Florida Financial Literacy Mandates & Review of SB 1054

Thanks for joining me as I review financial literacy mandate for Florida Bill SB1054. Last year, 2023, the first freshman entering into high school. It’s the first time they’ve been mandated financial literacy and it is a graduation requirement. So I’ll be reviewing this bill in detail. There’s a few positives, a lot of negatives. Again, I always like to start off, even though I’m critical of these mandates across the country, I am appreciative of those who led the way and got the toe in the door. Now it’s time to really kick in that door and make sure we’re passing bills that make a real true difference in our kids’ lives. We want to see them being self-sufficient, productive members in society and ready and capable to tackle the challenges this modern world presents to them. And there’s a lot, especially on the financial side. So my goal is to ensure that students, all students graduate self-sufficient, able to meet their near term challenges. In addition, we want to elevate financial education standards to meet the minimum education standards required of every other core classwork. But again, I’m appreciative of those people that led the way. And my critique is meant in good spirit to elevate those standards. So breaking down this bill, again, I’ll put a link in the show notes here where you can review it with me. Starting on page one, line eight, they’re required to have one half credit of financial literacy instruction in school, and it is a requirement to graduate. So kudos for you guys. They’re the seventh state to make it a graduation requirement. That’s an awesome thing. I think every state should have financial literacy as a graduation requirement. And that one half credit in Florida means 67 and a half hours, basically. So 67 and a half hours, which equates to about 50 to 50 hours of actual instruction time after admin of classes and other things go on. So that is neat. It is also a part of their career in technical education path. It’s a mandated class in that path. But the good thing there is in Florida, the career and technical education is funded. So another positive for Florida, many states, in fact, most states have unfunded mandates, which means the politicians tell the schools, hey, you need to teach this. And they don’t give them any money or resources to do so because Florida’s career and technical education is funded. That’s a good thing. That means they’re going to be funded as well. Now, personally, I would like to see in a perfect world, financial literacy have their own budget and funding source as well. So that way, if there’s any cutbacks, we’re sure that the financial literacy portion will maintain, but I’m just glad they have some funding here. Let’s move on to the next page, line item 30. And this is where I have some big problems, right? And it says, hey, better prepare young people in this state for adulthood by providing them with requisite knowledge to achieve financial stability and independence. The two words there, requisite knowledge, I don’t like at all. In fact, every teacher understands that requisite knowledge means fundamental knowledge. I’m going to show you A framework here, it’s Bloom’s taxonomy of higher order thinking skill sets. There’s also Webb’s depth of knowledge. These are basically the levels of learning, right? And at the very low level, we have understanding, remembering, recall, reproduction. So those are the knowledge levels. And since they mentioned foundational knowledge, basically, That’s all I would need to get a student to. So any teacher reading this would say, oh, I just need to get them to basic level knowledge. And they would refer to what they learned and what they learned in school to teach. And they would understand that they just need to get them to the recall, reproduction, basic understanding. And at that level, it does very little to long-term student outcomes, right? Long-term student outcomes as far as their finances, as far as their confidence to make qualified decisions, anything to do. It just means that they can pass a test. This is where memorization and those areas are focused on. And let me give you a concrete example so you can see. if i was going to give a student requisite knowledge of let’s say credit they would know what a good credit score is right 700 720 something like that they would know hey there’s a few credit bureaus they would know i should pay my bills on time and and they’re going to judge me and it might be harder to get loans that’s a requisite level of knowledge on on that topic now If I was going to train them to be very self-sufficient and able to make qualified decisions on that same thing, I would have them create access and analyze their credit report. They can do that and get in the habit of doing that. They can create a plan to build their credit. They can decide on what pathway they’re going to go to and be able to analyze their current credit report. Now, likely there’ll be nothing on their credit report, but it’s getting them in the habits. or if it was referring to let’s say considering a college a requisite level would be a how to how to uh understanding the terms of of a loan right what is what’s the loan amount what’s the interest rate um what does repayment terms mean right i’d be able to to define all