According to this article, Ohio high schools to include personal finance courses as of 2010. The article says:
Last year alone, BGSU students borrowed $129 million to attend school. Their debt worries don’t end here. Many are piling up bills they can’t pay on credit cards. The solution: mandatory personal finance classes in high school. That’s going to happen in 2010, the result of a bill sponsored by Ohio Treasurer Richard Cordray.
When I was in high school in BC we had a Business Education class in Grade 12. That included some personal finance topics such as preparing tax returns and investing in the stock market (those are the two I remember anyways). I had heard that the program was scrapped the year after I graduated and sure enough, the most recent google hit I can find is from 1997 or 1998 so they must have gotten rid of it. It’s too bad, as it was a good course. I know that I am definitely going to teach my kids about personal finance and investing even if they aren’t taught it in school. But I feel bad for all the kids out there who learn about some of the basics because it is not included in most school curricula.
You have just brought up an excellent point. Out of all graduation requirements, there is not a single requirement for a business class of any kind, not even a personal finance. Some schools have locally developed courses they offer, but it is very short sighted that some business is not included in graduation requirements, and doing taxes and understanding banking deposits and loans ought to be a minimum.
We actually do have interest in the grade 8-10 curriculum, compounding in grade 10 where you look at monthly payments and amortization tables, but to cover the whole curriculum you only have time to spend maybe 3 lesson on it and students really aren’t ready for it. It simply isn’t relevant to them yet and it would be far better to have it in grade 11 or 12.