Mr. Fundy's Level Up Initiative for Fourth- and Fifth-Grade Students
LFYO's Targeted Investment Campaign (1 of 3)
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Real talk on the current state of fourth- and fifth-grade students’ academic standing. And without financial math skills, they’ll have a difficult time making smart money moves in the future.
Why financial math skills help—and more importantly keep—inner-city students on the accountability path toward lifelong success.
40. 30. 40. 50. In percentage terms, these are the districtwide test scores (in math and reading) of fourth- and fifth-grade students who attended Columbus City Schools during the 2025-2026 school year. The good news? The scores have steadily increased over the last four years. The really bad news? Vulnerable students who struggle in math and reading are likely to experience poorer financial outcomes later in life. They just don’t know it—yet! Also, please keep in mind that the litmus test of standardized testing in Ohio is this: performance at grade level. Now the scoring range is basic, limited, proficient, accomplished, and advanced. Think about what it means for a poverty-stricken, academically challenged student who transitions from childhood into adulthood without financial math skills. Lower employment earnings. Higher debt loads (relative to income levels). Fewer wealth-building opportunities. Weaker problem-solving and coping skills. More learned hopelessness and leveraged helplessness. Not good. And we all pay a huge price when the least among us falls way behind.
Alright, let’s tune out the background noise—who’s at fault right now for the academic gaps—and zero in on what the data might actually communicate longer term. Reading scores for CCS students improved 10 percentage points from fourth to fifth grade, while math scores declined by 10 percent. Here’s why we should be alarmed by the drop. Seventy percent of fifth graders are not performing at grade level in math. Did you get that? And if at-risk students can’t get math early, then they’ll have a hard, if not impossible, time getting through life later on. Assuming this inverted trend line continues in the wrong direction, these students will likely settle for minimum-wage jobs, gravitate to get-rich-quick schemes as well as hook-and-crook scams, fall victim to impulse-buying traps that never dissipate, pay higher carrying costs to service “usury” debt, and most tragically, place their future children and grandchildren on the economic chaos treadmill with no turnoff switch in sight. The poverty tax, with legacy-debt-holder implications, is brutally oppressive.
Scores. Scares. Scars. As Jennifer Harvey, a retired public school teacher, pointed out to me, “We need to bring the joy of education back to the classroom.” I certainly remember those days when school was cool. Learning wasn’t drudgery. In fact, it provided us with a much-needed lift to an imaginary world, one better than what we experienced growing up in the housing projects on public assistance. Check out these socioeconomic status (SES) real-world correlations. Basic, or even limited test scores, will often lead to seemingly unlimited financial problems down the road. Proficient test scores will allow vulnerable students the opportunity (but not the guarantee) to barely get by financially in a left behind world. Lastly, accomplished or advanced test scores can catapult at-risk students to new heights as future high-income earners and wealth-building generators. Math scares fade away, and economic scars never form. How does LFYO assist vulnerable students? By helping them connect their present-reality dots with their future-possibility gains through gamification activities and experiential-learning opportunities. And we need your investment support to continue our mission.
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