those areas. Now, if I took a student to the creation and analysis level, those higher order thinking skill sets, now I have a student that will be able to decide on a college based on the return that they plan on getting on their chosen profession. They’ll have a plan on how much student debt to take out and how to minimize their student debt. They’ll have contingencies in case that their path, they change plans on their pathway. So now we’re getting them to apply and really plan and create these things, which is a much higher level knowledge. And when you’re thinking on those terms and creating these plans, it helps with everything as far as implementing it when you are making those decisions. So again, that requisite knowledge level, I don’t like that term. Every teacher will read it just like I did because that’s part of their training. They’re all are familiar with Bloom’s. They’re all familiar with Webb’s depth of knowledge. For the layperson, you may not be familiar with it, but I hope that helped you clarify that um let’s see it will be standalone course which is which is awesome um i’m very happy about that most states don’t have standalone courses so it’s great to see this will be a standalone course meaning it’s not integrated with other subjects however Because financial literacy does not get the attention and the time it needs, the rigor it needs to really make to teach people on this higher order thinking skill sets. It’s important we also include some terminology that will integrate it into other subjects, math, even English, even your social sciences that could be integrated in there. This way, they’re not just hearing it in one standalone class. They’re getting the benefit of increased repetition. Moving on to line item 83. And before I get there, I think it’s important through this whole document, they never mention any training for the educators. I’m mentioning this now because it’s important to this next item I’m going to show you. They never mentioned any training for the educators. So you have people that have never taught personal finance that are being told to teach personal finance. And we’ve trained a lot of traditional educators that lack the confidence. They’ve never studied the subject. They don’t know what to teach, what not to teach. And there’s a huge lack of that. Now, if I’m a math teacher, I went to eight years of elementary school learning math. I went through four years of high school learning math. I went through four, six or eight years of college learning math. Then I’m teaching math. Instead, with personal finance, they’re tapping people on the shoulder. I’ve talked to coaches. I’ve talked to math professors. I’ve talked to economics professors that have never taught it, that are told like that summer, hey, you need to teach personal finance. So this lack of personal finance, lack of training for the teachers is a major problem. In fact, every study I’ve seen shows that teachers are the biggest factor in student achievement. And the fact they did not address this as a major problem, especially when you consider Point two here. And so all instructors, if you look at line item 86, all instruction must include a discussion of or instruction of all of the following topics. A lot of these topics they won’t know and they’re told they need to teach these topics. So if you’ve never learned about this, if you don’t know anything about those topics and you’re a teacher, might you just skip over that, right? Might you just not mention it because you don’t feel confident? What if a kid asked you questions? That’s one of the biggest feedbacks we get from teachers. Hey, what if they ask me questions about this and I don’t know? On their core subject math, they knew it. One plus one equals two. But on personal finance, it’s such a unique subject. So many emotions, behaviors, sentiment involved with this topic. And every kid has different socioeconomic status, different goals. It’s a challenging topic to teach without proper instruction for the teachers. And then they’re told, you need to teach these subjects. And there’s 13 different things that they’re told that they need to teach. Let me cover these real quick here for you. I want to point out a few major problems in this section. Let’s take number one, for example. If I’m a teacher, I have to teach the types of bank accounts offered, opening and managing accounts, assessing the quality of banking institution services. All good, but as an instructor, that gives me no guidelines. You know, going back to what I said before about that requisite foundational knowledge. If I’m a teacher, I can meet the standard in one sentence. Hey, there’s checking and savings accounts offered through banks. And to open a bank account, you need to go talk to a local bank and you can visit this site to assess the bank strength. I just met the standards for number one, based off the requisite level knowledge and what they’re telling me to teach, because it just tells me I need to include discussion or instruction. So if we go back here and look at line item 87 discussion or instruction of all of the following in one sentence, I just covered that entire three points here. Bank accounts, managing a bank account, assessing the quality of a deposit institution’s services. So this is what the bill is telling me. As a teacher, I