National K-12 Financial Literacy Research Overview

Personal economic issues such as credit card debt, home foreclosures, the collapse of the sub-prime lending market, and escalating numbers of personal bankruptcy have focused the nation’s attention on the importance of financial education. Networks Financial Institute (NFI) believes that financial independence begins in childhood with a strong foundation of skills, knowledge and appropriate experiences. Important components of personal financial literacy include planning, budgeting, earning, saving, managing financial risks such as health or property events, investing, filing taxes, and the responsible use of debt including credit cards. Networks Financial Institute’s national research indicates that educators agree, identifying financial literacy as critically important and part of their classroom activity. NFI undertook a comprehensive national K-12 financial literacy research study to determine the barriers to implementation of financial literacy education that currently exist in classrooms. The study examines the attitudes and aptitudes of educators, the financial literacy curricula and materials teachers are using in classrooms across the United States, the materials that are helping them implement financial literacy lessons, and the sources of those materials. NFI drew a representative sample of the nation’s kindergarten through twelfth grade teachers across the disciplines of business education, family and consumer sciences, economics, and mathematics.