By Hank Russell
Despite a recent study showing New York schools are at the top of the class when it comes to making inroads to teach students about economics and financial literacy, the state has nearly failing grades when it comes to what students know about financial literacy.
According to a recent study by WalletHub, New York is No. 1 in requiring students to take at least one personal finance course and one economics course, the state has the 20th-highest high school financial literacy grade. West Virginia had the best test scores and Delaware had the lowest.
In addition, New York is ranked 27th in the nation when it comes to offering budgeting education courses in high school, according to WalletHub. Utah was the best, while South Dakota was the worst. The growth rate of financial education in high schools was slow, with a rank of 33rd. Florida had the fastest growth, while the District of Columbia had the lowest.
When it comes to financial education performance and access, New York is 24th nationwide, based on data from WalletHub. Again, Utah had the best financial education performance and provided the best access for its students, while Montana was the worst.
But what hurt New York the most was its ranking of what grades do high school students earn in financial literacy. The state was ranked as having one of the lowest grades — 45th — tied with Hawaii and Montana, according to WalletHub. The states with the highest grades were Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Utah, while Alaska, the District of Columbia and South Dakota had the lowest.
However, New York is ranked 24th in its projected high school financial literacy grade by 2028. The highest projected grades go to Florida, Connecticut, Virginia, Georgia, Rhode Island and Nebraska, while the lowest go to the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, California and South Dakota, according to WalletHub data.
“All high schools should have mandatory personal-finance education, including instruction in budgeting,” said WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo. “Students who learn to budget before they join the workforce will be able to make much better financial decisions. They will also be able to save more for the future and are likely to have higher credit scores than their peers who never learned how to budget or who had to figure things out on their own without instruction.”
Dr. David Spohn, associate professor of finance at Lynn University, said some states cannot provide adequate basic financial literacy education because of “curriculum limitations, competing academic priorities, and a lack of trained educators in personal finance. Schools often face pressure to prioritize standardized testing in subjects such as mathematics, science, and language arts, leaving limited room for personal finance coursework.”
Spohn also said that the implementation of financial literacy in the schools’ curricula by the states may be inconsistent. “While some states require financial literacy coursework, the depth and quality of instruction vary widely,” he said. “In many cases, personal finance is embedded within broader economics or business classes rather than offered as a dedicated course. This often results in fragmented exposure rather than meaningful mastery.”