would have successfully met what they’re telling me to do. Instead, again, going back to the higher order thinking skill sets, wouldn’t it be more beneficial to say, Write it in terms of outcomes. All students will have investigated five different banking institutions and selected one that meets their best needs in terms of their terms and monthly fee and these other requirements, right? All students have gathered the necessary information to open a bank account. All students have went into a bank and talked to a banker about opening the account. We can’t make them open an account because they’re in high school, but they can do everything required before. Those are very clear outcomes for the instructor. And also they deliver the student a real education that they can start to apply. So maybe someone to open the account, right? And they’re gonna talk with their parents and work that out. Others may not, but when they move out on their own, they’re going to have everything ready. They’re going to have investigated that. They’re going to feel much more confident in that decision. So again, we’re taking them to a stage where they can actually apply what they learned. Again, just because they’re in high school, we can’t make them open up accounts, even though that’d be great. But there is some risk there as well without parental involvement and oversight. But there can be some very clear things we can include in there that are outcome-based that give the teacher very clear instruction. My instruction was a lot more clear than listing these three things, right? And again, if they want to just meet the minimum standards in one sentence, they can successfully do that. Next, balancing the checkbook. I wonder how old the politician was that that wrote this in there, right? You know, there’s some of the balance of checkbook, right? Nobody uses checkbooks anymore. It’s not, I don’t even use a checkbook. I’m older too. You know, very few people do. It’s not common this generation. Nobody’s going to use a checkbook. In fact, it would take longer to explain what a checkbook is to them than not. It’s like them. If you’re watching those videos, When they give like this generation, like the old phones, we had a dial and spin. Nobody can figure out how to use it. Pretty funny. Same thing with a checkbook. I don’t know why that’s included. Next three principles of money management, spending credit, credit scores, managing debt, including retail, retail and credit card debt. Again, it’s not giving clear outcomes for the educator to follow, nor the student. Four, completing loan application. Okay. I mean, that’s good, but let’s focus on the repayment and also, yeah. But I think it’s good to complete a loan application. But again, we can make it in terms of something tangible they may need now. Completing the application to purchase a car. Completing a student loan application. completing those would be kind of the completing a rental application those would be the three clear things they need in the near term instead they can complete any type of loan application might be a home loan application well that’s not going to apply to them in the near term so let’s be specific there five receiving an inheritance in related implications Well, God willing, they don’t need to study this down, hopefully not for the next 20, 30, 40 years. But this would benefit such a small percentage of the students in the near term, right? Just because they’re younger, their parents are, you know, maybe younger. So it’s kind of one of those out of the left field. And, you know, some politicians say, no, get a handle, you know. and manage inheritance, right? Well, it’s going to apply to such a few percent of students. Why would we even include that? There’s so many more important things that we need to do to prepare them for near-term life challenges. Our next basic principles of personal insurance policies. Yeah, again, we can narrow that down. Maybe it’s rental policy. Maybe it’s car insurance, kind of the two core areas many of them will need. Computing federal income taxes, okay. But I think we can, again, we can get more specific. the risk of not completing your taxes, how to find a tax planner that will make sure that you’re not making a mistake. And we can get very niche there for them. Local tax assessments and competing interest rates by various mechanisms. Okay. Simple contracts, contesting incorrect billing statement, types of savings and investments, state and federal laws concerning finance. All right, just a random hodgepodge list of topics. There’s nothing really that works together that’s really giving them, you know, when we design courses, it’s all about life events, what life events are coming up. And for youth in high school, it’s about moving out on their own, making college loan decisions, managing their accounts properly so they’re not messing up their credit. deciding on credit cards and warning them about the onslaught of credit card ads that they’re going to get when they turn 18 to be prepared, how to buy a car or maybe not buy a car, right? There’s other options, how to consider transportation options and so forth. So there’s near term life events we can focus on. Instead, they just listed a hodgepodge of topics. If to meet their minimum requirements that they’re outlining here, I can