As a high school business teacher, choosing the right personal finance curriculum for your students is essential. After all, learning the principles of personal financial literacy can make all the difference as learners graduate from high school and face the challenges and opportunities of adulthood.
Two curriculum options you may have heard of are EVERFI and iCEV. While iCEV offers a robust personal finance course as part of our Business, Marketing, Finance, IT, and Media curriculum, our curriculum isn't for every classroom.
In this article, you'll discover the differences between EVERFI and iCEV for personal finance curriculum. For each provider, we'll specifically look at:
- The personal finance topics covered
- The instructional format
- The intended audience
- The curriculum cost
After reading, you should better understand what EVERFI and iCEV each offer so you can decide what is the best fit for your students.
1. Which Personal Finance Topics Do EVERFI and iCEV Cover?
You can cover a broad number of subjects within a personal financial literacy course. Depending on your students' needs and course standards, a personal finance class can include everything from budgeting and taxes to credit and investments.
Below, we'll consider the different topic areas emphasized by EVERFI and iCEV.
Which Topics Does EVERFI Cover?
As an introductory resource, EVERFI Financial Literacy covers several key topics essential to establishing sound money management principles.
The Financial Literacy course dedicates each of its seven lessons to a different personal finance topic:
- Banking Basics
- Employability and Taxes
- Budgeting
- Consumer Skills
- Managing Credit and Debit
- Financing Higher Education
- Insurance
Although EVERFI only dedicates a single lesson to each of these subjects, the materials are enough to provide an overview of some of the biggest financial decisions facing high schoolers in the near future.
Using additional courses available through EVERFI, teachers can guide learners through subjects like building credit and choosing wise investments in more detail.
Which Topics Does iCEV Cover?
iCEV covers a wide range of topics in the Personal Finance course. Since the iCEV Personal Finance course is designed to last an entire academic term, the lessons are intended to explore financial literacy subjects in greater detail.
In total, there are 24 lessons in the iCEV Personal Finance course playlist:
- Consumer Economic Decisions
- Math in Personal Finance
- Banking Products & Services
- Personal Financial Planning
- Employee Compensation Components
- Creating a Personal Budget
- Creating a Family Budget
- Cost of Education and Training
- Financial Statements and Recordkeeping
- Borrowing Basics
- Saving and Investment Strategies
- Retirement and Estate Planning
- Taxes and Government
- Understanding Personal Taxes
- Personal Risk Management
- Insurance Basics: Overview
- Insurance Basics: Automobile
- Insurance Basics: Health
- Insurance Basics: Life and Disability
- Insurance Basics: Home and Property
- Insurance Basics: Making Claims
- Car-Buying Basics
- Home-Buying Basics: Understanding the Language
- Home-Buying Basics
As a full-fledged class on financial literacy, the iCEV Personal Finance course spends more time on major expenses students will face, such as purchasing insurance, homes, and automobiles.
2. How Do EVERFI and iCEV Structure Their Curricula?
When selecting a personal finance curriculum for your classroom, it's important to choose materials that fit the structure of your classroom.
In this section, you'll find the key differences between how EVERFI resources are structured compared with the structure of the iCEV curriculum so you can decide which is more appropriate for your classroom.
How Is EVERFI Structured?
EVERFI's personal finance resources are focused on a series of introductory digital lessons. Each lesson covers a separate topic within the subject of financial literacy. Within the basic Financial Literacy course, there are seven lessons.
The digital lessons are designed to last 35 minutes, so you can teach one per class period for several consecutive days or spread them out and supplement them with other instructional material.
With Financial Literacy, EVERFI also includes a few supplementary resources, including an alignment to the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy National Standards.
Because of how EVERFI's resources are structured, you can expand on their basic personal finance resources by continuing with another course, such as Sustainable Investing Essentials or Build: Credit Fundamentals.
However, EVERFI's lessons aren't designed to last an entire semester. Rather, they work best for teachers who need to teach a unit on personal finance during a longer business, math, or career readiness course. To fill an entire financial literacy course, you'll need to include other resources or write some of your own lesson plans.
