What was asked, and under what authority
Each district was sent a public records request under N.C.G.S. § 132-1 et seq. (the North Carolina Public Records Act). The request, sent by email on July 28, 2026 with the subject “Public Records Request — K-8 Financial Literacy Curriculum” followed by the district’s name, asked for:
any public records that show whether [the district] currently offers or requires a dedicated personal finance or financial literacy course, unit, or curriculum for students in grades K-8, separate from financial literacy content embedded within social studies or mathematics standards
and, if one exists, records showing the grade level(s) in which it is delivered and the approximate instructional time allocated per school year. The request identified the sender and the project it was sent for.
The follow-up, sent the evening of August 10, 2026, restated the request in shorter form and asked whether it was still being processed or should be redirected. Its wording differs from the original in one respect that matters: it described the course as a “dedicated, credit-bearing K-8 personal finance course,” a phrase the original request did not use. Some districts answered in those narrower terms (see the limitations below).
What the audit covers, and what it does not
This audit reports only what a district stated in its own written reply. It does not state conclusions about North Carolina law; the state-law side is reviewed on its own page, /states/nc, where its status is currently under review. A district stating it has no dedicated K-8 course is not reported as breaking any rule, and this audit does not assess compliance.
Population
All 115 North Carolina local public school administrative units, the count NCDPI publishes (100 county systems and 15 city systems). Charter schools, lab schools and the regional school are out of scope. The denominator is fixed in advance so the totals cannot be flattered by counting only districts that replied.
Collection
- Request. Emailed to 115 districts on July 28, 2026, each addressed to a named district contact.
- Follow-up. One follow-up was emailed on August 10, 2026 to 54 districts. The other 61 districts have not received a follow-up. The correspondence does not record why those districts were left out, and each district page marks each district’s follow-up status.
- Recording. Each reply is saved on the district tracker with the date, the sender’s role, and the text of the reply. Signature blocks, phone numbers and email addresses are removed; the substance is not edited.
- Non-response. A district with no reply is shown as such. If it was sent a follow-up, it is labelled no response after follow-up. If it was not, it is labelled awaiting response, because it has not had a follow-up. Neither is dropped, and neither is evidence about what the district teaches.
How replies were coded
Coding follows the district’s own words. Where a reply does not say something outright, it is coded as unclear rather than read into. The same label is never applied to a reply that says something different.
| Status | Assigned when |
|---|---|
| Confirmed implementing | The district itself described dedicated financial literacy instruction at some K-8 grade level: a specific course, class or module. This does not mean full K-8 coverage. Its program, grades, resources and delivery are recorded as the district stated them. |
| Confirmed not implementing | The district stated it has no dedicated K-8 course or program, in terms that address K-8. A reply covering only high school, a reply that says only that there are “no responsive records,” or one that says a program is not “required” is not coded this way. |
| Unclear response | The district replied, but not in terms that settle the question: it answered about high school only, said it had no responsive records, pointed to standards or an attachment without saying what is offered, or directed the requester to another process (a form or portal). |
| Acknowledged, answer pending | The district confirmed receipt and sent nothing further. |
| No response after follow-up | The request and the follow-up were sent and no reply came back. |
| Awaiting response | The request was sent, no reply came back, and no follow-up has been sent. |
Automatic out-of-office replies and spam-filter notices are not counted as responses. Replies to a separate September outreach about a free classroom pilot program are not records responses and are not counted as such.
Rules the data collection follows
- No status without evidence. Every status rests on a saved reply or on the absence of any reply to the logged request.
- Non-response is data. 66 districts have not replied. They stay in the totals.
- No inferred statuses. Nothing is extrapolated from district size, region, neighboring districts, or curriculum documents posted online. A published curriculum map is not evidence of instruction delivered.
- Corrections are applied, not argued. A district that says an entry misrepresents it gets the entry updated or withdrawn.
Limitations
These constrain what the tracker can be used to claim.
- Self-report. Responses describe what a district says it does. There is no classroom observation and no audit. A district may over- or under-state.
- One respondent per district. A curriculum office may not know what an individual school or teacher does. Implementation almost certainly varies within districts in ways a single answer cannot capture.
- Who replied. Only 49 of 115 districts replied, so every share on this site describes the districts that answered. Districts doing something distinctive may have more reason to reply, and districts with nothing to report may have less. The direction of any bias is not known.
- Non-responses are not evidence of absence. A district that did not reply may offer instruction, may never have received the email (several messages were blocked or filtered), or may have routed it to a process this survey did not follow.
- The question changed between emails. The follow-up asked about a “credit-bearing” course; the original did not. Some replies speak to the narrower question, so a “no” may not rule out non-credit instruction.
- Records requests are not surveys. The Public Records Act reaches existing records. Some districts answered that they held no records, or asked that the request be resubmitted through a form or portal. Those replies are recorded as they were given and are coded as unclear, not as a finding either way.
- Coding involves judgment. Replies were coded in a single pass from the emails and have not been independently double-coded. The saved reply is on the district tracker next to each label so a reader can disagree.
- Point in time. Curricula change. Each entry is dated for this reason.
- Not a compliance finding. This is a survey, not an audit, and carries no legal weight. “Confirmed not implementing” describes what a district reported about its instruction — it is not a determination that any district has violated a legal duty.
Coding changes
Every change to a district’s coding after its reply was first logged is recorded here.
| District | Change | Date | Reason and evidence quote |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hickory City Schools | Confirmed implementing to Unclear or unresponsive | October 14, 2026 | The module is optional inside a Career Explorations elective (about 10 instructional hours) and the reply does not state grades or course status for the SECU program, so it does not establish dedicated instruction. Evidence: “Students who choose Career Explorations may select this module once during grades 6-8. The module is designed to be completed in approximately 10 instructional hours.” |
Updates and corrections
Earlier versions of this site showed 4 districts implementing, 31 not implementing and 80 without a substantive answer (12 acknowledged or pending, 68 awaiting). The figures were revised on October 14, 2026 after a follow-up round and a stricter reading of ambiguous replies. The current counts, out of 115 districts, are: 1 confirmed implementing, 23 confirmed not implementing, 22 unclear response, 3 acknowledged with the answer pending, 36 awaiting response and 30 with no response after follow-up.
An earlier version of the home page also counted one working paper as a peer-reviewed study. The current count of peer-reviewed studies is 7; the working paper is cited but not counted as peer-reviewed.
Status of this dataset
Last reply logged September 8, 2026. The findings summary and the public table are computed from the same checked-in data, so their counts cannot disagree. Counts will change as replies are added and a new version is deployed.