Why Financial Education

Financial Education begins with students’ identities and memberships in our communities, extends into disciplinary inquiry-based, culturally sustaining instruction that educates for broad economic inclusion, mobility, critical examination of existing systems, and financially secure individuals and communities.

Chicago Public Schools Approach to Quality Financial Education

Identity and Community: Expertise exists at the local community level

Students, Communities, and Teachers understand the challenges and opportunities in their lives in ways that others can’t or ignore. Teachers and Students have the experiences, history, and lenses to contextualize financial education in ways that empower the diversity of their communities.

The CPS Instructional Core: Educating For Equity and Continuous Improvement

To educate for equity, the CPS Instructional Core centers on identity, relationships, and community.

Our Financial Education programs allow students to experience core instruction that is responsive to and sustaining of who they are and what they bring. This approach empowers them to connect, imagine, and act as ethical, critical actors that shape the world.

Inquiry Based Education: Inspiring and empowering students' visions for their futures

Financial Education has a sustained and meaningful impact when students are engaged in the Inquiry Arc of learning. Students who question, connect learning to their own lives, and acquire the disciplinary tools needed to make optimal decisions, seek out and critically evaluate information to make decisions and take action.

Critical Literacies: Critical Financial Literacy to address a changing world.

Critical Financial Literacies prepare students with economic thinking-strategies applicable across diverse and changing contexts. The core elements of Personal Finance help shape individuals’ views of the economy and its systems.