Coming Soon to Oregon – New Financial Education Requirements

Posted by Pam Leavitt on August 13, 2026

In 2023, GoWest Credit Union Assocation and Oregon credit union advocates helped pass SB 3, a new law on financial education, into law.  This week, the Department of Education reported at a State Treasury meeting that only nine school districts have requested a waiver to delay implementation and that 94 school districts have already implemented (prior to the law taking effect) a personal finance course, up from 74 school districts the year before.

Background

Oregon’s new personal-finance education law is Senate Bill 3 (2023). It makes a standalone half-credit personal financial education course a requirement for an Oregon high school diploma or modified diploma, beginning with students graduating on or after January 1, 2027.

The law adds two separate 0.5-credit requirements within the existing 24-credit diploma total:

1. Personal Financial Education — Managing money, credit, taxes, saving, investing, and financial well-being
2. Higher Education and Career Path Skills — Postsecondary planning, financial aid, job applications, resumes, and career skills

Personal-finance content

Oregon Department of Education guidance identifies core content areas including:

• Budgeting, spending, and money management
• Banking, saving, investing, borrowing, and repayment
• Credit and debt, including credit scores
• Personal income, taxes, and public services
• Building and maintaining financial well-being

In practical terms, a student might learn how to compare checking accounts, evaluate an auto loan’s total cost, make a budget from a first job’s take-home pay, understand withholding and taxes, and recognize the tradeoffs between paying down debt and saving.

When it applies

The requirement applies to Oregon Diploma and Modified Diploma recipients graduating from January 1, 2027 onward—effectively the class of 2027 and later. Districts were expected to begin offering qualifying course options in advance of that deadline.

A district or public charter school could seek a one-year, districtwide waiver for the 2026–27 implementation period if it lacked educators qualified to provide the course. That waiver is not available student-by-student, and no waiver may extend the requirement beyond graduates on or after January 1, 2028.

Implementation detail worth noting

The State Board of Education’s rules allow these courses to satisfy multiple diploma-credit requirements in some circumstances, including mathematics, but the state’s adopted approach still requires students to pass a distinct half-credit course in personal finance and a distinct half-credit course in higher-education/career-path skills. The policy is a return to a more explicit statewide financial-literacy graduation expectation: Oregon once had a standalone personal-finance requirement, but it was removed in the late 1990s before SB 3 reinstated it.

Posted in Advocacy on the Move, Oregon Advocacy.