Ten public high schools in Rhode Island have agreed to try to increase the quality and quantity of personal financial education for students.
The programs will be supported with a $25,000 teacher training grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement. Matching funds have been provided by the Rhode Island Higher Education Assistance Authority, United Way of Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Student Loan Authority.
“The Rhode Island Youth Financial Education Expansion Program is an innovative and assertive project that will significantly increase the financial literacy of high school students through increased capacity of educators, increased student exposure to personal financial subject matter, involvement of volunteer financial service professionals and measurement of outcomes,” said U.S. Sen. Jack Reed.
William H. Hurry Jr., executive director of the Rhode Island Higher Education Assistance Authority, said, “Our country is in the middle of an economic crisis which highlights the importance of providing young people with the financial literacy skills they need to succeed, from helping them cope with the rising costs of college to encouraging them to begin saving early for retirement.”
A kickoff event for the program, hosted by The Rhode Island Jump$tart Coalition, will be held on Wednesday at the Roger Williams Park Casino in Providence.
Jim Hedemark, executive director of the Rhode Island Jump$tart Coalition, said, “With pounds of ‘cure’ being spent in reaction to our nation’s economic crisis, it is high time we added many more ounces of prevention. Last year, we completed research that reveals that only five percent of Ocean State high school students elect to take a full course in personal finance each year. The financial literacy of our youth is a necessary component to reversing our troubling personal financial trends.”
Founded in May 2004, the Rhode Island Jump$tart Coalition is a nonprofit corporation with the mission of increasing the financial literacy of the state’s young people. The participating high schools are: Barrington High School, Central High School, Cranston High School West, Cumberland High School, Lincoln Senior High School, New England Laborers’/Cranston Public Schools Construction & Career Academy, North Providence High School, Pilgrim High School, Smithfield High School and William E. Tolman High School.
Also at the event, two Rhode Island students will be honored who were among 362 in the United States to receive near perfect scores out of more than 75,000 high school students who participated in the Fall 2008 National Financial Literacy Challenge, offered by the United States Treasury Office of Financial Education.
Monica Baker, a junior at the Cranston Area Career and Technical Center, and David Tong, of Barrington High School, each received medals from the U.S. Treasury for answering at least 33 out of 35 questions correctly on the challenge.
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