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Putting Stock Into Investment Education

By Tim Kaldahl, University Relations

“Students get regular economic instruction, really, starting when they first come to school in kindergarten,” says Mary Lynn Reiser, assistant director in UNO’s Center for Economic Education. “Economics and personal finance instruction continues all the way through sixth, and the students really take to it.”

Reading about business and investment is one thing, doing it is another. Enter the Conestoga Capital Fund. Each grade level, first through sixth, received $20,000 from the Sherwood Foundation at the end of the 2007-08 for real-world economic education. Weitz Fund Investments manages the funds for first through third grade, and the students have instruction about what investments are, what makes a good company and why having investing goals are important. It’s far from a dismal kind of science, and the program took off in earnest during the 2008-2009 school year.

Starting in fourth grade, students begin applying what they have learned and start researching individual companies with an eye toward investing the Sherwood grant money.

Erin Ruis, the economic education specialist at Conestoga (who works closely with the UNO Center for Economic Education), says the students take the work seriously. A smaller set of students at each grade level — an executive group — narrows the choices to about 10 investment options.

“These selected students meet and become a board of directors to research investments,” Reiser says. They get assistance, of course, from their classroom teachers, from financial curriculum, Ruis’ instruction, and from real experts from the Omaha-based Weitz Funds.

After choices get further refined, the students make decisions and five stocks—each representing around $1,000 invested — are purchased. By the end of fourth grade year, that leaves $15,000 in a Weitz Mutual Fund account. In fifth grade, the process repeats and $5,000 more is invested in individual stocks. Fifth grade ends up with $10,000 in kid-directed investments and $10,000 in the Weitz Fund. In sixth grade, the program caps out with 15 individual stocks and $5,000 left in the fund. Profits accumulated by the end of sixth grade end up buying something to benefit the school, and the initial seed money of $20,000 goes back to first grade to start the cycle over.

The first cohort of fourth- through sixth-grade investments will be completed in 2010-11.

At the end of last year (the first full year of the program and a lousy year for investments by any standard) the sixth-grade class actually made a $2,500 profit, and it went toward outdoor benches near the school’s flagpole. What Conestoga has is “a dream program,” said Principal David Milan. He and Ruis both say the students learn more than just economics thanks to the program

Students increase their technology skills by using the Internet for research; they improve their writing when drafting investment recommendations; public speaking gets polished, too. The children also become more aware of their world.

A story Ruis likes to tell is about how a student, a boy, came up looking sad and concerned one day. “Ms. Ruis, did you watch the news last night? The Dow went down 700 points,” said the boy.

“A bad day for stocks was a great day for education,” she says.

“This is the reason I go to work every day,” Ruis says. “This is very exciting program for me and our students at Conestoga.”