Nearly half a million high school students across the U.S. will be learning money principles via Foundations In Personal Finance: High School Edition, the course from Dave Ramsey-backed Ramsey Solutions. According to the announcement, teachers say that today’s students are curious about building wealth through investments, and that test scores prove that Foundations coursework makes complex money topics like investing easy to understand.
“The kids are learning how to actually do this stuff,” said Jim King, executive vice president of Ramsey Education, a division of Ramsey Solutions. “The entire focus of the Foundations in Personal Finance curriculum is to teach them the how, not just the what. We do that by equipping students with steps they can start implementing right now. We’re excited that the test scores prove the principles being taught are working.”
Ramsey Solutions compiled four years of test results from more than a million students who had been enrolled in a class using the Foundations In Personal Finance: High School Edition curriculum. The students were tested before and after studying subjects like saving, credit, and debt, investing and retirement, careers and taxes, insurance, consumer awareness, and more. Comparing pre-test and post-test scores shows an average increase of 22 percentage points with investing topping the scores with a 27-percentage point increase.
Ramsey continues crusade
The Foundations program is yet another step in Ramsey’s personal crusade to pull people out of debt — or ensure they avoid it altogether. His story is well known and has fueled his passion to help others to achieve a solid financial course. After a financially successful career start, Ramsey and his wife soon found themselves drowning in short-term debt. “After losing everything, I went on a quest to find out how money really works, how I could take control of it, and how I could have confidence in handling it,” said Ramsey. More importantly, he wanted to share his insight to help as many people as possible.
And the timing couldn’t be better. One year after the pandemic and the economic fallout of 2020, financial literacy is trending. In 2021 alone, 25 states have introduced legislation that would add personal finance education to their high school course offerings.
“Students of today could very well be the millionaires of tomorrow,” said Jason Pearson, a Foundations in Personal Finance teacher in Frankfort, Illinois. “Compound interest is one of the biggest light bulb moments for my students. When I show them how investing just $100 a month can grow, they start to look at the money they spend on wants in a very different way. Foundations show them how to take advantage of the one thing they have plenty of, and that’s time.”