This is a rare feel-good story about financial literacy. In 1996, John Rogers, head of $11 billion Ariel Investments, helped start an elementary school focused on financial education in a low-income neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Each class gets a portfolio and buys and sells its own stocks. Students get a portion of the gains at graduation.
So far the Ariel Community Academy has disproved doubters (including me—I wrote an article a decade ago skeptical of financial education and mentioned the school). It now offers one of the strongest cases for teaching finance early. Students at the academy, which today goes up to the eighth grade, consistently out-test the city and the nation.
Read Full Article »