Focusing on programs that measure their effectiveness is an obvious way to make faster progress in the problem of financial literacy. One of the most-FAQs I get asked on the topic of Efficacy is "How, exactly, can we evaluate programs?" Here are some of the ways to do so.

1. Empirical evidence, the gold standard of education, includes a variety of assessments.
   • Pre- and posttests. The improvement of a posttest score over the pretest score is an objective way to measure what an individual has learned; when aggregated for thousands of learners, and you have an extremely reliable measure of efficacy.
   • Formative (How am I doing?) and summative (How did I do?) assessments can provide feedback about the learner's progress with the material. Formative results may suggest the learner go back and review some area to nail her understanding before going into the next layer.
   • Longitudinal data measures how well the learning is retained over time.
2. Instruction that simulates, rehearses and improves Skills Competence, the highest-order thinking in Bloom's taxonomy, rather than just Awareness or Knowledge.
3. Anecdotal reports about their learning or anticipated changes in behavior can also be useful measures, but being subjective, they are less rigorous.

Other criteria which contribute to an evaluation of a program's effectiveness include:

1. Objective content, free of any conflict of interest
2. From research on best practices, we also know that effective programs are
   • highly engaging and interactive (less about listening and reading, more about practicing and doing);
   • learner-centric (vs teacher-centric);
   • self-paced; and
   • require demonstration of mastery; that is, learners stay working in the content until they achieve an acceptable mastery.
3. The pedagogy rehearses skills that closely resemble the skills required in real-world situations.
4. Independent, credentialed reviewers have evaluated the program and documented their review process, criteria, and conclusions.
5. The program has received awards or other recognition, and disclosed their review process, criteria, and conclusions.

As you can see, there are lots of ways to objectively measure and evaluate the effectiveness of programs, and when used in combination, can provide clear and compelling comparisons of financial literacy education programs.