In Kristin Lidstrom’s business classes at Hamilton Southeastern High School in Fishers, the finance lessons quickly become personal.

“They begin thinking about their own spending habits, future goals, or even what they’re seeing at home,” Lidstrom said. “Concepts like interest rates or debt suddenly carry weight when they realize how long it can take to pay something off or how quickly costs can grow.”

Not every student will pursue business after Lidstrom’s class. But all of them can apply the lessons they’ve learned from business class in their future career paths, she said.

And Indiana wants all high school students to start thinking about what those paths will look like beginning in high school. The state will have in 2029 that emphasize career learning and financial literacy.

Lidstrom’s own career journey started with studying marketing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. But she found the path she wanted to pursue through volunteering in schools, and combined it with her passion for business to become a teacher.

Now the business department chair at Hamilton Southeastern with 22 years of experience in the district, Lidstrom has been piloting an AP Business with Personal Finance class this year, which is open to grades 9-12. The course, which is set to roll out nationwide in the 2026-27 school year, has the backing of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce and local employers.

Read more below about Lidstrom’s class at Hamilton Southeastern High, and the projects that students complete pitching business ideas and putting together a realistic budget.

These answers have been edited for length and clarity.

What does a typical day look like in AP Business with Personal Finance? How is this class different from other AP courses?

A typical day in this class is very active and hands-on. The course is intentionally designed with a project-based learning approach, so while there are occasional moments of direct instruction, most of the time students are learning by doing, working through real-world scenarios, collaborating with peers, and applying concepts in meaningful ways.

What really sets this course apart from other AP classes is that it’s less about memorizing content and more about developing skills. Students are consistently engaging in problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication, which mirrors how business actually works outside the classroom.

One of the anchor projects in this course is an entrepreneurship business plan that students build from the ground up, centered around solving a real problem.

Students start by identifying a need — something they’ve observed in their own lives, school, or community. From there, they develop a product or service to address that need and work through the full business planning process. This includes defining their target market, analyzing competitors, creating a marketing strategy, and building out basic financials.

What makes this project especially meaningful is that it’s not hypothetical in the traditional sense. Students are expected to make realistic decisions, justify their choices with data, and adapt as they encounter challenges along the way.

The project leads to a presentation where students pitch their business as if they were seeking investment. It’s a great example of a real-world scenario because it requires them to bring together everything they’ve learned.

The culminating project in the course is a financial-adviser simulation, in which students take on the role of advising a client through real-life financial decisions.

What makes this project impactful is that students have to think holistically and justify their recommendations based on the client’s situation. It pushes them to apply what they’ve learned in a realistic context and communicate their reasoning clearly.

Have you seen any moments where the material “clicked” in a real-world way for students?

One of the biggest “click” moments is around things like compound interest or saving for the future. When students see how small, consistent decisions can significantly impact their financial situation over time, it changes how they think. They start asking better questions, making more intentional choices in simulations, and connecting it to real-life decisions they’ll be making soon.

It’s in those moments you can tell it’s no longer just a class, it’s something they see as directly relevant to their lives.

What do your students hope to do after high school and has taking this course changed the way they think about money, entrepreneurship, or next steps?

My students have a wide range of plans after high school. Some are heading to four-year colleges, others to community college or trade programs, and some are eager to jump straight into the workforce or start something of their own. What this course does is give all of them a stronger sense of direction and confidence in those next steps. While not all students will pursue business after high school, they all come away with an appreciation for how business acumen can support them in any career path.

How does the course support students in meeting Indiana’s new diploma requirements?

This course directly supports Indiana’s new diploma requirements by fulfilling the Personal Finance requirement, ensuring all students graduate with a strong foundation in money management, credit, and financial decision-making.

As an AP Career Kickstart course, it also helps students begin building a purposeful pathway early in high school. It encourages them to pursue additional AP coursework, putting them on track toward earning Honors and Honors Plus Seals. By starting that progression earlier, students are more prepared and confident as they move into more rigorous AP classes, while also developing practical, real-world skills that connect to both college and career opportunities.

