It’s no surprise that finances are baffling to most children. Even parents find them a mystery, which in understandable since financial literacy is not a core requirement in schools.

A 2014 WalletHub national study ranked Arkansas 48th among the states in financial literacy, but there are efforts to improve that.

Junior Achievement is a national nonprofit that pairs students in kindergarten through 12th grade with professionals who have direct experience in the financial world. These professionals serve as teachers for financial literacy, entrepreneurship and career readiness.

“What really makes our program different than any other that’s out there is that we go out and recruit professionals from the business community to deliver the programming in the classroom,” Chad Kauffman, president at Junior Achievement of Arkansas, says. “A lot of times we utilize our connections with financial institutions, someone who deals with financial situations on a daily basis.”

Junior Achievement of Arkansas has about 500 volunteers who work with roughly 13,000 students.

“The demand from the education community is more than we can handle,” Kauffman says.

That demand illustrates an outcry from the education community. According to a survey published this year by PricewaterhouseCoopers, only 12 percent of K-12 teachers address financial literacy in their lesson plans, even though resources to teach financial literacy are on most teachers’ wish lists.

“There is a move afoot in the broader education community to look at how we’re teaching math to students and moving from that esoteric way to teach math,” Kauffman says. “It’s great to know the Pythagorian Thereom, but compounding interest would be something good to know, too. Maybe there’s a place for that in the regular math that students are required to take moving through their primary and secondary educations.”

Kauffman adds that although finances are best taught at home, many parents are reluctant to talk to their kids about money. Especially when the parents are struggling financially.

At the Little Rock School District, a Washington-based nonprofit called EverFi works with sponsors to provide online courses in financial literacy to high school students. Shaneka Montgomery, director of career education in the Little Rock district, says online learning appeals to a lot of students.

“The online program, it’s engaging because the students get to work at their own pace,” Montgomery says. “They can work at school and they can work at home. It’s engaging because it’s like a performance-based game that they have to play. It immerses them in financial literacy concepts and terms. When you talk to the students about it, you realize that they really get a lot out of the online modules.”

Each half-semester course consists of nine modules that each take 40-50 minutes to complete. The topics are bank accounts, savings accounts, payment types, credit scores, insurance and taxes, renting versus owning, cost of higher education, consumer protection and investing.

“I heard a lot of the students say that they didn’t understand credit scores and that they didn’t understand the benefit of having a good interest rate or having a good credit score,” Montgomery says. “I heard students say that the module on the cost of college, the cost of student loans, really touched them. Because they are getting ready to go to college and learning that they need to find grants and scholarships instead of getting student loans, because of the cost and the bills you have to pay after you graduate.”

Sponsorships allow EverFi to serve students at no cost.The two sponsors that work with EverFi to provide the Little Rock courses are the state Treasurer’s office and Regions Bank. The courses are called AR Finance, AR Future and the Regions Bank Financial Scholars Program.

State Treasurer Dennis Milligan campaigned on the issue of financial education and found an avenue to bolster Arkansas’ financial literacy through the AR 529 college investing plan. Milligan’s office partnered with EverFi to provide the modules to educators shortly after he was elected in 2015.

Milligan’s assistant chief of staff, Grant Wallace, says that the aim is to teach financial literacy to fourth- through sixth-grade students across the state. Through May, they had installed the program in 88 schools.

“The teachers have really taken this to heart and really implemented it into everything they’re doing,” Wallace said. “And we’re seeing a tremendous response as we’re traveling throughout the state.”

Providing students with better education in schools is a way to approach the state’s financial literacy woes, but talking about the issues at home is crucial as well. According to a 2014 study authored by Lynsey K. Romo and published in The Journal of Family Communication, parents are reluctant to talk with children about finances.

So parents are advised to conquer their discomfort, sit down with their children and frankly discuss finances. It’s a conversation both sides could profit from.