Financial Literacy Graduation Requirement in Indiana
Indiana didn't call its required course "personal finance." It called it Personal Financial Responsibility, and the word choice is doing real work. Finance is a subject. Responsibility is a disposition. One can be memorized for a test; the other has to be practiced until it sticks.
The requirement comes from Senate Enrolled Act 35, signed in May 2023 and codified at IC 20-30-5-19. It applies to students who entered grade 9 in 2024-25, which makes the Class of 2028 the first graduating class that must complete the course. Those students are sophomores headed into their junior year, so Indiana schools are past the planning phase and into the proving phase: sections are running, and the question is whether they live up to the name the legislature gave them.
What SEA 35 requires
The structure is clean:
- Every student must complete a dedicated Personal Financial Responsibility course to graduate, starting with the Class of 2028.
- The course teaches to the Indiana Academic Standards for Personal Financial Responsibility, published by the Indiana Department of Education at https://www.in.gov/doe/students/indiana-academic-standards/financial-literacy/. The standards cover income, careers, and taxes; money management and budgeting; saving and investing; credit and debt management; risk management and insurance; and financial decision-making and consumer protection.
- IDOE has issued course and career-planning guidance memos to help schools slot the course into schedules and graduation-pathway plans. For details your counselors will care about, like exact course codes and credit application, work from the department's current guidance.
If you track the national standards conversation, Indiana's strands map cleanly to the Council for Economic Education's six pillars. Materials aligned to that framework cover Indiana's ground without gymnastics.
Teaching responsibility, not just finance
Here's the design question Indiana's course name raises: what would it mean to actually teach responsibility?
You can't lecture someone into it. Responsibility develops the way it develops everywhere else in life, through decisions with consequences, made repeatedly, with room to get some wrong. A driver's ed course that never leaves the classroom produces students who know the rules and can't drive. Most first-generation personal finance courses have exactly that problem: students who can define diversification and have never once diversified anything.
The fix is structural, not motivational. Give students something to be responsible for, all semester long.
That's the design center of Rapunzl's program, and it's why the fit with Indiana's framing is unusually good. Every student manages a simulated $10,000 portfolio of stocks and crypto, priced by live Nasdaq data. From the first week, they own something: positions they chose, performance they have to explain, mistakes they can't blame on anyone else. When a holding drops 10%, the responsible-decision-making standard stops being an indicator on a curriculum map and becomes Tuesday. Around the simulator, scaffolded lessons and built-in assessments cover the full sweep of Indiana's strands, from budgeting and credit to insurance and consumer protection, so the hands-on core doesn't come at the cost of coverage. The Educator Dashboard generates an Indiana-specific standards crosswalk for documentation, and none of it requires the assigned teacher to have a finance background, which most won't.
Measured against that "responsibility" bar, outcomes follow. Students enter partner programs averaging 34% on financial literacy assessments, against a 64% national average, and finish averaging 93%.
The motivator hiding in plain sight
One more element fits Indiana's disposition-over-content framing: stakes students choose for themselves. Rapunzl runs a free national scholarship competition, at no cost for students to enter, where simulated portfolio performance and financial knowledge can win real scholarship money. Since the program began, students have earned more than $300,000 in scholarships.
Think about what that does inside a required course. The state says "you must take this." The competition says "this could pay for college." For a 16-year-old, the second message lands harder, and it converts the course from an obligation into an opportunity, which is, not coincidentally, the exact mindset shift about money the course exists to produce. Teachers report the competition season carries classroom energy that no required unit ever generates on its own.
Getting the Class of 2028 through, well
A practical rundown for Indiana schools this year:
- Check cohort coverage. The Class of 2028 has two years left. Confirm every sophomore's four-year plan shows where the course lands, and don't let it pile into senior year by default.
- Work from IDOE's current guidance. Course codes, credit application, and pathway details come from the department's memos. Verify against the latest versions rather than a 2024 summary.
- Audit the course you're running, honestly. If the saving-and-investing and risk strands are taught from packets, that's the upgrade to make now, while the first required cohort can still benefit.
- Give teachers materials that carry the load. Business, social studies, and math teachers will staff most sections. Choose curriculum with the expertise built in and spend PD time on facilitation instead of content triage.
- Keep the crosswalk current. As sections multiply and teachers adapt materials, regenerate your standards documentation so what's on paper matches what's taught.
One more scheduling reality worth naming: Indiana schools are juggling this requirement alongside the state's broader diploma redesign work, and personal finance can feel like one more moving piece in an already-shifting graduation picture. Resist the urge to treat it as filler that slots wherever the master schedule has a hole. The course pays off most when it lands in 10th or 11th grade, close enough to first jobs, first cars, and FAFSA season that students connect the content to decisions they're actually making, and early enough that a scheduling conflict doesn't turn into a senior-year emergency.
Indiana gave this course an ambitious name. The schools that take the name seriously, building a semester where students practice being responsible for money rather than reading about it, will graduate a Class of 2028 that proves the legislature right.
Frequently asked questions
Is personal finance required to graduate in Indiana?
Yes. SEA 35 (2023), codified at IC 20-30-5-19, requires students to complete a Personal Financial Responsibility course, beginning with students who entered grade 9 in 2024-25, the Class of 2028.
What standards does the course follow?
The Indiana Academic Standards for Personal Financial Responsibility, covering income and taxes, budgeting, saving and investing, credit and debt, risk and insurance, and financial decision-making and consumer protection. IDOE's financial literacy page is the official source.
Which students are affected first?
The Class of 2028, sophomores entering their junior year in 2026-27, and every class after them.
Do teachers need a finance background?
No. Most sections will be taught by business, social studies, or math teachers, and curricula like Rapunzl's are built to carry the content expertise so any teacher can deliver the course.
How do we keep students engaged in a required course?
Give them ownership and stakes: a live portfolio they're responsible for, and opportunities like free scholarship competitions that turn required learning into something students can win.
Building an Indiana course that earns the word "responsibility"? Book a district demo call with Rapunzl. We'll walk through the standards crosswalk, teacher onboarding, and how the scholarship competition fits your semester.
By Nate Thomas, School Partnerships Lead at Rapunzl and former classroom teacher.