If you could adjust one thing about how business or personal finance education is taught nationwide, what would it be?

If I could adjust one thing, it would be to make business and personal finance education more consistently rooted in real-world application rather than theory. Students don’t just need to know what a budget, credit score, or interest rate is, they need to actively use those concepts in realistic scenarios. When students are making decisions, experiencing the consequences, and reflecting on those choices, the learning sticks in a much deeper and more meaningful way.

I’d also push for this type of learning to happen earlier and more consistently across grade levels. By the time students are making real financial decisions, they should already feel confident navigating them, not encountering the concepts for the first time. Ultimately, the goal should be to move beyond exposure and toward true readiness, so students leave school not just informed, but capable.

What’s the best teaching advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

The best teaching advice I’ve ever received is to never do for students what they can do for themselves. In practice, that’s shaped how I structure my classroom in a big way. Rather than stepping in with answers, I focus on asking questions, creating space for productive struggle, and designing experiences where students have to think, decide, and reflect.

It can be uncomfortable at times (for both the students and me) but that’s where the real learning happens.

In a course like this, it means students aren’t just learning concepts, they’re applying them, making mistakes, adjusting, and building confidence along the way. Over time, you can see them become more independent, more thoughtful, and more willing to take ownership of their learning, which is ultimately the goal.

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Hundreds of Floridians, civil rights activists and religious leaders from across the state marched Wednesday from Tallahassee’s Bethel Missionary Baptist Church to the Florida Capitol building complex in protest of efforts to “whitewash” Black history by rejecting an Advanced Placement course in high school on African American studies.

The large crowd also included students and older folks and many Black activists and advocates — including civil rights leader Al Sharpton — who rallied against the DeSantis administration over what students can learn in school regarding Black history and other topics.

At the historic church, Ben Frazier, with the advocacy group Northside Coalition of Jacksonville, said that the DeSantis administration is attacking the rights to tell the truth about slavery, racism and white supremacy.

“Folks, the policies and the practices of this racist DeSantis regime, are in fact a vile and poisonous form of indoctrination. Simple and sweet: it’s political propaganda. I call it ‘hogwash,’” Frazier told the crowd gathered inside the church. The pews were nearly filled.

“By his efforts to whitewash American history, this governor is trying to turn back the sands of time,” Frazier added. He led the crowd in a chant: “Allow teachers to teach the truth.”

The crowd later left the church to start the march to the Florida Capitol building. There were signs and chants along the road, which led up to the Florida Senate side of the complex outside.

Metaphorically addressing Gov. DeSantis, Bishop Rudolph W. McKissack Jr., a senior pastor of the Bethel Church in Jacksonville, said that:

“We are not saying you don’t want Black history, but what we’re saying is we won’t let you have it your way. We will not let you tell our story from your perspective.

“We will not let you redact our history so that your children are comfortable. The reality is your children, and other generations can be comfortable now, because our ancestors were uncomfortable,” McKissack continued.

The rally gathered largely in response to an ongoing battle between the DeSantis administration and the century-old nonprofit College Board, which created a new AP African American studies course for high schoolers who can earn college credit.

The Florida Department of Education rejected the then-pilot course, according to a letter sent to the College Board in mid-January, causing a nationwide outcry and concerns that the move diminishes the importance of Black history and Black culture.

But the scope of the march and rally Wednesday spanned far beyond the AP African American studies course. The comments from faith leaders and Florida lawmakers touched on policies impacting the LGBTQ+ community, women, and immigrants.

The Rev. Al Sharpton spoke to the potential of Gov. Ron DeSantis running for president. Sharpton called DeSantis “baby Trump.”

“Black, Latino, women, LGBTQ — we beat Big Trump. We’ll beat Baby Trump,” he said.

“After Disney one day, after Blacks the next day — he’s like a baby,” Sharpton said. “Give him a pacifier and let some grown folks run the state of Florida.”

After his dig at DeSantis, Sharpton brought it back to teaching Black history to young Floridians.

