For Hawaii departments
The Hawaii financial literacy requirement, and what your department needs by 2026-27
Hawaii's financial literacy graduation requirement takes effect in the 2026-27 school year, first applying to that year's incoming ninth graders, the class of 2030. Completion is documented in the student's Personal Transition Plan, and schools may meet it with a standalone course or by integrating it into existing classes. This page sets out what that means in practice, what the Hawaii State Department of Education has named, and how to evidence coverage. It is written to be useful whether or not you ever use QuantAim.
The six areas
The requirement is built around six areas. Any course meeting it has to cover all of them, and a department will be asked which part of its course covers which area.
| Area | What it covers in practice |
|---|---|
| Earning income | Wages, salary, benefits, payroll deductions and what take-home pay actually is. |
| Spending | Budgeting, tracking, needs against wants, and the cost of everyday decisions. |
| Saving | Emergency funds, savings vehicles, interest and the effect of inflation on money held. |
| Investing | Risk and return, diversification, fees, and long-horizon retirement accounts. |
| Managing credit | Credit scores, interest and APR, borrowing costs, and student debt. |
| Managing risk | Insurance, risk transfer, fraud, and the tax side of financial decisions. |
What a department actually has to do
- Decide where the course sits. A standalone semester course, or the requirement distributed across an existing course such as Economics or a CTE Business pathway. The first is easier to evidence; the second is easier to staff.
- Assign the teacher. This is the step that slips. The six areas are not what most social studies or business teachers were trained in, particularly credit, insurance and tax, so whoever takes it will need material that teaches the teacher as well as the class.
- Map your material to the six areas. You will be asked for this in writing. A crosswalk naming which unit covers which area is the artefact that answers it.
- Decide how students demonstrate it. Coverage is not evidence. Something has to show that a given student met a given area, which in practice means per-area assessment data rather than a course grade.
- Plan the pacing. Six areas in a semester is roughly two to three weeks each, and credit and investing will both take longer than the schedule suggests.
The question that catches departments out
Not "did we teach it" but "can we show each student met each area". A gradebook with one column per unit answers the first and not the second. If your course is distributed across an existing subject, this gets harder, because the evidence is spread across a year of work.
Whatever you adopt, ask how it reports per area rather than per lesson. That is the report you will be asked for.
How QuantAim maps to it
Our Personal Finance track has six units, and they line up one to one with the six areas. That is not a coincidence or a retrofit: the track was built around the same six topics most state requirements name.
| HIDOE area | QuantAim unit | Lessons |
|---|---|---|
| Earning income | Unit 1 — Earning Income | 5 |
| Spending | Unit 2 — Budgeting and Spending | 5 |
| Saving | Unit 3 — Saving and Emergency Funds | 5 |
| Investing | Unit 5 — Investing and Retirement | 5 |
| Managing credit | Unit 4 — Credit and Debt | 5 |
| Managing risk | Unit 6 — Insurance, Risk, and Taxes | 5 |
Unit names and lesson counts are read from our live curriculum when this page loads, so they cannot drift out of date with the courses themselves.
Get the crosswalk as a document
A one-page mapping of the six areas to units, lessons and the assessment that evidences each one, formatted to attach to a curriculum submission. We will email it to you.
One email with the document. We will not add you to a mailing list, and your address is not shared with anyone. The full mapping is on this page already, so you lose nothing by skipping this.
In a hurry? Open the crosswalk now and print it, with no email needed.
If you want to try it
Every school plan starts with a free 30-day trial of everything, with no card and invoiced billing. Hawaii departments working to the 2026-27 deadline can also email ejanecek@quantaim.org directly and we will set the course up with you.
Start a free 30-day trial See the full alignment Other states
On approval. This page describes how QuantAim lines up with areas the Hawaii State Department of Education has published. QuantAim has not been reviewed, approved, endorsed or certified by the Hawaii State Department of Education or any other state education agency. If your district runs a formal curriculum review, email us and we will provide whatever your process needs.