The results from our pre- and post- tests in 2025 are in – and we could not be more excited!
What are the Pre- and Post- tests?
PersonalFinanceLab has pre- and post- testing integrated in out platform for participating classes. Teachers who agree to the integrated Pre Test will have their students complete our 15-question pre-test launch on their first sign-in.
Then, 2 weeks before their class End Date, students will be prompted to take our post- test. The questions on each test are the same, and are categorized as “Credit”, “Investing”, or “Saving and Income”. This allows us to separately report on outcomes of students depending on whether they participated in the Budgeting Game or Stock Game.
You can see our updated methodology by clicking here.
Measured Improvement
Because not every student utilizes both our Stock Game and Budgeting Game, and these games are designed to teach different types of financial concepts, we split out our reporting based on if a student completed each game. We also only count results of students who completed BOTH the pre- test and post-test, for a perfect apples-to-apples measurement of improvement.
All Students
| Question Category | Pre-Test Score | Post-Test Score | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Credit | 42% | 68% | +62% |
| Investing | 43% | 69% | +60% |
| Savings and Income | 42% | 55% | +31% |
Students Who Completed At Least 6 Months of our Budgeting Game
| Question Category | Pre-Test Score | Post-Test Score | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Credit | 42% | 69% | +63% |
| Investing | 43% | 70% | +61% |
| Savings and Income | 42% | 57% | +35% |
Students Who Completed At Least 10 Trades in the Stock Game
| Question Category | Pre-Test Score | Post-Test Score | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Credit | 44% | 71% | +62% |
| Investing | 46% | 72% | +56% |
| Savings and Income | 45% | 55% | +24% |
Key Results
Since our last reported pre- and post- test results, we modified our mini-lessons in the budgeting game to include a variety of investing topics (especially towards the end of the game). Since this change, students playing the budgeting game have gone from very little observed improvement on understanding investing concepts to almost as much improvement as students who fully participated in the stock game.
We also revamped our “Word of the Day” system that students encounter throughout both games. The previous “Key Terms” widget showed a different financial definition on each page, while our new system consistently shows the same “Word of the Day” all day, with updated definitions and links to lessons covering that concept in more detail. This has helped cross-pollination of students participating only in the stock game to getting much better exposure to general financial literacy concepts – which we are partially attributing to the increase in scores on Credit and Savings/Income topics for students who otherwise would not have had much exposure to those concepts.
Seeing Pre/Post Test Results For Your Class
If your class is using PersonalFinanceLab and you want to see your students’ results, there is a specific assignment task for “Pre Test” and “Post Test”, as well as a class setting to require students to complete both tests as part of your class (you can find this setting on class set-up, or “Edit My Session” from the admin menu.
We highly encourage teachers to require their students to complete the post test! Frequently teachers will assign only the pre-test to get a benchmark for student understanding at the start of the class, but not the post-test at the end of the class. We greatly appreciate teachers assigning BOTH tests to give us the widest-possible data set to measure the effectiveness of the platform!
We will continue to monitor student results closely, along with student and teacher feedback for our next updates!