“You ought to tell the whole story… Our children need to know the whole story. Not to know how bad you were, but how strong they are. We come from a people who fought from the back of a bus to the front of the White House. Tell the whole story,” Sharpton said.

He warned: “If we can’t protect education in Florida, it will jump to Alabama, it will jump to Texas — this is a national crime.”

Sen. Shevrin Jones, a Democrat who represents part of Miami-Dade County, said Wednesday, also spoke to teaching history centered around minority communities.

“Black history is American history. Queer history is American History. Black immigrant history is American history,” Jones said.

He added: “What we are dealing with here in this moment — the structure of a system that continues to perpetuate racism across this country, not just in the state of Florida,” Jones said at the Capitol. “The fight is never just about AP history. The fight is against this strong uprising of racism from people who are seeing the shifting of America.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

Amid back-to-school debates over vaccinations, mask requirements and the right lens for , the troubling lack of opportunities for many high school students to take advanced coursework they need for success in college and beyond has unfortunately fallen off the education policy radar.

Advanced coursework can include International Baccalaureate, dual high school-college enrollment or Advanced Placement courses, with AP being the most popular and widely available mechanism. Taking such courses helps students gain college credits while still in high school, earn admission to top colleges and flourish in the work world.

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Yet a recently released report from the Center for American Progress that Black, Indigenous and rural students were far more likely to attend schools offering fewer AP courses than schools attended by their white, Asian and suburban counterparts.

And even when students have similar access to AP courses, lower percentages of Black, Indigenous and rural students enroll in the courses and pass them. In high schools offering 18 or more AP courses, white students taking at least one AP exam had an average passing rate of 72 percent. For Black students in these circumstances, the average passing rate was 42 percent. Latino students are not experiencing the same gaps in access as other ethnic and racial groups, but they do have lower enrollment and pass rates.

This speaks to what many educators and advocates already understand: Equitable access and success in advanced coursework require more than availability, and there are policy investments that schools and districts can leverage to help students succeed in advanced courses.

The first is creating a national database on student participation and performance in advanced coursework (including dual-enrollment courses offered at local universities), disaggregated by race. Currently, no comprehensive national dataset exists for multiple dual enrollment options, and individual state report cards vary greatly in what is publicly reported.

Much of the research on advanced coursework, by default, is limited to AP participation and performance, because that is the only data that is easily aggregated, transparent and comparable among all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Future iterations of the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection should also report on IB and dual-enrollment participation and performance.

Another crucial investment is to remove entry barriers to AP and other advanced courses. and subjective gatekeeping measures have a way of creeping into the enrollment process for advanced courses through overreliance on teacher referrals or counselor recommendations. This often results in students being overlooked for enrollment in at the elementary school level and at the high school level.

Districts have succeeded in combating this through the use of universal screening for gifted-and-talented programs and automatic-enrollment or academic-acceleration policies for AP courses. Automatic-enrollment policies, in several states, require that students who meet benchmark proficiency levels on statewide examinations be automatically enrolled in the next-highest available class, including advanced courses, though they can opt out.

In addition to making sure students are properly identified for enrollment in advanced courses, it is important to ensure they are prepared to handle the content and demands of the coursework. That takes regular communication and lesson planning among elementary, middle and high school educators to map out common instructional vocabulary and concepts, known as .

Moreover, supporting students and teachers during their experiences in advanced courses is critical. One strategy that many states and districts embrace is to associated with taking an AP or IB exam. Additionally, some schools are experiencing success through creating , where junior and senior AP students advise and tutor younger high school students to make sure they are setting themselves up for success.

Finally, both teachers and students benefit immensely from the creation of regional and statewide . This can take different forms but usually involves time outside the regular school day when students and teachers can refine their skills, learn from experts and get real-time feedback on teaching and learning.

None of these strategies alone can surmount the stubborn and persistent inequities in participation and success in AP courses. But when done in concert and with dedicated leadership, they can help broaden access to and success in advanced coursework.

Roby Chatterji is a senior policy analyst for K-12 education at the Center for American Progress.