AP Business with Personal Finance debuts at more than 1,500 US high schools

Alabama teens turn part-time paychecks into investments

Sitting in a semicircle around their teacher, Gerri Kimble, students at Hoover High School near Birmingham, Alabama, weighed what to do with their part-time job paychecks. The teens said the money goes toward loaded teas, filling the gas tank — and investing. Junior Darshan Parmar said he buys index funds, “like S&P and then QQQ and VOO,” and makes the trades himself rather than leaving the investing to his parents. One classmate said he puts 70 percent of his money in a Roth IRA; another contributes to a 401(k); a third said he invests directly in stocks. “Oh you watch the markets?” Kimble asked. “Love it,” the student replied.

These students are among the first in the country to take the newly created Advanced Placement Business with Personal Finance course, offered this year for the first time at more than 1,500 high schools across the country. AP courses are college-level classes offered in high school; enrolled students can take an exam to earn college credit, typically in canonical subjects such as English, history and chemistry. In this class, students get lessons on management and finances, including the outside factors that can make or break a business — political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal. “It’s a foundational piece of business that we’re learning,” said senior Bramley Williams.

The College Board, the organization that creates and develops AP courses for public and private schools across the country and also manages and administers the SAT, created the course because students said in AP surveys that they want to turn their ideas into jobs. “Business is the constant learning of adaptation,” said David Coleman, the College Board’s CEO. The class is designed to appeal to students drawn to a more practical curriculum than a more theoretical subject such as AP economics, which was already offered at schools like Hoover.

Coleman said he still considers business a new part of the liberal arts, arguing it is as important for preparing students for the world as core areas of study like math and history. He said pedagogy that mixes the practical with the theoretical “could not be more useful today.”

The course is part of a broader trend toward money-focused curriculum in US high schools. Thirty-nine states this year require a personal finance class to graduate, four more than two years ago, according to the Council for Economic Education.

Hoover High, in an affluent Birmingham suburb, often feels more like a college, with wide open green spaces and a student body a bit short of 3,000, making it the largest high school in Alabama. Many students in the new class have college aspirations.

Students said the AP class is more challenging and could improve their grade point averages, since AP classes are often weighted higher than other courses. “This AP course is a way for me to boost my GPA and learn more about a topic that I love,” said sophomore Damola Kukoyi. Beyond the AP class, Hoover offers a four-year business academy with classes such as accounting and entrepreneurship.

Evidence for the push comes from research. A Federal Reserve paper from a few years ago found families in states requiring financial education made better financial decisions, including being more likely to use COVID-19 stimulus checks to pay down credit card balances and refinance their mortgages while rates were low. “When we educate youth about how to use money responsibly they’re really good at doing so,” said Jennifer Steele, a professor of education at American University.

Senior Rachel Deschaine, who is enrolled in the AP business course, said general business knowledge matters because it teaches students how people and companies interact financially with the world. Her father owned a trucking company and her brother is majoring in economics; she said she sees the class’s lessons in conversation at the dinner table. “There’s a business in literally everything,” she said. “If you’re willing to understand how it works, it really opens up the opportunities to a person.”