Is Financial Literacy Important?

By Dr. Marciene Mattleman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - If you ask parents, teachers, elected officials, and business persons if financial literacy is important, they would all agree that it's critical.  Yet a new study from Champlain College's Center for Financial Literacy, gave only one state, Utah, an A grade.

High school students must get the equivalent of a half year personal finance course in order to graduate.  But grades don't tell the whole story.  Some give seven hours of instruction and other more than 30.

Liana Heiten reports in Education Week that Pennsylvania and Delaware are among the twelve states with no requirements for personal finance instruction. New Jersey is one of twenty states where districts require stand alone or material embedded in another course.

But kids on their own dealing for the first time with credit cards and rent should not be deprived because their state education departments don't see personal literacy.