'How Do We Prepare for the Future?': A Conversation about Financial Literacy and Economic Education

3/29/2024

Tom Heintjes:Hello, and welcome back to another episode of theEconomy Matters podcast. I'm Tom Heintjes, managing editor of the Atlanta Fed'sEconomy Matters magazine. The Atlanta Fed makes a big outreach effort to students and teachers to further economic education, and since April is Financial Literacy Month, I thought it would be a good time to sit down and talk with Jackie Morgan, a senior outreach adviser on the Atlanta Fed's economic education team. Welcome to the podcast, Jackie.

Jackie Morgan: Thanks for having me.

The Atlanta Fed's Jackie Morgan. Photo by Stephen Nowland

Heintjes:Jackie, I wanted to ask you about the landscape of financial education for K-12 students in states in the Sixth District. I know you reach students in kindergarten through 12th, right?

Morgan: We do. We work with K-12 audiences, and then also some postsecondary audiences. We work with a lot of educators-in-training to help them be better equipped to go into the classroom as well. So the landscape here in the Southeast-we've made a lot of strides. We're fortunate in many cases to have both economics and personal finance as part of the standards that are taught in the different states. I'm in Tennessee-I'm out of our Nashville Branch-and in Tennessee, we have required courses in both economics and personal finance. We have credit courses in both of those. In Georgia, it's a combination of having both economics and personal finance in the same class. And then in Mississippi, they started having a requirement that was part of their college and career readiness course that personal finance is infused in. So all three of those states have it currently in place, but the good news is that in the rest of our district, we're going to see some things coming in the near future. Florida has recently mandated personal finance as well, so that'll go into effect this next year. Alabama just passed it, and it's going to be part of a ninth grade course related to career preparation. And then Louisiana also has it coming in the 2026-27 school year for high schoolers. So, lots of activity for both econ and personal finance-more on the personal finance side. And then we also see some requirements that are in elementary and middle school as well-not necessarily stand-alone courses, but woven throughout the different classes. You might see it in teaching math, or in teaching social studies, you might see a snippet for econ and personal finance as part of those standards.

Heintjes:I have a lot of things I want to ask you about, but before we get into it, let's step back a bit. I want to ask you how the Fed initially got involved in financial and economic education. How did that come to be?

Morgan: We'll take a quick step back to the '70s. It was in 1976 when Board of Governors chair Arthur Burns had a call to the governors and the presidents of the Reserve Banks to discuss the need to inform the public about the work of the Fed. And so it grew out of that point. From there, there was a plan to really develop public information, and that's how many of our public information departments evolved across the Fed as well. They were really charged with helping the public to better understand the Fed, to dispel misconceptions, and to inform consumers. And so, growing out of that then came economic education. We see it in a lot of different ways across the Fed-there's no one specific way that it's done in all of our different districts. Our model here in the Sixth District, we formalized back in 2004. Our outreach is directly to educators, because we feel by taking that wholesale approach that we can have well-trained educators who can then take that knowledge-not just that one class, but from year to year-and have that multiplier effect with students.

Heintjes:So this is obviously a long-term effort that you guys have undertaken. And during the time you've worked in education and teacher outreach at the Atlanta Fed, how has it changed? Obviously, the payments system has undergone huge changes, for example. Do changes like this affect how teachers approach financial literacy, or are there core concepts, like compound interest, that just don't change over time?

Morgan: Of course, there are going to be some things that are the same-interest is interest. But if we think about payments, for example-I actually, early in my Fed career, started in payments. And so, thinking about check writing, as we take a step back, check writing is a little different today than it was back in 1999 and 2000. If we were still doing things the same way now that we were then…our evolution and being able to take advantage of all of the digital things that are available out there has really made a change not only in payments, but also in our education world as well. We've seen that evolution, and it's been great. As a teaching tool though, teachers are now not only having to think about teaching about checks-because it is still a payment tool-but also things like cryptocurrency and other digital payment tools. So, they're having to really stay on top of it, those who are teaching about the subject matter.

Heintjes:You're obviously very passionate about what you do, and financial literacy. I want to ask you what led you to become interested in financial literacy and economic education. Was there something specific that set you on this career path?

Morgan: Yes. Sometimes it's about being at the right place at the right time. I started with the Fed back in 1999 and found my job when jobs had just come online. It was like a new, cool thing. When I started with the Fed, I was working in payments strategy, and my background was in ag economics and public relations. As we got into this area-doing economic education outreach back in 2004-I said, "Man, that sounds like fun. That kind of marries all of my passions together." It was a good fit for me to move over and dive more deeply into this area, and get really involved in personal finance education in Tennessee.

