NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (WKBW) — The first cohort of Niagara Falls High School students who took required financial literacy classes will be graduating soon — creating an opportunity to showcase the importance of money management.
Yuvraj Singh, a Niagara Falls High School senior, said he's turned mandatory financial literacy courses into self-selected electives throughout his high school career.
"Once I started actually being in class, started learning, I realized I started enjoying it more and more," Singh said. "So then I just kept on taking it, and now senior year I'm still in the business class — real estate."
The high school requires students to take a full-year financial literacy course their first year and a half-year course their second. Before taking these classes, Singh said "financial literacy" was a term his friends would get a kick out of.
"We'd make jokes here and there like, we haven't learned about taxes."
However, Singh is soon taking his financial skills beyond the high school classroom.
"I plan on going to Niagara County Community College for accounting ... graduating, then transferring over to a university ... then once my Bachelor's is done, probably going to do real estate and just move back and forth between those two," he said.
Niagara Falls High School implemented these required classes three years ago — classes that Mark Laurrie, Superintendent of the City of Niagara Falls School District, said are essential to students' futures.
"This is a life skill. This is value added to a student," Laurrie said. "We hear horror stories all over the place about kids that leave and soon after high school are [in debt]."
New York State is currently in the process of reviewing a new set of graduation requirements that include financial literacy education.
The National Endowment for Financial Education finds 88% of U.S. adults believe their state should require financial literacy classes for graduation.
Laurrie said once this cohort of students graduate, the district will be able to gather concrete data regarding the effectiveness of financial literacy classes in the "real world."
"Empirical data that says that kids are learning more — we're just on the precipice of that," he said. "I know it's going to make a difference for the lives of kids in the long run."
