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Flagging Economy Propels Financial Education

On the same day President Bush signed a $150 billion economic-stimulus package in an attempt to head off a recession and offset a crisis in the home-mortgage market, a group of financial experts and educators met a few blocks from the White House to craft a plan for better preparing Americans, young and old, to manage their money.

Financial education experts have been advocating teaching students economics and personal-finance skills for decades. But while they have seen progress in getting those lessons into the nation’s high schools, concerns about the foundering economy are helping to highlight the need to improve students’ understanding of money matters.

“There’s been a steady building in the recognition that we need to give students basic financial skills,” said Ted Beck, the president and chief executive officer of the National Endowment for Financial Education and a member of the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy, which met for the first time last week. The Greenwood Village, Colo.-based endowment sponsors a financial-planning program for some 800,000 students in more than 8,400 high schools, and provides free materials and interactive lessons for promoting student...