For more than four years, business teacher Marcia Latta has been helping youth improve their financial literacy at McKay High School in Salem.
In recognition of her efforts, Latta was recently named the Oregon Financial Empowerment Educator of the Year by Oregon Treasurer Elizabeth Steiner.
The Salem Statesman Journal first reported news of Latta’s award, which includes a $1,500 cash prize for Latta, $500 for her school, and $500 total in college savings plan gift certificates for her students.
Starting next year, all Oregon high school students will be required to earn a half credit in personal finance education to graduate.
Latta teaches two classes at McKay, including one that’s a requirement on personal finance that helps high school juniors understand bank loans for car or home purchases, how to save for retirement, and other financial concepts.
For three years now, Latta has also used a grant from the Oregon Department of Human Services to organize free tax preparation clinics for students, many of whom she says get refunds on their filed returns.
Latta joins us to share her work educating youth about their personal finances.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Business teacher Marcia Latta has been helping young people improve their financial literacy at McKay High School in Salem for the last 4 years, and she’s doing so at a time when there’s a lot more that they have to be literate about, from cryptocurrency claims to relentless scams to omnipresent ads for gambling. That’s all in addition to navigating student and car loans, taxes, and wondering how they’ll be able to afford a home, let alone retirement. Now Latta is getting statewide recognition for her work. She was just named the Oregon Financial Empowerment Educator of the Year by Oregon Treasurer Elizabeth Steiner, and she joins us now to talk about her work. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud, and congratulations.
Marcia Latta: Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here.
Miller: What was your path to becoming a business and financial literary teacher in a high school?
Latta: I had an opportunity to work here at McKay right after schools returned to in-person learning, and I took it. I’ve worked in education for maybe 25 years in different roles, some as a part-time teacher, but as a communications staffer and in a policy field. I’ve also had my own business where I’ve been consulting with school districts to manage bond campaigns so they can improve their facilities for students. So I’ve been in the education field for a long time, but this focus here was a bit of a new departure for me and I just loved learning so much about these ways that students can improve their self-empowerment and maybe avoid making some of the mistakes we all kind of make when we’re figuring out our money.
Miller: What classes do you teach now?
Latta: I teach intro to business, that’s sort of the foundation for this program. It’s a career technical education program and I teach marketing, but the intro to business class covers the same ground as our new personal finance class. It’s new to us, but the class has been around the district for a long time, and we do cover all of the bases to make sure that we’re meeting the requirements for the new state graduation mandate.
Miller: Right. This is something that, as you said, is new. So what is now required at the state level in terms of financial literacy education?
Latta: So Senate Bill 3 passed a couple of years ago, and that requires that all students graduating in 2027 or later must have a semester of financial literacy. So, it is all of the things you talked about. It is making sure they have a foundation of good financial skills or at least exposure to it so they can keep building their skills when they graduate.
Miller: So all the things I talked about. So let’s talk about some of them. And before we talk about the curriculum, I’m curious [about] the level of financial awareness, in general, that students arrive with in the fall. Your beginning students, what do they know in general and what don’t they know?
Latta: I get the feeling a lot of their knowledge comes from TikTok or some of these social media platforms where they’re hearing these messages about how it’s harder to get work, the career field is kind of tough to break into for new grads or student loans are overwhelming for some students after college. They’re hearing about inflation, they’re hearing about their desire to buy a house and perhaps feeling like it’s a bit out of reach.
One student, when we had that discussion in class, because most of my students would like to be homeowners, we’re talking about it. It’s a challenge and it doesn’t mean they can’t do it, but it does mean they need to make a good plan and be diligent about working toward raising the money to do that. And this student told me, we’re cooked, we’re just not gonna be able to do it. So I’m hoping that with some of these resources and some of this information, we can counter that message with the fact that nobody said it would be easy, you can certainly do it. You just need to know what’s out there, what you’re up against.
Miller: It’s interesting that what you just summarized there in terms of the messages they’re getting from TikTok were all pessimistic, which you’re trying to counter, but I wonder how much you’re also hearing about the opposite messaging from social media. Here is basically a kind of get rich quick scheme or do what I do and then you can retire at 25 if you buy into this plan, various versions of what are scams. I’m curious how you teach literacy for spotting those and how you teach kids to be wary of the bombardment of messages.
Latta: That’s a really good question because we do have a scam unit. We talk about frauds and scams and we have several exercises that cover anything from how to watch out for shopping scams versus those text messages that will ask you to verify your account information. We’re trying to give them some clues for what to watch out for. And the latest research I saw shows that this generation is more likely than any other generation to be a victim of a scam, which really surprised me. It surprises them as well.
