Parents Want More Financial Education in Schools

Financial education is becoming a bigger part of K-12 education, as more states require students to learn about money before graduating from high school. A recently published study found parents overwhelmingly supported increased financial education in schools, while reporting gaps in their children’s understanding of topics that will eventually affect their financial lives, including investing and retirement.

Those findings came from Everfi’s March study, What Parents Want from Financial Education and Who They Trust to Provide It, which surveyed 750 U.S. parents with children in grades 1 through 12. Eighty-eight percent of parents said financial education should be required for high school graduation, while 87% said teaching children about money is as important as teaching reading, math or science. Eighty-four percent called financial education critical for their own children, and 85% said it belongs in the K-12 curriculum.

The gaps grew sharper when parents described what their children have learned. Retirement planning was the financial topic reported as taught least often, with 16% of surveyed parents saying their children learned about it in school. By comparison, more than half reported that their children have received instruction in saving (55%) and budgeting (53%). The statistics dropped to 36% for using credit cards, 34% for investing, 27% for paying taxes and 24% for entrepreneurship.

Parents Want It, but Don’t Always Know It’s There

That support did not necessarily mean parents knew what their schools were providing. Only 63% of all parents said they were aware of financial education requirements at their children’s schools. Awareness fell to 59% among parents of middle school students and 54% among parents of high school students.

Separately, 61% of respondents said their child had received financial education, falling to 56% among parents of high school students.

Parents also saw financial education as a shared responsibility: 47% said parents and families are completely responsible for providing it, while 41% assigned that level of responsibility to teachers and schools. Thirty-two percent said financial institutions were completely responsible, and 28% said the same of community organizations and nonprofits.

The survey found considerable support for private sector involvement: 64% of parents said privately funded financial education was appropriate, and 62% said they were comfortable with a sponsor’s logo appearing on the material.

Seventy-six percent said financial institutions should give back to the communities they serve, while 79% said they would trust a financial institution more if it provided financial education. Banks received the highest level of support as potential sponsors, at 73%, followed by credit unions at 67% and financial technology companies at 60%.

Retirement Is Part of the Education Gap

Everfi’s separate “State of Teen Financial Literacy 2026” report analyzed responses from 161,900 high school juniors and seniors. Half said they were quite or extremely likely to invest in the future, while 70% said investing was at least somewhat intimidating. Twenty percent said they had never discussed investing with their families.

The Everfi survey also found that 59% of students felt unprepared to set up and follow a budget, 57% felt unprepared to manage checking and savings balances, and 62% felt at most somewhat prepared to manage credit.

States Move Toward Financial Education Requirements

State policies are also changing. The Council for Economic Education’s 2026 Survey of the States found that 39 states now require students to take a personal finance course to graduate high school, up from 35 in 2024. California, Delaware, Colorado and Hawaii have newly adopted semester-long personal finance course requirements in 2026, according to CEE.

Next Gen Personal Finance’s 2026 U.S. dashboard used a narrower measure, counting states that guarantee a stand-alone personal finance course for all high school students. It currently counts 30 such states, with 11 requirements fully implemented and 19 still in progress. According to NGPF, those requirements will eventually cover more than 76% of U.S. public high school students.

The expanding requirements create a growing number of schools where financial education is no longer an extracurricular option. At the same time, the responses from parents and students suggest that the need extends beyond meeting a graduation requirement: Parents want financial education, students are interested in investing and long-term financial decisions, yet many still lack confidence with the concepts they will encounter as they enter adulthood.