Lectures are a common method of financial knowledge transmission, but they're not so great for financial skills transmission.  

Moreover, the trending behaviors of college students may make lectures an ever-less-effective mode, because they're less engaging than tempting distractions like IM. 

Harvard Business Review's Daily Stat mentions a Study, "Examining the Affects of Student Multitasking With Laptops During the Lecture", which found that their laptops for frequent multitasking during classes, generating, on average, more than 65 new screen windows per lecture, 62% of which were unrelated to the courses they were taking.

Task-based simulations are more engaging, and thereby stickier, and thereby more effective.

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Equifax rolled out a new product this past week: Debt Wise.

Shame on Equifax! This is a flawed program for which Equifax will charge $14.95 per month.

Here's how it works, and why it's a bad deal:

Debt Wise pulls all the debts from your Equifax credit file, and the program algorithm stacks the debt in order of size, from smallest to largest, and totaling the minimum monthly payment required on each. This "debt stacking" strategy is similar to "Snowball" strategies touted by Dave Ramsey and others.

Let's say, for example, that your minimum monthly debt payments total $1000. You make a commitment to pay an extra amount that you choose – say, $30 per month – until you're debt free.  That extra $30 goes to the top of the stack every month, while the rest of the stack gets their required minimums, until the top debt gets retired.

Then, you continue paying $1030 every month until every debt is retired, in stack order.

It's based on the "Snowball" strategy;  you can find FREE Snowball calculators on the web, which WILL get you out of debt faster than paying the minimum each month, but WON'T the FASTEST strategy.

To SAVE THE MOST MONEY, you want to retire your debts not in order of size, of course, but in order of highest to lowest APR (Annual Percentage Rate, your Interest expense)!

People who are carrying too much debt should not be signing up for a recurring monthly fee! Don't give Equifax $15 a month for a second-rate strategy.  Apply it to your highest APR debt every month and retire THAT debt first! You'll save ALOT more in interest expense and time, than the Snowball method!

Why would Equifax do this? Because their valued customers aren't the consumers, they're the lenders who pay Equifax for your credit score. And lenders don't want you to get out of debt too fast.

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Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was on Capitol Hill all day today, in hearings to Reauthorize ESEA (formerly known as No Child Left Behind); in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (watch the video on this important education subject) and in the House Education and Labor Committee.

The blueprint for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is a slender, for Washington, 45 pages. Here's Duncan's written testimony.

Kay Hagan (whose staff I met in October about S.1339, on Financial Literacy) asks a very direct question about Financial Literacy in the DoE Blueprint. Her question, at 120:00 on the video above, ties college-readiness and career-readiness to financial literacy of students. His reply, at 121:54 on the video, demonstrates his earnest commitment, personally and in dollars, to financial literacy.  He refers to a bucket called a Well-Rounded Education, $265 million to improve instruction in many subject areas, explicitly including Financial Literacy. See page 25 of the Blueprint.

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High school students seem to be overwhelmingly in favor of online instruction as a component of their educations.

The vast majority have taken an online course or expressed interest in taking one, according to new data released this week by Project Tomorrow.

Article here: http://bit.ly/b2byMW

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Senator Dodd (D-CT), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, released his proposal to overhaul the nation's financial regulations. 

Read Dodd Releases Huge Financial Reform Package, by Jann Swanson for more details on its regulatory provisions.

Three provisions that are particularly dear to me are:

1) Establishment of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and

2) Establishment of an Office of Financial Literacy to educate the public about financial matters

3) Offering a complaint hot line for reporting problems with financial products.

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Broadband Plan Looks To Overhaul E-Rate, Promote Online Learning

By David Nagel

In a presentation to stakeholders Wednesday, FCC Director of Education Steve Midgley provided a preview of the forthcoming National Broadband Plan, which will be formally released next week. The plan, as it pertains to education, calls for an expansion of E-Rate and new federal supports for the promotion and delivery of online learning.

Read more about how this plan will help promote online learning nationwide.

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National Education Technology Plan — The draft National Education Technology Plan (NETP) was released today. It provides the context and vision for how information and communication technologies can help transform American education. The plan provides a set of concrete goals to inform state and local educational technology plans, as well as recommendations to inspire research, development, and innovation.

You can download a copy of this document, which highlights the importance of technology in the classroom.

Plan PDF (1.6M) - Transforming American Education - Powered by Technology

The NETP presents 5 goals, with recommendations for meeting the goals:

1.0 Learning. All learners will have engaging and empowering learning experiences both in and outside of school that prepare them to be active, creative, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in our globally networked society.

2.0 Assessment Our education system at all levels will leverage the power of technology to measure what matters and use assessment data for continuous improvement.

3.0 Teaching Professional educators will be supported individually and in teams by technology that connects them to data, content, resources, expertise, and learning experiences that enable and inspire more effective teaching for all learners.

4.0 Infrastructure All students and educators will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning when and where they need it.

5.0 Productivity Our education system at all levels will redesign processes and structures to take advantage of the power of technology to improve learning outcomes while making more efficient use of time, money, and staff.

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Just published earlier this month -- this excellent 9-page brief titled, "The Online Learning Imperative: A Solution to Three Looming Crises in Education," is written by Governor Bob Wise. Wise is from the Alliance for Excellent Education and outlines clear and compelling evidence for the ways online learning solves the major challenges in K-12 education today and looking ahead.

The link to download is:
http://www.all4ed.org/files/OnlineLearning.pdf

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Let's keep in mind that Valentine's Day has been hijacked by Retail, with the message: show you love someone by buying them stuff, and if you love them a lot, buy a lot of stuff, or expensive stuff. 

When it comes to children, especially, this is a dangerous unintentional connection: “Stuff equals Love” or “More stuff means more love.”

We can show love and appreciation just as well, perhaps better, by creating memories and experiences, than by accumulating things. The original Valentine's Day was to write a heartfelt message to one's beloved.

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A study by Wendy Way and Karen Holden titled “Teachers’ Background and Capacity to Teach Personal Finance: Results of a National Study” published in the Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning in 2009 found that teachers are not prepared to teach financial literacy.  Fewer than 20 percent of teachers and prospective teachers reported feeling competent to teach any of the six personal finance concepts normally included in educational standards.

Although the trend for states to mandate financial literacy education is encouraging, it's shocking to me that the mandates typically include no training for the teachers!

Surely, if state legislators want students to learn essentials of personal finance, it follows they should want their teachers to learn the essentials, too.  In most states, these same underprepared teachers are expected to review materials for congruency with the curriculum, for efficacy, and for engagement. It's quite literally the blind leading the blind!

An instructionally complete program like MoneyU®, which doesn't depend on the subject-matter expertise of the teacher for her students to succeed, is a good way for the teacher to learn financial skills alongside the students.

Dr. Lusardi has posted thoughtfully on this study as well: Financial Literacy and Ignorance

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