Miller: Yeah, I guess, I mean, we’ve talked in the past about financial abuse of elders, people who didn’t grow up with this technology and might be more credulous. But you’re saying research says that it’s younger people who are even more likely to be victims?
Latta: That’s the research that I’ve been reading and who knows, scam information changes from year to year. So perhaps this year, the tide’s turning a bit, but in the past, in the most recent years that I’ve seen this research, it says young people, Gen Z, are more likely to be a victim of a scam. Now, the older people are more likely to lose money. They’re going to lose more money because they have more. But this research suggests that these students are online so much, they are exposed to so many things and perhaps haven’t developed some of these more sophisticated skills to watch out for scams.
Miller: How much do you talk to your students about cryptocurrencies?
Latta: So crypto is super complicated. We cover so much and I do mention it. We have a unit, a brief one, but our focus has been on compound interest, investing for the long term. These students have such a gift, because they’re so young. So if they understand that the sooner they start investing in a basic, maybe even boring index fund, the better off they’re gonna be. We use compound interest calculators.
I’m not a financial advisor. I’m not telling them to invest in any one thing in particular, but we do try to lay out the case for, maybe the investment sounds boring, or some of these other tools we’re talking about, they kind of sound boring, but what’s not boring is having a solid financial foundation, not having to worry about whether you can pay your bills or keeping you up at night with any kind of stress. Having that sort of base is not boring to me, that having money is not boring, even if you think that maybe this isn’t as interesting as crypto.
Miller: Between skyrocketing costs for housing and education, huge questions about what AI is going to do for the job market, as you were talking about earlier, there are a lot of reasons for young people to be scared about their futures, but also, I think, angry at older generations for the future that we have created for them, are creating for them. Do you hear that in your class, anger towards you and me and other older people for what we’re giving them?
Latta: They don’t vocalize outright anger, but I have heard some frustration and maybe resignation about [how] the circumstances are different. It may have been easier back when we were younger and back when older generations were much younger. They don’t really vocalize it. They, I think they sort of understand things have changed. Pensions have gone, have been reduced quite a bit. Access to pensions, if they know about Social Security, if they’re thinking about it, they understand it may not be there in the same way for them. I think it’s more of a resignation. They are hopeful.
Miller: I’m happy to hear that. You started a tax clinic at the high school. I mean, this is obviously, this is tax week. How does that work?
Latta: So this was a really great opportunity and one of the things I like most about this teaching position is the professional network that I found. And so I’m pretty involved in our state Business Educators Association and at our conferences, we hear about all these resources. We get to bring them back to schools. This happened to be one of them. The legislature funded a pilot program for Title One schools to provide tax support for students, because it turns out they’re leaving a lot of money on the table when they don’t file. If they’re working and they have deductions, they should get that money back.
So that was the goal for the legislature. We’ve been doing it for three years now. We are clear that we’re not CPAs. We don’t have that kind of certification, but we provide support for students. We walk them through these do it-yourself free programs through the IRS and overwhelmingly they’re getting refunds back. I think there’s only been a few who maybe filled out their W-4 wrong and they didn’t get a refund. But this year I think the numbers were anywhere from $200 to, I think the high mark was $1,200.
Miller: Wow, that they may not necessarily have even gotten back if it weren’t for this high school-based tax clinic.
Latta: Exactly, and part of our goal is to also raise attention. Some students are feeling like they’d rather do it with their parents, which is completely understandable, but at least it’s on their radar. We make sure that we publicize it. We tell them why they should do it, and they go home and talk to their family about it as well.
Miller: Just before we say goodbye, I’m curious what the challenges are. You were talking about a boring portfolio, or an index fund, and thinking about the long term. What are the challenges of getting a 17 year old to think about what it’ll be like when they’re, I don’t know, 77?
Latta: So that’s the biggest challenge because I tell them, you don’t need to have a lot of money. Most high school students don’t, I didn’t. But you do have this tremendous gift, which is time and with compound interest, that is going to mean a lot to you and your returns, when you’re old. I talk to them about, I hope you get a job you love, but someday you’ll want to travel or sleep in or spend time with grandkids. But the biggest challenge I think is just when you’re in your teens, when you are 15 or 16 or 17, being old is not something that’s on your mind, so it’s hard to visualize.
Miller: Marcia Latta, congratulations again and thanks so much.
Latta: Thank you so much.
Miller: Marcia Latta is a business teacher at McKay High School in the Salem-Kaiser School District.
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