Gov. Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, on the campaign trail in 2018. DeWine just signed mandatory personal finance education for high schoolers into state law.
Kirk Irwin | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has signed a bill mandating all high-schoolers in the state take a half-credit, standalone personal finance course before they graduate.
With the signing of the measure on Oct. 28 by its Republican governor, Ohio is now the 10th state in the U.S. that requires personal finance education at the high school level. So far, it’s also the largest, with the legislation spanning more than 600 school districts in the Buckeye State.
“I was a banker for 41 years and I saw the results of us not teaching our children financial literacy,” said Ohio state Sen. Steve Wilson, chair of the Ohio Senate’s Financial Institutions and Technology Committee and a primary sponsor of the bill. “I wanted to do something about it.”
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Ohio’s personal finance mandate
In the last two years, five states — Ohio, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nebraska and Rhode Island — passed legislation requiring that students take a full semester standalone personal finance education course in high school, doubling the total…