literally, again, taking you back to the foundational knowledge, I can literally cover this in 60 minutes, right? They’ll not benefit at all, but I can cover all this in 60 minutes. And that’s the directives they gave to untrained educators. So my thought is it’s going to be not a very well-designed class. In addition, in this entire six pages, there’s no mention of what type of testing requirements there are. And again, we have important testing, not just pre and post tests with personal finance, We have surveys as far as their confidence in applying what they’ve learned, project-based learning where we can assess if they actually are able to do the steps required to make this decision on their own. We have behaviors. We have system measurements if they’re setting up the proper systems, if they’re having plans. So, again, there’s no mention of measurements. So a teacher could easily pass everybody by just skimming these topics and then focusing in on whatever they want. So, again, major challenges with the topics. And I don’t know who kind of selected those. They just seem out of left field. Right. Oh, let’s talk about this, this, this just random things there. On line item 123, it talks about for students entering grade 9 through 12. So a student can take this financial literacy class any time between their freshman and senior year. That’s problematic as well. If it’s a freshman or sophomore, it would be great if they took all four years, right? I would want this to start in freshman year or sooner. But if they take it in their freshman year, they’re three years from applying what they learned in many instances, right? About moving out on your own and other things that are covered. So when it’s a limited class and only a semester long, the later in their high school career, the better, because they’re sooner to applying that. And when they can apply what they’ve learned, The learning loss curve is reduced significantly. So if you look at learning loss after students don’t go to college, after they graduate high school for math, science, social studies, so forth, it’s a steep curve. After a year or two years, they forgot 90% of what they’ve learned in school on those topics. And the reason is they’re not applying it. They’re not using it. They don’t need it in their daily life. But personal finance is one they can actually apply in their daily life and they’re using it. So much greater benefit when we’re doing that later in life. And sadly, that is it. So of those six pages, again, about 50%. We’re just making room through the career and technical education. And then we had another percentage that was focused on what they actually should teach and so forth. But a lot of holes there, a lot of problems. I want to bring up a slide here. We actually wrote a framework and policy guide for those enacting legislation. So I’m not just coming here critical. you know, hey, why are they doing this? I’m here with a plan and a path for them. Over the years, we’ve been contacted by over 10 people from state legislatures, two people from the House of Representatives that want us to back their bill. We said absolutely no, but we offered our support. We’ve given them tips and things to include. No action on those parts. But It’s a guide that outlines what people should be doing for financial literacy mandates. The basic of it is we need to elevate personal finance standards to meet the minimum standards of other core subjects. I think personal finance is more important than any topic they’re teaching the school currently. I think the first two years of English are very important, but other than that, it’s more important than the majority of topics because such a small percentage of students will ever need math, advanced math, and I’m talking under 10% advanced science or anything of that nature. And second, the basic objective of financial literacy in schools is that students are prepared to meet near-term financial challenges. The very basic level, the basic outcome we want. I think that’s fair. I think our kids deserve it. I think we need to push these standards further. So we wrote that to really promote higher standards in education and And let me go through the Florida checklist here. And I’m going to cover this just really one by one on the standards and basically the framework we developed and policy standards for those in enacting legislation. There’s 12 core things, right? And these are 12 core things that are required of any typical topic in other subjects. So let’s go through these and we’ll start with program structure. And I’ll rate these. And basically it’s three-point rating scale, fail, mediocre, doing good, right? So integrated, delivered in a standalone class. So that’s good, but it’s not integrated into other subjects. So I’m going to give them an okay there. And again, if they had four years of standalone personal finance, the integration into other subjects may not be so important, but the fact it’s only one semester, 67 hours, 50, 55 hours of instruction time, it needs more repetition and more time and that integration is critical. So I’ll give them an okay there. Assign adequate time and level of rigor to subject matter. Absolutely not a big fail there for two reasons. One, it’s only a semester. um second they tell us the rigor level the rigor level is content knowledge um