“Junior Achievement partnered with Michigan educators, business leaders, and policy makers to ensure that students across the state could achieve the new personal finance requirements for high school graduation.”
William Coderre is President and CEO of Junior Achievement of the Michigan Great Lakes, a Grand Rapids-based organization that provides learning experiences aligned with state and national standards.
“Our partnership with the Michigan Department of Education this past school year was to get the infrastructure in place so that we could offer these programs to all school districts that wanted to have it at no cost to them.”
As part of that process, a survey of teachers who took part in those personal finance programs found that 95% of teachers felt their classes gained substantial knowledge in managing their finances, and 100% of the teachers said they would use them again.
“Our focus is really giving young people the skillset and the mindset to build thriving local communities because if we have thriving local communities, we’ll have thriving regions, we’ll have a thriving Michigan, and we’ll have a thriving U.S. economy.”
Coderre says he hopes Junior Achievement can continue to help students beyond the 47,000 in 50 counties they’ve already helped meet their personal finance goals.
