North Dakota Personal Finance Standards

North Dakota at a glance

Requirement: Required, embedded in another course
Legislation or authority: N.D. Century Code § 15.1-21-21 ('Financial literacy — Concepts of personal finance — Inclusion in curriculum'), amended and reenacted by HB 1533 (2025), which added the half-unit stand-alone course option
Passed: HB 1533 signed by Gov. Kelly Armstrong in April 2025 (House 90-0, Senate 46-0)
Takes effect: August 1, 2025; in effect for the 2025-26 school year, with DPI directing full curriculum alignment by 2026-27
Course length: 0.5 unit if a district elects the stand-alone course option; otherwise no dedicated credit — content is embedded within existing required Economics or Problems of Democracy coursework
State standards: North Dakota Financial Literacy Content Standards K-12 (July 2025), Department of Public Instruction

Read the official North Dakota standards

What North Dakota requires

North Dakota does not require every student to complete a dedicated personal-finance course. Instead, NDCC § 15.1-21-21 requires each district to ensure its Economics or Problems of Democracy curriculum (part of the 3-unit social-studies graduation requirement) exposes students to personal-finance concepts — or, since the 2025 HB 1533 amendment, to offer a stand-alone half-unit Financial Literacy course as an alternative path. The statute lists required topic areas covering budgeting, saving and investing, credit and debt, banking, taxation, consumer skills, insurance, college/career planning, retirement, and entrepreneurship.

This is a local-control, content-coverage mandate rather than a statewide standalone-course requirement, which is why NGPF and Champlain College both classify the state short of 'Guarantee'/'A-grade' status despite crediting near-universal coverage. In July 2025 the DPI issued the state's first-ever stand-alone K-12 Financial Literacy Content Standards, which previously lived only inside the 2019 K-12 Social Studies standards.

Last reviewed against official sources on 2026-07-15.

How Rapunzl maps to North Dakota standards

Rapunzl's curriculum is built on the Council for Economic Education's six pillars. Here is how they line up with the North Dakota framework.

North Dakota strand	CEE pillar	Rapunzl modules
Financial awareness	Financial Decision-Making	Financial Statistics Top Investor Strategies
Money management	Spending	The Basics Of Banking Buying Your First Home Paying For College
Taxes	Earning Income	Taxes & Income Careers In Finance
Savings	Saving	Saving Versus Investing The Basics Of Banking
Credit and debt	Managing Credit	The Power & Risks Of Credit How To Make Loans Work For You
Risk management (insurance and fraud)	Managing Risk	Diversification & Risk Insurance & Retirement

Educators can request a full North Dakota standards crosswalk through the Educator Dashboard.

Why North Dakota schools choose Rapunzl

North Dakota requires that every high schooler be exposed to personal finance concepts, but it lets districts meet that inside Economics or Problems of Democracy, or, since a 2025 change, through an optional standalone half-unit Financial Literacy course. It is a content-coverage mandate rather than a guaranteed standalone, which is why national trackers stop short of top marks even as coverage nears universal. Rapunzl works in either setup: students manage a $10,000 portfolio in a live-market simulator, and the modules embed into an existing course or fill the new standalone one. The state issued its first standalone financial literacy standards in 2025, and Rapunzl's crosswalks line up with them.

100,000+students have completed Rapunzl's curriculum
93%average financial literacy scores on national test over past 5 years, 24% above average
31interactive modules that can be customized into a course progression for your classroom
20+hours of gameplay in 2 interactive mini-games alongside our investment simulator and financial calculators

Teachers get a dashboard that exports grades and crosswalks each lesson to North Dakota's financial literacy content standards, with materials in English and Spanish that work with a screen reader. Rapunzl's January scholarship competition gives students a reason to keep managing their portfolio wherever the content lives.

North Dakota personal finance requirement FAQ

North Dakota requires personal-finance concepts be delivered to every high schooler, satisfied either by embedding them in Economics/Problems of Democracy or (since 2025) by offering an optional stand-alone half-unit course, not a statewide standalone mandate.

The requirement is set by N.D. Century Code § 15.1-21-21 ('Financial literacy — Concepts of personal finance — Inclusion in curriculum'), amended and reenacted by HB 1533 (2025), which added the half-unit stand-alone course option.

Takes effect: August 1, 2025; in effect for the 2025-26 school year, with DPI directing full curriculum alignment by 2026-27.

0.5 unit if a district elects the stand-alone course option; otherwise no dedicated credit — content is embedded within existing required Economics or Problems of Democracy coursework.

North Dakota's requirement is an embedded requirement.

In practice that means the personal finance content lives inside another required course, so every graduate covers it without a separate class on their schedule.

North Dakota Financial Literacy Content Standards K-12 (July 2025), Department of Public Instruction.

Rapunzl is built on the Council for Economic Education's six pillars: earning income, spending, saving, investing, managing credit, and managing risk. North Dakota's 2025 financial literacy content standards cover the same topics, so the crosswalk above ties each to the modules that teach it.

Yes. Whether a district embeds the content in Economics or offers the standalone half-unit, Rapunzl's six-pillar modules map onto North Dakota's financial literacy standards.

Students learn by investing a simulated $10,000 in real market conditions, and teachers manage the class from a dashboard with grade export, bilingual materials, and screen-reader support.

Ask for a demo and we'll send the North Dakota crosswalk along with classroom access so you can see how it fits the embedded or standalone option.