Students at Calera High School in Alabama surround New Orleans Saints running back Mark Ingram, center left, and Alabama Treasurer Young Boozer after playing an online game of Financial Football that teaches financial literacy. Alabama recently began requiring that high school students take a personal finance course. (Courtesy Office of Alabama State Treasurer)
Students paid attention when Mark Ingram, former Alabama Crimson Tide star and current running back for the New Orleans Saints, showed up at Calera High School outside of Birmingham.
Ingram and Alabama state Treasurer Young Boozer unveiled a free educational videogame called Financial Football, developed by the NFL and Visa, Inc. The game allows students to move their favorite team down the field and score if they answer money management questions correctly. Now in 41 states, the game and classroom curriculum aim to give high school and middle school students the fundamentals of personal finance.
“Students enjoyed the game,” said Dawn Morrison of the Alabama Department of Education. “They did learn something without realizing they were learning.”
The recent recession raised greater awareness of the importance of money management skills as many people purchased homes they could not afford by signing mortgages they did not fully understand. But the recession also cut deeply into state budgets, forcing policymakers to find new ways to get money management into school curriculums and creative ways to pay for it (see sidebar).
Currently, only four states — Missouri, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia — require that high school students take a stand-alone personal finance course to graduate, according to Jump$tart Coalition, made up of 150 financial institutions, consumer groups and federal agencies.
The Council of Economic Education, which also gets backing from businesses and financial institutions estimates that 17 states require high school students to take courses that include personal finance instruction. Both groups lobby for more financial literacy in schools.
Teens are big consumers, as much as $91 billion in 2011, by one estimate, but few are saving for college or