# Teacher Handbook — Personal Financial Literacy & Money Management Honors

**Course code:** KHAE-SS11-PFL  
**Credit:** 0.5  
**Authors:** Jennifer Pearl and Autumn Pearl  
**Release date:** 2026-08-05

## Course purpose

This is a rigorous, inquiry-centered honors course designed for independent, homeschool, cooperative, or classroom use. Students read substantive course text, examine public records and primary sources, interpret models and data, write defensible arguments, complete weekly assessments, correct errors, and defend a cumulative capstone.

## Credit and transcript rule

The separate financial-literacy record must not be merged into the Government or Economics credit.

Local schools, homeschool programs, districts, states, colleges, and accrediting bodies retain authority over credit acceptance. Keep work samples, attendance, assessment records, standards reports, and the completed portfolio.

## Weekly rhythm

1. **Monday — Frame the inquiry:** vocabulary, institutions, relationships, and initial claim.
2. **Tuesday — Source/case laboratory:** authority, context, evidence, limitation, and corroboration.
3. **Wednesday — Model and data:** calculate, graph, map, simulate, or test a process.
4. **Thursday — Argument and deliberation:** evidence-based position with counterclaim and qualification.
5. **Friday — Assessment and correction:** objective quiz, constructed response, correction, and transfer.

## Grading

- Principal assignments: 45%
- Weekly quizzes: 20%
- Cumulative assessments and capstone: remaining course weight as stated in `data/course-data.json`

Teachers may adjust local weights, but should preserve separate records for lessons, assignments, objective assessments, constructed responses, and capstone work.

## Nonpartisan grading rule

Students may defend different constitutional interpretations, economic policies, or financial choices when the position is lawful and supported. Grade:

- factual and definitional accuracy;
- correct use of law, institutions, models, and calculations;
- source quality and citation;
- evidence-to-claim reasoning;
- treatment of counterevidence, uncertainty, and tradeoffs;
- clarity and revision.

Do **not** award or remove points because a response agrees with a political party, candidate, advocacy organization, teacher, or course author.

## Reassessment

A student may repeat an objective assessment after completing the correction form. The correction must identify the original error, state the correct answer, cite evidence or show work, and explain the reasoning change. Local policy determines whether the latest, highest, or averaged score appears on the transcript; the portal preserves best objective performance.

## Accessibility

Use text-to-speech, enlarged type, extended time, reduced-distraction settings, oral rehearsal, chunked source sets, structured organizers, and alternative input methods as needed. Accommodations should improve access without substituting an easier disciplinary standard.

## Verve N Veda resources

Verve applications are laboratories and research gateways. They are not automatically authoritative sources. Students must still identify the creator, date, purpose, data, legal status, and limitations and corroborate consequential claims with official or independent sources.