Review youth financial education curricula
CFPB has developed a review tool to help you decide which financial education curriculum best suits the needs of your students and classrooms and help curriculum developers evaluate strengths and gaps in their materials.
As educators, you have a wide range of financial education curricula to choose. The CFPB curriculum review tool can help you select the ones that are most appropriate for your students. It provides evaluation criteria to help you determine if a curriculum is accurate, unbiased, well-designed, and effective in strengthening students’ financial knowledge, skills, and capabilities needed to achieve financial well-being.
The review tool can also help curriculum developers identify strengths and areas for further development as they create or revise their own curricula.
Preparing for a review
It’s helpful to do a few things before starting a review:
- Gather all curriculum materials (scope and sequence, lesson plans, etc.)
- Collect studies and other evidence of the curriculum’s impact
- Assemble a review team
- Schedule two to three hours for the review
Conducting a review
When evaluating financial education curricula, consider the following:
- For each curriculum you review, save a version of this tool under a unique name
- Complete all four dimensions of the tool
- Along with your ratings, include notes and observation
- Review scores to make an informed choice
The curriculum review process
The review process includes four dimensions. For each dimension, you’ll find:
- Criteria that represent important features or content areas of the curriculum
- Indicators for each criteria that describe specific elements or characteristics of the curriculum
- Components consisting of statements or questions that help you determine if the curriculum meets each indicator
Content
How well does the curriculum cover knowledge and skills identified in national standards?
Utility
Do the materials and guidance provided support effective teaching?
Quality
Is the information presented clear, accurate, and objective, and can students and teachers easily access materials?
Efficacy
Is there evidence that the curriculum has a positive impact on financial knowledge, skills, or behaviors?
Research behind the curriculum review
The criteria for the curriculum review are based on relevant literature, careful consideration of best practices, and real-world feedback from educators and financial education experts.