Teachers already know NGPF curriculum works. Now, there's a peer-reviewed study that says so. Research published last month in the Journal of Economic Education, the leading peer-reviewed journal in economics education, is the first academic study of NGPF's curriculum, and the findings are strong.

Researchers at Penn State Behrend reviewed data from students in classrooms where NGPF was used as the core curriculum through the 2022–23 school year. They assessed students before the course and again after, then compared the two.

The verdict: students improved on every measure the researchers tested. 

Key Findings

Statistically significant gains across the board

Questions in the third row came from outside researchers with no connection to NGPF materials. These were included specifically to guard against pro-NGPF bias in the results. 

Other notable gains:

• There was an 8% gain in how strongly students agreed with the statement, “I have conversations with my parents regarding personal finance.”
• By the end of the course, students were choosing "I don't know" far less often.

The course cut a persistent gender gap in half

Female students started 10.4 points behind their male peers on objective knowledge and finished 5.0 points behind.

Moreover, the confidence gap closed almost entirely. Girls started nearly 9 points behind boys on financial self-esteem and ended within 1.3 points. Their self-esteem gains were about 64 percent larger than their male peers'. 

The pattern held in regression models controlling for grade level, GPA, favorite subject, and learning style. Female students gained significantly more on every measure except financial behavior. 

Every student group improved

The researchers found statistically significant improvements across all ethnic groups, with no significant differences between them. Black students and white students both made substantial gains on all five measures.

In-person delivery outperformed online and hybrid on most measures

In-person curriculum delivery outperformed online/hybrid delivery by roughly 6 points on pre- to post- Assessment gains. The advantage was strongest on knowledge measures and persisted in the researchers' regression analysis.

This supports NGPF’s core belief that a trained teacher in the classroom (not a screen) is the model for effective financial education at scale.

Read the full study: Filbeck, G., Pettner, J., & Zhao, X. (2026). The effectiveness of Next Gen Personal Finance's financial literacy program. Journal of Economic Education. Free to read and share under a Creative Commons license.

Want to contribute to future research like this? 

The Penn State Financial Literacy Progress and Efficacy Assessment (FLPEA) is up and running for the 2026-2027 school year. Any high school teacher in the U.S. can participate.

Your students remain completely anonymous throughout the FLPEA process. Neither NGPF nor Penn State collects any identifying student information as part of the FLPEA.

Get started today. It takes about 10 minutes to set up for the school year, and the pre-assessment is about 45 minutes long.

Details & Methodology

Researchers at Penn State Behrend (Filbeck, Pettner & Zhao) analyzed anonymous data from high school students who took the Financial Literacy Progress & Efficacy Assessment (FLPEA):

1. A 45-minute pre-assessment
2. A Personal Finance course in which their teacher used NGPF as their core curriculum
3. A matching 45 minute post-assessment

The sample the researchers analyzed was 5,838 matched pre-/post- students across 354 schools in 42 states in the 2022-23* school year.

*This study reflects FLPEA data from where the Personal Finance education movement was about three years ago. The underlying assessment’s reach and assessment samples have been substantially larger while showing similar gains in 2023-2024, 2024-2025, and 2025-2026. 

The core of the study is Penn State’s anonymous pre- and post-assessment that asks a combination of:

1. Self-reported knowledge questions: 14 questions asking students to rate what they believe they understand, such as how to plan for retirement, how to figure out how much car they can afford, how loan repayment works. 
2. Questions about self-reported financial behaviors:
1. I like to save money more than I like to spend it.
2. I have a checking and/or a savings account.
3. I have conversations with my parents regarding personal finance.
4. I purchase things online due to an influencer’s endorsement of the product.
3. Questions about six core Personal Finance concepts from National Standards: Earning Income, Investing, Managing Credit, Managing Risk, Saving, and Spending
4. Questions about objective financial concepts independent of National Standards: interest (numeracy), compound interest, inflation, risk diversification, and credit

The assessment also measures financial self-esteem by tracking how often students were willing to commit to an answer instead of selecting "I don't know."

About the Author

Christian Sherrill

Former teacher, forever financial education nerd. As NGPF's Director of Teacher Success, Christian is laser-focused on helping the heroic teachers who fuel NGPF's mission to guarantee all students a life-changing personal finance course. Having paid down over $40k in student loans in the span of 3 years - while living in the Bay Area on an entry level teacher's salary - he's eager to help the next generation avoid financial pitfalls one semester at a time.

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