Evidence

Built to measure. First cohort, fall 2026.

The Launchpad was designed so that every class produces learning data a curriculum office or a researcher can read: what students knew before, what they knew after, how confident they felt, what they did, and how they compare with adults nationally. This page states the instrument, the benchmark, and the limits.

Fall 2026: The College Project in three classrooms

Before After

Average quiz score +11 points

157 students, before and after each module

56%67%

Said yes, they could afford a 4-year public university +18 points

152 students, before and after the Real Costs lesson

36%54%
4 in 5

of 157 students raised their quiz scores

70%

of 158 students rated their confidence higher

Fall 2026, The College Project in The Launchpad, taught by three teachers at a Title I California public high school where about two-thirds of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. Quiz results are 157 students with matched before-and-after quizzes (1,192 pairs, modules 2 to 9); the before and after questions are parallel, not identical. Confidence is 158 students. The affordability question is 152 students, asked before and after the Real Costs lesson. 129 of 158 students finished all nine modules.

One school, no comparison group, and self-reported confidence and affordability. Not directly comparable with the 2018 pilot, which surveyed students before and after the whole course.

“I hope more schools implement some part of this into their curriculum. It’s really important that students are educated on this early and regularly, not just their senior year with everything in the rear view.”
Kathleen Steinkamp, high school teacher, California

What we measure

Knowledge, before and after

Every module opens with a short quiz and closes with another. The two ask different questions about the same concept, so a gain reflects the concept rather than a remembered answer. The dashboard reports each question's pre and post share correct and the class gain in points.

Confidence, before and after

Students rate their confidence on a five-point scale at the start and end of each module. Paired with the quiz, this shows where a class was overconfident and where a module closed the gap between what students felt they knew and what they could do.

Behavior, not just knowledge

Each student keeps Money Moves: real steps they choose for themselves, marked to-do, planned, or done with a date. It is the student's own record of what they did, outside the course, because they took it.

The Big Three, on the first day and the last

Three questions on compound interest, inflation, and risk diversification, written by Annamaria Lusardi and Olivia Mitchell and asked verbatim, with "do not know" as an accepted answer. The same three items sit in the National Financial Capability Study and the P-Fin Index, which is what lets a class be compared with national results.

The national benchmark

Since the Big Three were first asked in the United States in 2004, the share of adults who answer all three correctly has stayed near a third. The figure we compare classes with:

30%
of U.S. adults, all three correct

30.2 percent of U.S. adults answered all three questions correctly in the 2009 National Financial Capability Study, as reported by Lusardi and Mitchell in the Journal of Economic Literature (2014, Table 2, n = 1,488). Their 2023 review reports about one-third of young adults answering all three correctly, 29 percent of women and 48 percent of men. Risk diversification is the question people miss most, and the one most often answered "do not know."

A teacher's class board shows the share of the class with all three correct on the first day, on the last day, and the national figure beside them, with n.

What we will report, and when

The College Project results above are the first from The Launchpad. When the fall 2026 semester ends, we will publish here, for each module and for the course:

Figures will be de-identified aggregates. No student is ever named in anything we publish.

Prior pilot: The College Project

83.3%
from 46.7%

believed they could afford a 4-year public university

69%
from 17.6%

believed they could afford a 4-year private university

Prior pilot (2018), The College Project, at a Title I California high school. The percentages compare a pre-course survey with a post-course survey. These are belief measures, not knowledge measures. Write to us for the 2018 survey or The Launchpad’s quizzes.

Limitations

For researchers and districts

De-identified, aggregate results for a district's own classes are available to that district on request. Record-level data is shared with a researcher only under a written agreement with the district and applicable consent; the terms we hold data under are in the district data agreement. The survey instrument, including the exact quiz items, is available on request.

Ask for the instrument or the dataDistrict data agreement (PDF)See the class board in the demo

Sources