LHS Earns Financial Literacy Award

Lakewood High School recently earned a Gold Standard School award from Next Gen Personal Finance for being among the top high schools in the nation in financial literacy education course offerings. 

Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF), a non-profit with a mission to ensure every high school student in America takes a personal finance course by the year 2030, teamed up with Montana State University researchers to evaluate thousands of high school course catalogs and graduation requirements on the following scale:

  • Bronze Standard Schools offer some personal finance instruction in less than one continuous semester, often by embedding it into other courses (e.g. Economics).

  • Silver Standard Schools offer at least one semester of personal finance as a standalone elective OR offer a standalone personal finance course as one option among multiple that can fulfill a one semester graduation requirement.

  • Gold Standard Schools ensure all students take at least one standalone semester course in personal finance before graduation.

Outside of the six states that currently require every high school student to take a personal finance course, researchers identified 1,591 Gold Standard Schools, Lakewood High School among them.  

West Shore Career-Tech teacher Lisa Boettcher has been teaching the NGPF curriculum for the past three school years to Lakewood High students through West Shore's Business and Management Career Cluster course offerings.

“The course materials and no-cost professional development have transformed how we teach the one semester Personal Finance elective,” Boettcher said.  “Students are engaged in a wide variety of activities, assignments, and projects to develop foundational skills to create a real-world tool kit for future financial success. Being recognized as a Gold Standard School positions Lakewood High School to seamlessly pivot to meet Ohio's new financial literacy graduation requirement.” 

K-12 financial education has recently found the spotlight with 26 state legislatures introducing bills to expand access to financial education in public schools in 2021.Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine in October signed into law SB1, which requires that Ohio public school students who enter ninth grade for the first time on or after July 1, 2022, will be required to complete a financial literacy course. 

NGPF co-Founder Tim Ranzetta said, “Gold Standard Schools show remarkable leadership, surging ahead of state progress on financial education instead of waiting for a mandate.”

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Volume 17, Issue 23, Posted 12:10 PM, 12.01.2021