Slow Progress in Financial Literacy Requirements

State agencies are reporting mixed results in implementing the recommendations of the General Assembly’s Task Force on Financial Literacy.

Most of the state’s 24 school systems “will have some component ready to go this fall, but they won’t be as ready to implement [the curriculum] as we had hoped,” said Katharine Oliver, the Maryland State Department of Education’s assistant state superintendent for career and college readiness.

Oliver presented her report at a meeting last Friday on progress on the 2010 recommendations of the task force on financial literacy that was co-chaired by Del. Dana Stein, D-Baltimore County, and Sen. Anthony Muse, D-Prince George’s.

In its recommendation on public education, the task force required the Maryland State Department of Education to develop and implement age-appropriate financial literacy curriculum for grades 3 to 12 by September 2011.

In 2010, the state board approved the curriculum that the department had developed in “bands,” for elementary school grades 3 to 5, middle school grades 6 to 8, and high school grades 9 to 12.

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Readers should note that there are no such delays in implementing the “Environmental Education” standards.  Obviously hugging a tree is far more important than balancing a checkbook in the eyes of Maryland’s “educators”. – Ed.