When Aaliyah Duah was 17, she realized one of the major differences between an underserved community like Brooklyn鈥檚 Bedford-Stuyvesant, where she grew up, and more affluent ones was early access to information on how to manage money.

In her public schools, she never learned about financial literacy 鈥� and had not heard the term 鈥� until she started going down a 鈥渞abbit hole鈥� to educate herself on investing. She began to believe: To address the wealth gap in a systemic way, she needed to address the information gap. While a sophomore at Virginia State University during the pandemic, she started , creating workshops that teach personal finance to young people in straightforward, relatable, and fun ways.

Now 23, Duah continues to grow her organization, reaching students at more than 30 schools across Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx. She uses examples like Roblox, sneakers, bacon-egg-and-cheeses, and Apple iPhones to teach about credit cards, interest, and retirement accounts. She鈥檚 soon releasing a coloring and activity book called My Financial ABC鈥檚, designed to help kids ages 3鈥�8 learn basic financial terms.

(The extra 鈥渘鈥� in Revolutionn stands for 鈥渘etwork,鈥� because as Duah said, 鈥淚 learned early on that building wealth requires knowing the right people and making sure the right people know you.鈥�)

On Tuesday, Duah is being recognized for her efforts as a changemaker. She was named , which is essentially . Launched in 2020 by the Walentas Family Foundation, the prize awards $200,000, no-strings attached, to visionaries working to make a difference in the five boroughs.

Duah鈥檚 push comes as school districts across the country are embracing financial literacy. , New York state is . Next year, students in grades K-4 must also learn personal finance.

鈥淓verything in our communities teaches us to spend our money poorly and to chase after quick success/financial gains meanwhile wealth builds over time,鈥� Duah said. 鈥淚 realized that I couldn鈥檛 just share this information with my closest friends, I needed to share this message with the world.鈥�

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tell us more about your own experience with school and/or financial literacy and how that affects your work today.

Growing up and even to this day I鈥檝e watched many of my loved ones and peers make poor financial decisions due to a lack of financial education taught to them at a young age. This showed me the importance of learning early so that you don鈥檛 grow up developing poor financial habits.

As I learned more about financial literacy, there were accounts and information that I had access to that changed my life. This made me understand that the gap is truly in the access to information. After investing my money and seeing my account grow or building my credit and using it to buy my own car and apartment in my 20s without a cosigner or getting ripped off just because I knew how to manage my money at 17 shows how making smart financial decisions pay off. This drives me to continue to educate myself so I can provide the information to my family and the world.

The David Prize is all about the 鈥減ower of people with the conviction to change the future of our city.鈥� Tell us a bit about your vision for what鈥檚 possible with financial literacy in NYC and how it can help break the cycle of generational poverty.

Financial literacy can change the entire NYC landscape. I truly believe this because that is why some people fight so hard to keep it out of schools, because they know when you put financial education in the hands of all people it will level the playing field. If we provide financial education to people at a young age, they grow up avoiding years worth of making poor financial decisions, they can open accounts at a young age that gives them money to have options when they are older.

Additionally, when they become parents they know how to manage their money so they aren鈥檛 passing down financial trauma to their children and helping them establish smart financial habits at a young age.

Financial education helps build better communities and solve systemic issues. When we think of a community, a community is made up of individuals, so if each individual becomes financially savvy the whole neighborhood becomes wealthy. That changes the quality of life for all people who live there. That changes family dynamics, closes the wealth gap, fixes crime, and all the very systems that are hurting families.

What does your work look like with schools?

Every school gets the same Financial Revolutionn experience, but the way they receive it depends on the needs of the school. Some schools鈥� budgets allow for a six-session program while others can be a semester long. All programs end in a culminating activity which can vary from a stock analysis competition, business pitch competition, or students designing their financial future. The purpose of the program is for the students to come in with any understanding of finances and leave with a transformational experience.

What鈥檚 your favorite lesson to teach and why?

My favorite lesson to teach is types of accounts and stock investing. Types of accounts is fun because I watch the students go through this aha moment where they are learning about new accounts they didn鈥檛 even know existed. For example teaching them about a 401K, which is a term they probably hear often but nobody has ever taken the time to educate them on what that is. I remember teaching a group of college students the difference between a high yield savings account and a regular savings account, and one of them asked me: If this is free and grows your money at a higher rate, how come everyone doesn鈥檛 have this account? I had to tell them the truth: It鈥檚 simply because people just don鈥檛 know these exist.

The stock investing class is always cool because I see students鈥� mindsets shift from thinking like a consumer to an investor/owning. They start to understand the power of compound interest and investing at a young age gives them more time for their assets to grow.

Many students have told us they think schools should be teaching financial literacy. What sort of feedback have you gotten from students?

I have students say my classes were the best classes they鈥檝e ever had or they only come to school to come to my class, which is sad but the truth.

This is a big moment for financial literacy. New York is now requiring public schools to begin providing personal finance instruction. What are your thoughts on the requirement?