How Is iCEV Structured?
The iCEV Personal Finance course is designed to be a comprehensive, standalone class in financial literacy.
The course playlist includes 24 lessons covering separate financial literacy topics. Each lesson comes with its own pre-built lesson plan, multimedia presentation, interactive projects and activities, and formative and summative assessments.
Between the lesson plans, activities, and assessments, iCEV is structured to provide teachers with a complete course for teaching personal finance. The materials are structured to work best in a traditional business or career readiness classroom that dedicates an entire course to teaching personal finance foundations.
The Personal Finance course also prepares students for the Center for Financial Responsibility Personal Financial Literacy Certification hosted on the iCEV Testing Platform. The certification is provided by the Center for Financial Responsibility at Texas Tech University and assesses learners’ comprehensive knowledge in six key areas of financial literacy.
3. Who Is the Intended Audience For EVERFI and iCEV?
Although EVERFI and iCEV are both designed to introduce students to sound personal finance principles, their audiences have a few key differences.
In this section, you'll learn more about who these resources are designed for and why.
Who Is the Intended Audience of EVERFI?
EVERFI is designed to provide free educational resources to schools and students who need quality educational materials. Their materials are offered without cost so that educators have resources available to teach the basics of important subjects, like personal financial literacy.
EVERFI Financial Literacy is designed to be used as an instructional unit within a basic mathematics, business, or career readiness course. It works best when used alongside other instructional resources. While the course is intended for high school students, educators who use EVERFI may teach a variety of subject areas.
Who Is the Intended Audience of iCEV?
Although the iCEV Personal Finance course is also oriented toward high school students, it's meant for a different audience of instructors.
iCEV works best when used in a traditional, standalone personal finance class. Teachers who use the Personal Finance course typically have an entire academic year or semester to cover financial literacy subjects and have more time to explore topics such as investments, taxes, and insurance.
iCEV is also intended as a cohesive learning resource. Since it covers each topic in-depth, educators typically don't rely on additional educational materials to augment their lessons.
4. How Much Will Your Personal Finance Curriculum Cost?
Since they serve different purposes in a CTE classroom, EVERFI and iCEV are priced differently.
In this section, you'll learn more about how much these curriculum resources will cost your program.
How Much Does EVERFI Cost?
As part of its mission to provide free educational resources, EVERFI offers its financial literacy lessons for free. When you sign up with EVERFI to access the program, you can use the lesson plans and learning resources on the website for free.
This is also true for EVERFI's additional finance courses, including courses in credit, investments, and accounting, which might also be part of your personal financial literacy standards.
How Much Does iCEV Cost?
iCEV is offered as an annual curriculum subscription for teachers, students, and schools.
Several factors influence the cost of iCEV for your classroom or program, including the number of CTE subjects you teach and the number of students who will need access.
Access to iCEV for a single subject starts at $1,500. This price includes access to the iCEV Personal Finance course and every iCEV course in the Business, Marketing, Finance, IT, and Media pathway.
You can request a free quote to get a more accurate picture of how much iCEV will cost your program.
Which High School Personal Finance Curriculum Is Best For Your Students?
Choosing the right financial literacy lessons for your high schoolers is essential to their success. When your students receive a thorough education in financial management, they'll be more likely to become good money managers in the future.
Depending on how much time you dedicate to personal finance and the materials you need to meet your standards, EVERFI or iCEV could better fit your classroom.
If you're looking for a free resource you can use to provide a quick overview of personal finance concepts with your students, EVERFI could be right for you. You'll be able to give your students a primer on basic financial literacy as part of a more extensive course that may cover other business or career readiness subjects.
However, if you are looking for a comprehensive personal finance course that you can use to cover financial literacy in depth over an entire academic term, iCEV could be the better choice. You'll receive pre-built, standards-aligned lesson plans, interactive activities, and assessments to help your students master money management.
Does iCEV sound like a good fit for your learners? Sign up for a free trial to learn more. You'll have access to try out the entire curriculum —including the Personal Finance course—to help you determine if it's the best choice for your program.
