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For more than a decade, high school students in Saco, a town east of the High Line, have had to immerse themselves in classes on debt management, budgeting and financial investments in order to earn a diploma. What started as an elective quickly morphed into a two-semester requirement for graduation and is a yearly favorite among both students and parents, Saco Public Schools Principal Tanya Funk said.
“Some students are fortunate enough to have grown up in homes where their parents took the time to talk to them and teach them these things, but many of our students don't grow up in homes like that anymore,” said Funk, who taught the course for years before becoming superintendent. “So the burden has shifted to schools to raise students who are responsible consumers, who are going to go out into society and be productive members, and who aren't going to get into so much debt that they'll never be able to get out of it.”
The district's experience with financial literacy education offers a glimpse into the near future for public schools across Montana. Last year, the Montana Public Education Board approved a series of regulatory changes, including two new requirements for graduation statewide: half a civics course and half a credit of financial education or economics, both of which are set to take effect next July. The move was pushed hard by Superintendent Elsie Arntzen during a broad review of school accreditation rules and was praised by lawmakers in the 2023 legislative session, who passed a bipartisan bill supporting financial literacy education.
The new civics requirement will be a much easier one for school districts to navigate, according to many local and state education leaders who spoke to the Montana Free Press. They said existing political science and social studies courses are largely in line with the state-mandated standards. Teaching students about checking accounts, student loans, personal investing and other financial topics is a bit of a different story, and although the requirement doesn't take effect until the graduating class of 2026, districts large and small are already preparing for it.
In Missoula County Public Schools, the conversations began in fall 2023 as the district worked to map out a continuum of pathways for students. Deputy Superintendent Amy Shattuck said the State Board of Education gave local governments a lot of flexibility to meet the requirements, allowing them to offer financial literacy through existing courses in math, family and consumer science, business and career and technical education. MCPS recognized the need to move quickly to make the change, she added, because third- and fourth-graders are often already juggling overloaded course loads.
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“When our students enter as freshmen, we try to create a template for their four-year plan,” Shattuck said. “This cohort of 2026 is in the middle of their high school career, so we needed to plan ahead and make sure that counselors knew in advance so they could work it into their schedule.”
Shattuck added that the new requirements will not require the district's four high schools to hire additional teachers.
One of the ways MCPS plans to provide financial literacy education is through online courses from outside venues, such as the Montana Digital Academy, a state online program established by the Montana Legislature to provide digital education and resources to Montana schools in 2009. Executive Director Jason Neifer said the academy has been discussing the change with about a dozen district leaders over the past six months and is developing a broader messaging strategy to let other schools know about its offerings as it heads into the 2024-25 school year.
“We don't have any specific school districts that are signing up for this yet,” Neifer added, “but we anticipate that we will have some districts that will work with us to offer a traditional distance learning instruction model because it will be some time before it becomes mandatory.”
In addition to virtual classes taught by certified teachers, the academy also offers digital content and materials through an online clearinghouse, an expansion the Montana Legislature voted to implement last year. Neifer said these resources can help school districts develop and adopt their own financial literacy curriculum for local teachers or align existing courses with the state's financial literacy standards.
A similar situation is playing out in eastern Montana, where Miles Community College has expanded its dual credit education partnerships with 31 school districts, dubbed “Opportunity Realized,” to include business and personal finance courses. Chancellor Ron Slinger, who also serves on the Public Education Committee, told MTFP this week that the expansion is designed to meet the state’s financial literacy standards and will be offered at no cost to participating districts and their students from the college campus.
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“We know our district partners have limited resources to meet these new requirements,” Slinger said, “and MCC's Opportunity Realization Program allows our college to be an active partner in meeting these new requirements while providing great opportunities for our students.”
Montana isn't alone in placing an increased emphasis on financial literacy for high school students. Carly Urban, an economics professor and researcher at Montana State University, said the changes to statewide graduation requirements reflect a national trend over the past five years. Twenty-three states have now passed laws requiring one semester of personal finance study for high school graduation, and 35 states have incorporated such instruction somewhere in their regulations governing public education. Urban noted that much of the legislation on the issue is relatively recent, meaning the requirements have not yet fully taken effect.
“I want to say that eight states are actually requiring the class of 2024 to take a semester of coursework, which really shows how much progress has been made over the last few years,” Urban said. “It hasn't impacted schools yet, but it's going to have a massive impact on the class of 2030.”
Urban said she has studied financial literacy in public education and related state requirements for more than a decade and shared her findings with the Department of Public Education as it developed resources for schools to implement the new standards. Based on her research, Urban said outcomes of such instruction for students include improved credit scores, better student loan decisions and a reduced likelihood of defaulting on loan payments.
“They're taking out a little bit more public student loan debt, but in exchange they're taking out less credit card debt, which is a very common way to finance things like housing, food, books, etc., and which leads to higher interest rates,” Urban said. “So basically what we're seeing is an improvement in borrowing.”
Urban added that studies by other researchers have also shown that people who receive personal finance education in high school use less payday loans, but one outcome she hasn't noticed is an increase in the amount of money students invest or save, and she believes the biggest outcome of these classes so far has been avoiding “really bad debt decisions.”
That's roughly in line with what Funk has heard in Saco Public Schools, where lessons on responsible student loan and credit card use have been a “huge hit” with students. She said she's also seen the topic of compound interest generate a lot of enthusiasm from students as they realize the long-term benefits of saving $100 a month. As other school districts prepare to incorporate such lessons into their own required curricula, Funk encouraged “not to overthink it” and to simply come up with a list of topics that will give high school graduates a strong financial foundation, regardless of what academic or career path they choose.
“Whether they go into a career, stay on the farm or ranch, or go to college, they still have to budget, pay rent, buy groceries, insure their car and their home,” Funk said. “The strategies, the curriculum that we teach, apply to all kids, regardless of where they go.”