I love that the DOE is starting to be more serious about the financial literacy conversation and really implementing it into more schools. I just hope that they are intentional about how they implement it into the school system.

Financial literacy is very important and if it isn鈥檛 received well in the classroom, it would almost become like an English class where students need to know how to read and write but because they made the topic so boring, students don鈥檛 take it seriously.

What do you plan to do with the prize money?

I plan to utilize the prize money to invest into an online program that helps families learn about personal finances in an engaging and interactive way.

I also plan to use it to invest in a team to help expand my program into more schools so that we can impact thousands of families all over NYC.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

As the people responsible for deciding how to spend some $700 billion in education dollars, school board members, one might assume, are spending a lot of time discussing tough choices. 

But according to from researchers at Georgetown University鈥檚 Edunomics Lab, many boards devote as little as 15 minutes to considering possible trade-offs and the impact of spending decisions on student outcomes as they vote on new budgets. Indeed, as millions of dollars are allocated, half don鈥檛 ask any substantive questions at all, researchers found. 

But the data indicate that educating even a single board member on how spending can impact student learning stimulates more discussion. States could play an important role in making this happen, says the report鈥檚 lead author, Edunomics Director Marguerite Roza.

The results suggest that states, which provide the lion鈥檚 share of school funding, should consider requiring board members to undergo better training on budgeting, says Roza. Though states bear primary responsibility for holding districts accountable, they rarely demand that boards spend money on the things that . 

鈥淢ost board members have only rudimentary finance training that’s about compliance issues with state laws or audits,鈥� says Roza. 鈥淎s a condition of giving them the money, [states could require] board members to regularly get some training on the basic role of budget oversight. What is a strategic way to evaluate a budget? How often should they be asking questions about the outcomes, or equity or other kinds of things?鈥�

Published by Brookings, the paper is the latest of three drawn from a of hundreds of hours of video of school board budget deliberations, which take place every winter and spring. Using a federal grant, Edunomics researchers streamed meetings that took place in 174 districts of varying sizes, poverty levels and geographic settings in 27 states, tracking the amount of time each board spent discussing revenues and proposed spending, as well as what specific issues members talked about. 

The meetings analyzed in the latest report took place in 2023, when districts had wide discretion over an unprecedented $189 billion in pandemic aid intended in large part to boost students鈥� academic and social-emotional recovery. In theory 鈥� with students falling further behind academically, the money set to run out in September 2024 and a fiscal cliff looming 鈥� board members should have asked which investments were proving effective and whether budgets should be adjusted accordingly, says Roza. 

At the time, the researchers noted, states and the U.S. Education Department were offering districts numerous resources on how to best use the one-time infusion of federal funds. 

But on average, boards 鈥� which typically vote each spring to approve proposed budgets drafted by district leaders 鈥� spent just 40 minutes discussing finances. Conversations were longest in the largest school systems, yet in one-third of all boards, they took less than 15 minutes. Fewer than a fourth of budget discussions made reference to the possible impact of past or current spending decisions on student outcomes in reading, math, attendance, mental health measures or assessments. 

When board members did ask questions linking spending to results, says Roza, the conversation changed to, 鈥�’What did we learn this year and what are we changing next year to accommodate that?鈥� That that simple statement by a board member would create a lot of pressure on district leaders to be thinking about that and to come ready to talk about that in plain terms.鈥�

Student outcomes were discussed in just 7% of meetings in the highest-poverty districts in the researchers鈥� sample. Board members asked whether prior investments were delivering their intended effect in just 13% of meetings. How a proposed budget would affect individual schools within a district was raised in 15% of meetings, and the impact on different student demographic groups was discussed 22% of the time. 

One-fourth of boards spent the majority of their budget discussions focusing on sources of revenue, which they do not control. In 9 out of 10 meetings, there was no discussion of alternatives to the spending proposal before the board. Researchers categorized 53% of board members as 鈥渟ilent observers,鈥� who sat through meetings without offering substantive comments. 

A secondary goal of the research was to determine whether educating board members on evaluating budget trade-offs 鈥� something Edunomics does during annual workshops for district leaders and others 鈥� has an impact on deliberations. To that end, Edunomics and researchers at the American Institutes of Research鈥檚 National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, or CALDER, reviewed budget meetings from 2022 and 2023. Half of the videos were from districts where Edunomics had trained board members on finance issues between the two budgeting seasons.  

that board members who had participated in education finance training were more engaged in budgetary discussions, and were more likely to ask about budget choices and student outcomes and to insist on better information. Board members in high-poverty districts were most likely to ask about the sustainability of financial investments, the impact on different student groups and spending alternatives. 

鈥淚f we could get more board members focused on whether the budget is delivering the outcomes expected,鈥� says Roza, 鈥渢hat would just send a powerful message that this is what they’re expecting at the next meeting.鈥� 

Disclosure: In 2024, Beth Hawkins participated in an Edunomics education finance training.