Review by Lisa Kopp
Econ 3052
April 25, 2005

I reviewed Jumpstart.org, which is maintained by the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy. The purpose of the coalition is to encourage K-12 schools to provide basic personal financial management skills for students. For the most part, I was impressed by the information and materials this website offers.

One excellent resource Jump$tart provides is a set of K-12 standards developed in part by input from a panel of elementary and secondary teachers. There are four areas the standards cover: income, money management, spending and credit, and saving and investing. In addition to specific skills and concepts students should know, the standards also include a set of benchmarks that designate the knowledge and skills students should possess at fourth, eighth, and twelfth grade. I think the standards provide a great framework for teaching personal finance; however, it would be even more helpful to know what skills or concepts teachers should teach before fourth grade, between fifth and seventh grade, and between ninth and eleventh grade. Teachers can either view the standards as a PDF file, download it as a Word document, or print it directly from the website.

A second resource I found very useful is Jump$tart’s clearinghouse. The clearinghouse provides a variety of personal finance education materials for K-12 classrooms in a variety of mediums, such as lesson plans, books, workbooks, videos, software, teaching guides, pamphlets, and web pages. Teachers can access some lesson plans directly from the link provided by Jump$tart. Occasionally when I clicked the link I was directed to the correct webpage, but not exactly to what I was looking for, so I had to do some searching around. I briefly viewed some of the resources, and they seem pretty worthwhile. I found everything from a lesson plan about adding pennies, nickels, and dimes, to a pamphlet about buying a car. The only downfall to the clearinghouse is that many of the instructional resources are geared towards older students. For example, when I searched for materials available for K-2 students, there were only 63 items compared to 367 items for 11-12 students.

Finally, and probably the neatest and most useful resource I found, was a tool called the Reality Check. It’s like a calculator that adds up the cost of living. Students have to answer a variety of questions about living in the real world as an adult, such as “Will you buy a new car or a used car?” or “Will you watch regular TV, get cable, or get cable with premium movie channels?” I took the survey to see what my costs would be for living alone versus living with a roommate, as I do now. Reality Check told me that based on the information I provided them, I would need to make at least $13.00 per hour, or $520.00 per week, to support myself. It also suggested several jobs which pay that salary, such as a correctional institution officer with a salary of about $13.76 an hour, or a truck driver with a salary of about $13.92 an hour. If I remained in the situation I am now, which is sharing an apartment, I would need to make at least $11.00 per hour, or $440.00 per week, to support myself. That’s a little bit above what I need to support myself financially, but that figure is relatively accurate. Some of the suggested occupations were a sales worker, with a salary of about $11.14 an hour, or a telephone operator with a salary of about $11.29 an hour. Another nice feature about Reality Check is that it provides a list of what an individual will make at minimum wage, with a high school diploma, with some college, with a Bachelor’s, etc. This is a tool I will unquestionably use with my students. Very few students realize how much it costs to be an independent adult, or how valuable and profitable it is to stay in school and receive an education or some type of technical training. This would definitely be a reality check for them. The direct link to Reality Check is: http://www.jumpstart.org/realitycheck