foundational knowledge and that’s the lowest level of rigor you can have that’s somebody that may be able to pass a quiz or test isn’t and then it’s going to forget it so that’s what the students are receiving absolute fail there Conduct ongoing education to support long-term outcomes. Nothing mentioned is something we can easily integrate, especially with technology. So a big miss there and something very easy to implement, again, with the ability we have and schools have to communicate with students. Relevant content that prepares students for near-term life events. No, and in fact, they mention a lot of things that they will not need in the near term and a lot of random things and some things that are completely outdated. Again, near-term life events, moving out on your own, protecting your credit, setting up the right accounts, deciding on college loan, how to avoid debt. Those are relevant to our youth. Adopt proven curriculum that encourages higher order thinking skill sets and application. Absolutely not. In fact, their curriculum, they don’t recommend any, but also if I’m a curriculum salesperson, all I have to do is meet that minimum level, that helping them gain low level knowledge for approval. Customized lesson plan based on student needs. Nothing was mentioned there. Just a quick recap there. I’ll let you know what that means. Meaning different socioeconomic statuses. We have to change the material a little bit to accommodate where they’re at so they feel supported where they’re at and progressing further. So I talk about that in many other videos. But basically it’s nurturing students on their unique socioeconomic status because our challenges lower socioeconomic status face. They lack hope for the future oftentimes. But the surprising thing is they know a lot more about basic personal finance, budgeting, delayed gratification. Whereas people in higher socioeconomic, they have a lot more hope for the future, but they lack the fundamental knowledge of budgeting and so forth because they’re often handed a credit card and they’re not having to delay gratification in many cases. Courses led by highly qualified educators, absolutely not. And this is a major, major issue. That is one of the largest problems I see with this bill. Absolute fail there. program developed and deployed by experienced leaders. Judging by the bill, nobody that’s conducted a quality financial education program before was consulted in this. There’s absolutely no way. And when you have a bill shaped like this, all the teachers and the admin have to do is follow the letters of the law to meet those standards. So it’s not only impacted from that top down, but then the next level. So when you have a top person enacting these legislation law, with low level outcome goals, it trickles down. So big problem there. No mention of learner outcomes. Funding, I kind of want to give them a green check because it’s part of their career in technical education. But again, I like personal, I like them to have their own budget as well. That way, if there’s any budget cutbacks, they can make a case for financial literacy. I’m not feeling too generous just because of the other thing. So I’m going to give them an okay there. It might be okay green, you know, so I’ll go between the two, but at least they have funding. Again, better than most, but again, the goal of these videos is to encourage the top programs out there, ones that will ensure our kids are graduating competent to make financial decisions. Funding is needed. So we’ll give them an okay there. No mention of training earlier than high school. Financial behaviors form very young. Study after study points to between age seven and nine. Elementary school, it’s very easy to incorporate financial literacy lessons. So a big miss there. And another big miss with encouraging parental involvement. Nothing was mentioned there. And really, when you’re teaching personal finance, making sure that there’s parental involvement is very critical. And there was no mention there. So Overall, here’s a breakdown for Florida. Surprisingly, with two yellow circles, they’re better than most, which is very sad. Again, I do these videos not to rag on what’s out there. I want to ensure our kids are prepared for the financial realities of life. I want them to avoid the dumb mistakes I made coming out of high school. I never had any personal finance training in high school. Thank God my parents and grandparents did. educating me on that. Without them, I would have been completely lost, but it would have been nice to have some anchoring with a structured program in school. So all you parents out there in Florida, florida is not teaching your kids personal finance at the level they need to become self-sufficient it’s your responsibility don’t get don’t think oh the schools are teaching now i don’t have to teach my kids they’re absolutely failing at what they’re doing uh they get a less than a 10 mark by meeting minimum education standards again These aren’t wildly high standards. These are just the minimum education standards required by other subjects. And because money impacts our kids, you and your family and your loved ones every single day, let’s put some attention there and ensure this next generation is graduating so they’re self-sufficient and contributing members of society.