New Texas law mandates personal finance class. What will it look like?

Julie Harris has no shortage of cautionary tales. Back in the day, like many teenagers, she blundered with money. 

Among the memorable anecdotes: running up her first-ever credit card, close encounters with scams … and that one time she vacationed in Mexico, faltered in negotiations at a tourist trap, and came home with an overpriced sombrero hat. 

Now 50, the veteran educator, cherished for her boisterous voice and infectious smile, wants students to avoid her mistakes. She takes teaching personal financial literacy — quite personally. 

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“I have a lot of stories,” she exclaimed. “I tell them, ‘Look, this is what happened to me.’” 

Harris teaches a personal financial literacy and economics course at Dallas ISD’s Skyline High School, where she’s worked for more than 25 years. In her classroom, cartoon piggy banks and coins emblazoned on posters line the walls. And when students leave her room, she hopes they will be better prepared to spend their money. 

Harris’ class is optional — but soon, the topics she covers will be required learning. To graduate high school, Texas students are mandated to take a personal financial literacy course, starting with the freshman class entering this fall. The law, which saw bipartisan support, was enacted in June 2025. 

The push for personal finance education is happening across the country. Surveys indicate low levels of financial literacy among American adults, but advocates say a class like this addresses the problem early on and tackles wealth disparities. To achieve long-term career success, school leaders say D-FW natives must be equipped with the skills to be financially stable and build generational wealth.

How to avoid credit card debt? Ways to pay for college? The responsibilities that come with purchasing a house? A personal finance class aims to answer questions like these and help students make sound financial decisions. 

The State Board of Education is still formalizing the personal financial literacy curriculum standards, otherwise known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. On Friday, the elected 15-member board gave preliminary approval to the TEKS.

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“This is what I call the adult life skills,” Harris said. “Because it’s credit, it’s budgeting, it’s how we make our financial decisions.

Currently, Texas high school students must earn at least three credits of social studies, including a semester-long economics course. They can choose between “Economics with Emphasis on the Free Enterprise System and Its Benefits” and “Personal Financial Literacy and Economics.” 

Both have aspects of personal finance weaved in — to varying extents. In the first course, students receive about 11 hours of personal finance instruction, according to Champlain College’s Center for Financial Literacy. The other class devotes about 45 hours — roughly 75% of course material — to personal finance.

Some districts, including Dallas ISD, offer a separate personal financial literacy elective. But this class does not satisfy the economics requirement needed to graduate. 

But with the passage of HB 27, the class of 2030 will follow a different track. Personal finance becomes a mandatory standalone class, which supporters say allows for a deeper, more nuanced instruction. Economics transitions into an optional course. 

The law also directs the Texas Education Agency to compile a list of free curriculum resources that school districts may use to teach the course. An Advanced Placement class that substantially aligns with the material can also fulfill the requirement. 

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Many Americans lack an understanding of basic financial concepts, such as how insurance works, types of investment and managing debt. For the past 10 years, American adults answered only half the questions correctly in an annual measure of financial literacy by Stanford University and TIAA Institute. In 2026, Gen Z answered 38% of the questions correctly, the report notes. 

Those who understand money manage it better, experts say. Knowing basic financial skills is associated with saving regularly, dealing with debt better and having a higher confidence in retirement. 

Thirty states have passed a high school graduation requirement for a standalone personal financial literacy class, according to Next Gen Personal Finance, which pushed for the legislation and provides a free personal finance curriculum. Over two decades ago, not a single state had one.

“When it comes time for these big-ticket purchases, having a great credit score … makes a huge difference in terms of your ability to generate wealth,” said Christian Sherrill, director of teacher success for Next Gen Personal Finance. “That’s my hope for Texas young people: better behaviors and decisions.” 

It may be a while before students start thinking about purchasing a home, but other big-ticket purchases come sooner. For example, Next Gen Personal Finance offers a unit that walks students through buying a car — from researching which one to buy, to negotiating, to securing an auto loan. 

Nowadays, teenagers are targeted by a torrent of “get rich quick schemes,” Sherrill said. Flashy social media posts encourage them to bet on sports and buy cryptocurrency. 

But a personal finance class helps students weed out bad ideas, he said, and introduces them to sensible ones. 

“Our brains, as teenagers, are not necessarily wired to think that way,” Sherrill said. “It will be an uphill battle against some of these trends, which are deliberately targeting young people.” 

Shalon Bond, Dallas ISD social studies director, said the requirement will help the district prepare students for college and careers by teaching skills applicable to real life, she said.  

“The state has created a law that actually helps us plan for our students,” she said. “This is monumental for the state, as well, because we’re changing lives.” 

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Financial skills were once taught at home, but nowadays, parents may be ill-equipped to teach it, said Annamaria Lusardi, senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. 

In a changing world, it’s the “blind leading the blind,” she said. Parents may struggle to keep up with the onslaught of new financial instruments — let alone, explaining what they do to their kids. 

“We live in a different world. [It’s] much more complex with much more individual responsibility,” she said. “Schools should adapt in the same way we have added foreign languages, we have added computers.”

A personal finance class levels the playing field, she said. In her research, she found that this knowledge was disproportionately concentrated among white males from college-educated families.

“Young people acquire knowledge at the dinner table,” she said. “Everybody today needs this knowledge. Leaving it to the parents, I think we just create inequality.”

This could be a more pronounced concern in districts that serve a large population of economically-disadvantaged students. 

Dallas ISD has caught on. It has pushed for more personal finance programming — before the law was passed, beyond the classroom. 

The district hosted “Financial Literacy Days,” where students participated in workshops and connected financial concepts to real-world problems. The school board made plans to promote finance-focused classes, such as the one at Skyline High School.

On a March morning, a flurry of high schoolers dashed around Harris’ classroom, as the exchange of fake cash flew between hands. 

They were learning the usual in Harris’ class: relationships. No, not the kind between friends, partners or families. The kind between businesses and households, between goods and services, between resources and capital.  

They negotiated. They made bucks. They pored over worksheets in silence. And at the end, they came together to discuss how this fake scenario applied to real life.  

Rather than negotiating fake bills, students will have to negotiate their salaries down the line, Harris told her class. That resonated with senior Samuel Estrada. 

“If I ever decide to buy a house or buy a car, you always want to … negotiate,” Samuel said. “Get it for cheap.” 

Samuel said he always looks forward to coming to class. He appreciates Harris’ personalized approach to teaching it. 

With what he’s learned, he’s now able to help his parents do their taxes. He knows they’ve taken demanding jobs to provide for their family of seven: his mother works in the medical field, his father works for the United States Postal Service.   

Samuel wants to “help out my family in any way I can.” 

The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas. 

The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, Judy and Jim Gibbs, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Ron and Phyllis Steinhart, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks, and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.