New AP Business Course Reflects Push to Teach Money Skills in High School

At Hoover High School near Birmingham, Alabama, a group of students gathered in a semicircle around their teacher, Gerri Kimble, to talk about a familiar teenage question: what to do with the money from a part-time job. Some said they spend it on loaded teas or gas. Others said they invest it.

Junior Darshan Parmar said he puts his earnings into index funds, naming the S&P, QQQ and VOO. When Kimble asked whether his parents handle the investing, he said he does it himself. Another student puts 70 percent of his pay into a Roth IRA, a third contributes to a 401(k), and a fourth buys stocks directly.

These students are among the first in the country to take the new Advanced Placement Business with Personal Finance course, which is being offered for the first time this year at more than 1,500 high schools nationwide. AP courses are college-level classes that let students sit for an exam and possibly earn college credit, usually in subjects such as English, history and chemistry.

In Hoover's class, students study management and finance. They also learn about outside forces that can make or break a company, including political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal factors. Senior Bramley Williams called it "a foundational piece of business that we're learning."

David Coleman, CEO of the College Board, which develops AP courses and administers the SAT, said the group built the course because students responding to AP surveys said they wanted to turn their ideas into jobs. The class is meant to attract students drawn to a more practical approach than a theoretical course like AP economics, which Hoover still offers. Coleman nonetheless regards business as a new part of the liberal arts, as important as math and history, and said a blend of the practical and theoretical "could not be more useful today."

The course fits a wider movement toward money-focused instruction in American schools. According to the Council for Economic Education, 39 states this year require a personal finance class for graduation, four more than two years ago. A Federal Reserve paper from a few years ago found that families in states requiring financial education made better decisions, such as using pandemic stimulus checks to pay down credit card balances and refinancing mortgages while rates were low.

"When we educate youth about how to use money responsibly they're really good at doing so," said Jennifer Steele, a professor of education at American University.

Hoover High sits in an affluent Birmingham suburb and often feels like a college campus, with wide green spaces and nearly 3,000 students, making it the largest high school in Alabama. Many students in the class have college plans. They say the AP course is more demanding and can lift their grade point averages, since AP classes are often weighted higher. Sophomore Damola Kukoyi called it "a way for me to boost my GPA and learn more about a topic that I love." The school also runs a four-year business academy with classes in accounting and entrepreneurship.

Senior Rachel Deschaine said general business knowledge matters because it shows how people and companies interact financially with the world. Her father owned a trucking company and her brother is majoring in economics, so she hears the class lessons echoed at the dinner table. "There's a business in literally everything," she said. "If you're willing to understand how it works, it really opens up the opportunities to a person."