Gov. Tony Evers signs bill making personal finance graduation requirement

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on Wednesday signed a bill into law that will make a personal financial literacy class a graduation requirement for all Wisconsin students.

The bill requires students, starting with the graduating class of 2028, “to complete at least half a credit of personal financial literacy in order to graduate from a school district,” a news release from Evers’ office said.

The governor announced his “Do the Math” initiative as part of his proposed 2023-25 biennial budget to provide districts resources “to start or improve financial literacy curriculum and prepare students for financial success,” which includes learning concepts such as household budgeting, consumer financing, insurance decisions and retirement planning, the news release said.

“We have to make sure our kids have the tools and skills to make smart financial and budgeting decisions to prepare for their future, so ensuring our kids have strong financial literacy is essential to setting them up for success as adults,” Evers said in the news release. “I was proud to propose investments to bolster financial literacy in our biennial budget, and it’s why I’m glad to sign this bill today to make sure every student has a strong foundation for their financial futures.” 

More: Wisconsin does not require a personal finance course to graduate high school. A new proposal seeks to change that.

More: ‘The stakes are really high’: Inside the growing movement to teach financial literacy to every Milwaukee kid

Wisconsin has become the 24th state to make a standalone financial literacy course a graduation requirement. Other states that signed similar laws this year include West Virginia, Indiana, Minnesota, Connecticut, Louisiana and Oregon.

The number of states requiring a standalone personal finance course for graduation has tripled from eight to 24 in the past three years, according to a news release from Next Gen Personal Finance, a nonprofit organization that advocates for financial literacy in schools.

Previously, the state required school districts only to adopt state financial literacy academic standards to their curriculums, leaving the implementation of those standards to each school district. Some districts have created standalone personal finance classes, some making them graduation requirements or presenting them as electives, while others sprinkle personal finance material into business and economics classes, for example.

More: Five things to know about how Wisconsin schools teach personal finance

NextGen Personal Finance wrote in its 2023 annual report in March that 61.2% of Wisconsin students took personal finance class as an elective, 34.6% will take it as a graduation requirement, 3.6% will take a class that embeds personal finance content in it. 0.7% attend a school with no personal finance requirements.

One of the districts that has already made it a graduation requirement is Milwaukee Public Schools, which in 2021 was one of just a few urban school districts nationwide in the nation to do so.

The bill passed the Assembly in June and then the Senate in September after being introduced in March. A similar bill had been introduced in 2022, but neither chamber of the state legislature took it up, according to the state legislature website.

Contact Alec Johnson at alec.johnson@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @AlecJohnson12.