Heintjes:I want to ask you about the pandemic, and going to remote learning for an extended period, which everyone had to do in that time. How did that affect financial education? I know a lot of tests show that students backslid in general as a result of that time. Is that true in the area where you work? And how can any lost ground be made up, if in fact it can be made up?

Morgan: Yes, I think financial literacy, or any kind of education, clearly took a backslide. I think we can use the pandemic as a learning moment as well, and to think about as we're helping students to prepare for the future. We may have had that awful moment in time, but let's use that as a springboard to think about, how do we prepare for the future? Using the pandemic to teach about things like emergency funds, and making difficult decisions, and changes in our lives, as it applies to education-students are generally resilient, but it was hard on them socially, too. And so, thinking about how that ties into what that meant for jobs and what they were seeing with their parents as well-all of that has an impact on how they view financial education. I always feel like things are kind of a pendulum. When the economy is good and people have jobs and things are going great, we're on one end, and I think students perceive things differently. But when they see it swing the other way and we're having difficulties, and their families are having difficulties or losing jobs of parents-or losing a parent, which can be a huge financial difficulty on the family-and then they view things a little bit differently.

Heintjes:I know your team also reaches out to underserved and majority-minority schools. Can you talk a bit about your efforts in that area, and maybe the associated challenges and opportunities?

Morgan: I think no matter what audience you work with, there are always challenges and opportunities. And to better understand the underserved audiences that we work with, we do have a congressional mandate to work with schools that are majority-minority-at least 51 percent minority-or all-girls schools. And so we work strategically to look at and make sure we're reaching those and other underserved populations as well. That can look a little bit different. That can look like doing teacher trainings on personal finance for some of those educators in those areas. It might mean bringing a school group in to get some career or personal finance training here as part of a day that they might be experiencing at the Fed for jobs. It could be that we're going out-and also, another topic we work with in this area is one of our team members does a lot of work with Native American communities. That's another way that we can serve different communities-not only just those that are underserved, but to be sure that we're serving all communities as well and reaching out to both urban and rural populations.

Heintjes:There's more I want to ask you about, but we're going to pause a moment so you can listen to this message from the Atlanta Fed.

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Heintjes:Welcome back. We're talking to Jackie Morgan, who is on the Atlanta Fed's economic education team. Jackie, I know I'm asking you to generalize here, so forgive me-but do young people see financial education as something that is truly important, or is it sort of an abstract concept for them?

Morgan: I think it depends, just like anything. One of the things we find, though, about financial literacy is that it's often "just in time" education for people. Often people won't seek out information about buying a house until they're thinking about buying a house. They're not going to look for that information 10 years in advance. The important thing when we're doing financial education with young people is making sure that it's relevant to what their interests are. If you're working with a class of sophomores-16-year-olds-they're thinking about car buying, or their next steps. They might be juniors or seniors and thinking about what life after high school looks like for them. So making it relevant to them. I'll share a great story from a teacher that I work with. He had a young person come to him and say, "Gosh, I just don't know-I just don't think I can afford a car." And the teacher said to them, "Well, I see you with multiple Dr Peppers every day." He said, "Let's talk about this." And this happened to be a Junior ROTC teacher that had this student for multiple years. They came up with a plan to help that student, over the course of three years, get that car-just by forgoing that consumption of that one drink per day.

Heintjes:As a teacher, things like that must be really satisfying: to see a student come in feeling one way, and leave feeling another way.

Morgan: Yes, absolutely. And I think it speaks to the impact that we can have, also, because we're working with those educators to be sure that they're equipped with what they need for knowledge, and then resources in the classroom. And then hearing those stories for us is also very impactful and rewarding.

Heintjes:That's great. We spoke before of the pandemic-it's hard to talk about the pandemic and not talk about Zoom, which became a lifeline for so many people during that period. Have new technologies like Zoom or other platforms changed what you're able to do? It used to be that everything was in person, but that limitation doesn't necessarily exist anymore.

Morgan: Yes. We take a hybrid approach these days, where we do some things in person and some things by Zoom. And in fact, before it was mainstream, we were already doing a lot of Zoom and other Webex programs, so we could reach a broader audience. When we bring educators in, we love that in-person impact and the things that we can do that are hands-on for learning and building those relationships. But we find that we can't reach everybody in the limited space and time that we have available.

Heintjes:And coming here requires resources that maybe not everyone has.

Morgan: Absolutely right. And so, with Zoom and other platforms, we're able to reach not only somebody who might be here in Atlanta or in Nashville, when I'm doing an in-person program, but it could be upper East Tennessee and all the way down to New Orleans where our office is, and all the entire district. It really helped us to reach a broader swath of educators.

