The Jump$tart Coalition^® kicked off the media blitz surrounding the release of its 2006 Survey results with a press conference at the Federal Reserve in Washington, DC. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke spoke first, noting the importance of personal financial literacy, and the media that usually follows the chairman's speeches covered Jump$tart as well. The coverage that day included five live feeds from the board of governors' conference room, and it has been non-stop since then. It has focused attention not only on Jump$tart but also its many partners!

Other televised interviews, with executive director, Laura Levine, and researcher Lew Mandell, Ph.D., have included: ABC News Now, Bloomberg TV, CNN and Cox TV. The ABC News spot, for example, was made available to a series of online subscribers that included more than 35 million people; not to be outdone, radio spots that highlighted the results were Everyday Wealth Radio, CBS News Radio, KTSA Radio and Investment News.

The Associated Press ran its own syndicated piece, which has been picked up by literally hundreds of newspapers—large and small—nationwide. In addition, more than 55 outlets have published their own articles on the sad state of the nation's youth grasp of basic personal financial concepts. Some of those outlets have included: the Washington Post, Money Magazine, Time Magazine, USA Today, Congressional Quarterly, The Miami Herald and many others.

The comprehensive written survey of 5775 high school students in 37 states measured 12th graders' level of knowledge of personal finance basics and compared the results with those surveys conducted earlier. The average score for the 2005-06 survey was 52.4 percent, up marginally from 52.3 percent in the 2003-04 survey. After falling from 57.3 percent in the 1997-98 survey, financial literacy scores are up from the low of 50.2 percent in 2002 but now seem to hover in the low- to mid-50 percent range.