Keys to success
Delaware high school students face off on personal finance skills
1:23 p.m., May 14, 2015--Delaware high school students visited the University of Delaware to compete in UD’s seventh annual Personal Finance Challenge, demonstrating their personal finance knowledge and skills through multiple interactive challenges.
The Personal Finance Challenge invites Delaware high school students and teachers who utilize the Keys to Financial Success curriculum, created by UD’s Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship (CEEE) in the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics in partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, to use their new skills to compete for prizes and the Delaware state title.
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First place in this year’s challenge went to Anthony Mannino, Tosin Ibironke, Thomas Penuel and Zachery Haas from Smyrna High School, who won $1,000 each and a trip to Kansas City, Missouri, to compete in the national Finance Challenge competition, produced by the Nebraska Council on Economic Education.
Smyrna teacher Mario Tiberi said that they are very excited for their well-deserved trip to Kansas City.
“These guys have worked really hard,” said Tiberi, who has led a winning Personal Finance Challenge team once before.
Mannino confirmed his teacher’s assertion that the team dedicated a good deal of effort to the competition, saying that their game plan was simple: “Just extensive studying.”
Penuel said that studying the Keys curriculum helped him to better understand both the competition and his own financial goals.
“I thought it really prepared us well,” Penuel said. “It helped me to set goals about where I need to put my money and where I don’t.”
Cab Calloway student Austin Wilson agreed, saying that the Keys curriculum helped him to improve his saving habits.
Wilson used what he learned to create a budget, eventually saving $1,000. He used the money for a trip to Europe.
“It helps you to think about things that you know exist, but you wouldn’t think about,” said Wilson of the curriculum.
Wilson, along with teammates Morgan Wood, Eli Gordy-Stith and Anna Nowak, took home the second place prize of $500 each after a final competitive quiz bowl round in which Cab Calloway faced off against the Smyrna team.
Cab Calloway teacher Ed Killheffer, who has been teaching the Keys curriculum for a number of years, said that the course is special because its hands-on content is so applicable to daily life, like lessons on loans, taxes, insurance and the economics of housing and transportation.
“It’s all the stuff that adults say, ‘I wish somebody had taught me that,’” Killheffer said. “In this course, connections to their real lives are all over the place. It’s how they’re going to live their lives.”
Killheffer added that he often runs into students who, years after taking the course, have saved their Keys materials and continue to reference them to make financial decisions.
“I’m proud of the fact that they leave feeling confident and well-equipped to go out there,” he said.
First-time Personal Finance Challenge teacher Will Nielsen, whose school, Glasgow High School, just entered the program, echoed this sentiment.
He praised the program’s realistic scenarios for giving the subject more meaning and connection to students’ lives.
“A lot of the student feedback is, ‘This is the most influential class I’ve had in high school, because it means something to me,’” Nielsen said.
It seems that the Keys program and Personal Finance Challenge are doing just what they were designed to. Program coordinator Barbara Emery of the CEEE, who helped to create the Keys curriculum, said that its design focused on real-life situations to get students more engaged in the learning process.
It’s particularly vital that students care about these subjects, Emery said, since they are part of a generation experiencing a complex new financial world in which knowing the basics is “not enough.”
“Products and services not only have changed but also are continually changing,” Emery continued. “So you have to give them the skills to make decisions.”
“This is what that they need now to plan for retirement,” she said. “They have to start early.”
Further, research has shown that the Keys curriculum helps students to learn critical personal finance skills, with students reporting an increase in content knowledge of more than 60 percent. Further, students improved significantly in subjects that usually prove difficult in pre-testing, like credit history and the rights and responsibilities of buyers, sellers and creditors.
Connie Montaña, Bank of America vice president and regular volunteer at the Personal Finance Challenge, said that each student benefits by learning “the business that is their life.”
Bank of America has been a critical partner with the Delaware Council on Economic Education (DCEE) and the CEEE in bringing the Keys curriculum and the Personal Finance Challenge to Delaware students.
On the morning of the challenge, Bank of America presented the DCEE with a grant for $60,000 to continue this work, and each year a team of Bank of America volunteers visits UD to help facilitate the Personal Finance Challenge.
“Connecting with these students and teachers about financial education. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend the day than that,” Montaña said.
Article by Sunny Rosen
Photos by Evan Krape and Kathy F. Atkinson