Heintjes:You spoke about resources, and I want to ask you, what resources does the Atlanta Fed-and other Reserve Banks, because we all do this-what resources do you offer to educators?

Morgan: We have a variety of personal finance and economic infographic posters. There are visual depictions of different topics, so if an educator is teaching about supply and demand, price ceilings, price floors, fiscal and monetary policy on the econ side, or maybe they're teaching about taxes, or decision making, or saving and investing-we have posters and then activities and lessons that go along with those that they can order from us on our website at atlantafed.org/education. That way they can get those, and order those resources for their classroom, at no charge for them.

Heintjes:And I should note that we'll have a link to those resources on the website with this podcast episode. As you mentioned, you work with a team, and other Reserve Banks also have teams working in this space, but the demand is great. How do you decide how limited resources get allocated to accomplish the job as best you can?

Morgan: That is just a pure question on economics, isn't it?

Heintjes:Yes, it is-how appropriate!

Morgan: It's all about scarcity and how each of our Reserve Banks has different priorities and has to figure out how they're going to allocate those resources. And so, within our teams we've decided how we're going to look at reaching out-and that's part of the reason we decided to take, for lack of a better word, the wholesale approach in working with educators, to get them equipped so that they have the tools that they need to work with students. In each Reserve Bank, they take a little bit different approach, whether or not they actually have an economic education outreach program.

Heintjes:And you speak with your peers and talk about best practices, and maybe adjust your approach accordingly?

Morgan: We do. We have a system-level group called Federal Reserve Education, and we work collaboratively for outreach. So, they might see us at conferences underneath that brand-we're at a lot of those-or our website that was promoted during the commercial time as well, federalreserveeducation.org. That's a place where we have all of our resources. We also have online modules, there are books, online e-books, and we have lots of other lessons and activities-anything that an educator could want for teaching economics and personal finance, we likely have something to help support them in the classroom.

Heintjes:When you meet with and talk to economics teachers, are there common things you hear in terms of areas of needs, things they wished they could emphasize more, and so on? Does that influence your team's thinking about future efforts?

Morgan: Yes, absolutely. We do surveys with all of our programs to get feedback from educators so that we can be sure that we're meeting their needs. Also, we ask them for ideas about what would they need to be better in. The one thing that seems to be common across all of these teachers is, so many economics and personal finance teachers are just so passionate about the subject matter they teach-which is really inspiring. One of the things that's often common is when they first hear about us, they don't know about Federal Reserve resources and our materials, and they're all so excited to be able to find those and to use those. One of the best experiences is, we were at the National Council for Economic Education, at the national conference, and had an exhibit booth there. And before that, we had done some preconference sessions, met some great educators who then ended up bringing their peers and colleagues to our exhibit booth, and they did the sales pitch for us. They were out there telling them about all of our resources because they said, "These are great. You need to know about these." And that's the best feeling, when other educators can help us with that reach to get to others so that they can also have these materials in their classroom.

Heintjes:Yes, that's got to be gratifying. So, you mentioned parents-hopefully some parents of students are listening to this episode. How can a parent learn if economics and personal finance are part of the standards and the graduation requirements of their children's schools?

Morgan: Yes. One place to go to get an easy, quick view of things is the Council for Economic Education. One of the partners that we work with has a survey of the states that they do, and it looks at which states require economics and personal finance for graduation. And they have a great visual, so at a snapshot, you can say, "Oh, my state does or does not require that." And from there, you can always go to your State Department of Education and look for the course standards that go along with that particular requirement-whether it's a graduation requirement or if it's just a general, standard course that they have, that they take as an elective. The other place you can always check is, often the school websites will include that information, or the course books that the students may have. So lots of different places to go and check, and look and see what might be available.

Heintjes:I wanted to ask you to look into your crystal ball and tell me: What's on the horizon for you and your economic education colleagues?

Morgan: I think you can count on us to continue to work with educators and be out there working closely-especially with economic personal finance and our career and technical educators. They do a lot of our college and career readiness, which we find is important as well and ties into all of our economic and personal finance efforts. So we'll continue to work with those teachers. And then trying to stay on top of what's new-you'll see some new lesson plans and other materials from us in the future-and then just being out there on the front lines.

Heintjes:Great. Well, Jackie, this has been a really stimulating conversation today, and I want to thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us.

Morgan: Again, thanks for having me.

Heintjes:And that brings us to the end of another episode of the Economy Matters podcast. I'm going to note that we'll have a link to the Atlanta Fed's economic education material, which we've been discussing today, on our website at atlantafed.org, and Financial Literacy Month in April is a great time to check it out. Who knows? You might even learn something yourself. Thanks for spending some time with us today, and I hope you'll join us again next month.

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