School district tests pilot programs for financial literacy

The idea of saving for retirement is not in the forefront of most teenagers' minds, but the Clark County School District wants to change that.

This school year the school district tested financial literacy programs at 12 high schools around the Las Vegas Valley. One, the $mart Program, is a series of web-based educational lessons by Washington, D.C.-based developer EverFi. About 3,000 students in 12th-grade U.S. government classes participated.

The nine online lessons, which took one to two weeks to finish, were on savings; banking; payments, interest rates and credit cards; credit score; financing higher education; renting vs. owning; taxes and insurance; consumer fraud; and investing.

Participating high schools were Mojave, Southeast Career and Technical Academy, Desert Rose, Sunrise Mountain, Western, Durango, Basic, Chaparral, Cimarron-Memorial, Eldorado, Veterans Tribute Career and Technical Academy and College of Southern Nevada.

Another pilot program, sponsored by Nevada State Treasurer Kate Marshall, was used at several other high schools.

Seniors Corina Tarango and Karen Molina, who attend Mojave High School, 5302 Goldfield St. in North Las Vegas, said they learned from the $mart Program and would apply the knowledge, especially the information about financial aid for college. They also said there is room for improvement.

"It was kind of boring," Molina said, adding that much of the time was spent listening to a lecture.

Mojave U.S. Government teacher Averill Kelley said the program should be more interactive.

"What I saw is that students aren't paying attention," Kelley said. "That's my biggest problem with it. Instead of really trying to learn, they're just racing to get it done."

The United Way of Southern Nevada and Citibank sponsored the $25,000 pilot program.

Some schools used only the EverFi software, while some used EverFi as a supplement to classroom teaching and others acted as a control group, teaching financial literacy without EverFi.

Superintendent Dwight Jones visited Mojave May 31 to talk to students about the importance of financial awareness and to get their feedback on the program. The district said it is evaluating the results and will decide whether to expand the program next year. That decision might not be made until August, and a date was not given when the results would be released.

Brian Boothe, the school district's project facilitator for K-12 studies, said that before this school year, each school decided how to teach financial education.

"We tried to make the pilot really functional with regionally and financially diverse students," Boothe said. "We wanted to make sure it was varied to really check the results. ... We're really just trying to do our due diligence to find out what program does the best job."

Contact View education reporter Jeff Mosier at jmosier@viewnews.com or 224-5524.