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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
Icon representing the content dimension

Content

How well does the curriculum cover knowledge and skills identified in national standards?

Icon representing the utility dimension

Utility

Do the materials and guidance provided support effective teaching?

Icon representing the quality dimension

Quality

Is the information presented clear, accurate, and objective, and can students and teachers easily access materials?

Icon representing the efficacy dimension

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.

Learn how the review was developed