EVALUATION OF FINANCIAL FITNESS FOR LIFE PROGRAM AND FUTURE OUTLOOK IN THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA

ABSTRACT In Fall 2008 the College Access Challenge Grant, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, chose 13 school districts in Mississippi's Delta and Southwest regions to receive the Financial Fitness for Life (FFL) curriculum. The Mississippi Council on Economic Education was asked to implement the training and evaluate the program. Superintendents recruited counselors and teachers to participate in a train-the-trainer program. We used a subset of the FFL theme tests and a survey of questions on student self perception on future perspective, identity development, perception of opportunities, and school performance. We hypothesized that learning the FFL material could positively influence the long term goals of increasing college attendance for disadvantaged youth. We find that the students surveyed did increase their knowledge, especially on Themes 1, 4, and 5. However, their self-perceptions did not improve and we find no correlation between the behavior variables and the improvement in test scores. The experiment was less than ideal in a few areas, so improving the design and carrying out the experiment under more ideal conditions may yield different conclusions. This project was made possible by the Council on Economic Education. In 2008-2009, 13 school districts in Mississippi were chosen to participate in a pilot program that is part of the College Access Challenge Grant sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and administered through the Institutions of Higher Learning in Mississippi. The Mississippi Council on Economic Education was asked to offer financial literacy opportunities for teachers and students as one way of achieving the goal of assisting low-income students and families learn about, prepare for, and finance postsecondary education. Approximately 7,000 middle school students in Mississippi's Delta were chosen to receive the middle school Financial Fitness for Life (FFL) materials as well as teacher training and support. This provided a unique opportunity to assess teacher and student financial literacy, teacher training, and other significant factors that affect the attitudes towards college of disadvantaged youth. Our original research agenda included studying the change in student behavior as well as the change in knowledge of teachers and students. We are interested in exploring how the FFL program affects the future perspective, identity development, perception of opportunities, and school performance of youth from low-resource communities. Based on the extant literature on youth development, each of these are plausible mediators that could explain how the FFL program can help achieve the long term goals of increasing college attendance for these youth. However, due to the difficulties of studying students and miscommunication with teachers, this research is unable to study the link between the curriculum and potential behavioral changes. We are able to shed light on students, teachers, and schools in the Mississippi Delta area, the overall effectiveness of FFL curriculum on knowledge for low-resource communities, and the correlation of self-reported attitude measures and performance on FFL theme tests. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Financial Literacy Education. The effectiveness of the FFL curriculum has been recently studied only by a handful of previous researchers (Lyons et al., 2006; Harter & Harter, 2007; Swinton, et al., 2007). Lyons, Scherpf, and Roberts (2006) find that the FFL parent's curriculum was valued as an effective vehicle to improve communication between parents and children on financial matters. Swinton, et al (2007) used data collected by the Georgia Department of Education to test whether teacher participation in FFL training workshops by the Georgia Council on Economic Education affected the high-stakes test scores of students in economics classes. They find that having a teacher who participated in a FFL workshop was statistically significant in explaining expected end of course economics test scores. …