New Florida Law Makes Financial Literacy Class a Requirement for High School Graduation

Fla. Gov. Ron DeSantis takes questions from reporters at a press conference and signing of a new education bill in St. Petersburg, Fla, on March 15, 2022. The Florida Channel

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed into law a bill that makes it a graduation requirement for high school students to complete a course on financial literacy.

Under Senate Bill 1054 (pdf), which gained unanimous approval in Florida’s state Legislature, all public school students entering 9th grade in the 2023-2024 school year and thereafter will have to complete a half-credit course covering topics such as balancing a checkbook, managing bank accounts, applying for loans, filing federal and local taxes, and disputing a billing error.

The new law makes Florida the 22nd state in the nation to require financial literacy instruction as a prerequisite for high school graduation and a standard high school diploma. It also makes Florida one of the seven states that require students to take a standalone finance class before they graduate.

“What this bill is doing for financial literacy is going to be applicable in [students’] lives regardless of what path they take,” DeSantis said at a signing ceremony at a public charter school in Tampa Bay area. “If they go the university route, postgraduate ... they are still going to need these skills. If they go right into the workforce, they are still going to need these skills.”

“It is important that our students are given the tools and knowledge to make basic and well-informed financial decisions in the future,” said outgoing Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, who has led the DeSantis administration’s effort to remove Common Core standards from K-12 public education in Florida.

The Common Core standards, which set benchmarks for what students should know in mathematics and English language at each grade, do not include financial literacy for any grade level.

The proposed legislation also continues a similar effort by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to expand civics education in his state to include instruction about the evil nature of communist and other totalitarian governments.

The signing of the law comes after DeSantis on Monday promised to set aside $800 million in this year’s budget to raise minimum teacher pay and increase veteran teacher salaries in Florida.

The Republican governor said he hopes this will provide help to teachers in Florida as inflation rises rapidly across the country, and bring more teachers into the profession.

“One of the goals we’ve had is to increase the average minimum salary across the state of Florida,” he said. “You want to recruit more people to come in, they’ve gotta be able to afford to be able to be teachers.”