been, Wright said. Now, fewer than half are doing better than the previous generation. 

“When you have much more resources, you’re going to be less affected by whether you paid off your low-interest credit card versus your high-interest card,” he said. “Now, when things are really sort of tight, I think it makes much more of a difference and people are realizing that.” 

Western’s Center for Economics & Financial Education provides curriculum and professional development to K-12 teachers, and it’s the state’s only such center housed in a college or university. Many teachers rely on the center as an unbiased source of classroom material, Wright said. 

The center also organizes the annual for K-12 teachers, which will be held at the University of Washington in July. The center’s new program specialist, Kelli Burton, will help redouble the center’s professional development outreach efforts around the state.

The center’s previous director, Pam Whalley, who led the center for 38 years, spent several days a week on the road meeting with teachers, and was well-known throughout the state as a reliable supporter of K-12 financial education. 

“Kelli is a former teacher and I’m very confident in her ability to pick up what Pam’s big legacy was,” Wright said.