According to the latest NGPF State of Financial Education Report, 30 states require a standalone personal finance course for high school graduation. Once all 30 states have fully rolled out their requirements, 76% of public high school students in America (Class of 2031) will be required to take a course in personal finance. That's 2 million more students per year compared to 2026.

The Council for Economic Education's (CEE) 2026 Survey of the States reports that 39 states require students to take a course in personal finance to graduate. That's 9 more states than the NGPF report includes. So what's going on?

We get this question all the time, and it's a fair one. The answer is that it comes down to what counts as a "requirement."

CEE's 39-state figure includes two categories: 26 states with a standalone personal finance course requirement, and 13 states where personal finance is required coursework integrated into another course like Economics, Business, etc. The NGPF report only includes standalone requirements, and leaves out embedded requirements, because research consistently shows that embedding personal finance content into other courses does not produce measurable improvements in graduates' financial outcomes. 

NGPF reviewed over 12,000 individual school course catalogs in partnership with researchers at the University of Alabama, then cross-referenced that data with state legislation. CEE took a different approach of surveying expert representatives from state departments of education and state councils on economic education, then verified those responses against current policies.

These 2 different methodologies led to different conclusions regarding states where the law has a high level of flexibility built in, or when implementation is still ramping up.

Why does it matter that reports on access to financial education use differing methodologies?

These reports are read keenly in state capitals across the country. A methodology that recognizes states for "requiring a personal finance course" when they are actually embedding a few personal finance standards into another course can lead to a false sense of progress and not push states to go for full-scale guarantees.

Both reports prove that the momentum is real! With 20 states lacking a standalone requirement, and implementation timelines that stretch years into the future, the work is far from over!

NGPF remains committed to #Mission2030: All students by 2030 will be guaranteed access to a one-semester Personal Finance course before they graduate from high school.

About the Author

Yanely Espinal

Born and raised by Dominican, immigrant parents in Brooklyn, Yanely is a proud product of NYC public schools. She graduated from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in 2007 before going on to receive her bachelor's degree at Brown University in 2011. As a Teach For America corps member, Yanely taught third and fourth grade in Canarsie, Brooklyn. She received her master's degree from Relay Graduate School of Education in 2013. She spends her spare time making YouTube videos about personal finance on her channel, MissBeHelpful. Yanely also loves to dance, sew, paint, listen to podcasts, and babysit her 10 nieces and nephews!