Bringing free, independent and objective financial education to every student in Alabama
Financial literacy, a critical skill for navigating in today’s society varies significantly across sociodemographic groups. Financial knowledge is positively correlated with age and income, lower among women, and substantially lower among Blacks and Hispanics due to lack of access to accurate information.
Recognizing that financial literacy skills are essential for success in career and life, we sponsor FoolProofAlabama, providing middle and high school students, and their teachers free of charge, financial literacy curriculum and life skills resources developed by FoolProof, alongside Troutwood App financial planning and budgeting interactive tools to simulate their financial future and build a plan with real-world applicability.
The FoolProof financial literacy curriculum received the 2024 Jumpstart Coalition’s national Innovation Award for significant impact on financial literacy education and is uniquely endorsed by Public Citizen, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the Consumer Federation of America, Fairplay, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Program Resources
This program is turn-key, web-based and self-grading. It includes nine modules for middle school and 19 modules for high school in English and Spanish. The curriculum features engaging videos and peer-to-peer learning, and is agenda and conflict-free, teaching students critical thinking and smart consumer habits, such as making thoughtful choices toward their goals, healthy skepticism, and avoiding scams. Teachers design their class curriculum utilizing the FoolProof learning modules and can monitor their student’s progress remotely via their own dashboard.
FoolProofAlabama meets Alabama’s financial literacy standards for 9-12 grades, as well as the Council for Economic Education standards and guidelines for financial competency.
Program Reach
FoolProof Alabama was launched in Birmingham School District in 2022 following a successful pilot at Booker T. Washington K-8 Middle School where 210 6th and 7th grade students were given access to its learning modules.
FoolProofFridays was launched in November 2022 districtwide for 8th-grade students at 9 middle schools in Birmingham. 1,200 students used our sponsored financial literacy and life skills program every Friday during the 2022-23 school year.
FoolProofAlabama high school learning modules were rolled out in the Greater Birmingham area in the 2023-2024 school year, enabling students to fulfill the financial literacy requirements for high school graduation mandated by the Alabama state legislature.
Impact Assessment
To date, more than 125 schools, 220 teachers, and 8,000 students in Alabama have used FoolProof resources. Alabama students have completed over 46,000 module tests, raising their average pretest score of 48.5% to a post-module average test score of 81.7%. This represents a 69% increase in proficiency toward standard learning objectives, closely tracking the national averages of 49% pre-test and 86% post-test scores, respectively.
Statewide Expansion
Our goal is to bring conflict-free financial literacy resources, planning, and budgeting tools free of charge to all middle and high school students with access to the internet in Alabama.
