A group of McLaurin High School seventh graders experienced the trip of a lifetime after placing nationally in the 2024 Capitol Hill Challenge, a national financial-education program underwritten by the Charles Schwab Foundation. Students Kalia Nickerson, Shania Mcintosh, Isaiah Hughes, Walter Gainwell and Cameron Jefferson placed third in the nation in the competition consisting of more than 600,000 students from one thousand schools.

The Securities and Financial Markets Association and Foundation honored the students at a welcome dinner on June 11, 2024, in Washington, D.C., where U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, spoke to those gathered about the importance of financial literacy—learning about it early and using it throughout your life. Beatty co-chairs the Congressional Financial Literacy and Wealth Creation Caucus.

“I am deeply committed to ensuring that every American has the knowledge and tools needed to navigate the complexities of our financial system,” Beatty said in an April 15 press release prior to the competition. “That is why I am so grateful for the SIFMA Foundation’s consistent, dedicated efforts in pursuit of this mission, as programs like the Capitol Hill Challenge teach children critical investment skills and enable them to build long-term wealth. Together, we can put every American on the path to financial freedom.”

Ira Vaughn of Unique Class of Limousine Service supplied limousine transportation to and from the airport. While in the nation’s capital, students toured the city and participated in several scheduled events. Morgan Stanley and RBC Wealth Management each hosted the group for breakfasts. The students met United States Representative Micheal Guest, R-Mississippi, who congratulated them on their accomplishment. The all-expense paid trip included meals, a $100 gift card for incidental expenses and a metro pass.

“We saw the Lincoln Memorial, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial and the Washington Monument,” McLaurin team member and now rising eighth grader Kalia Nickerson told the Mississippi Free Press on June 26. “There was a museum in the Capitol. It was a lot of, like, political facts and just important people.”

The Capitol Hill Challenge is offered free of charge and by invitation from the SIFMA Foundation. The program matches members of Congress with students, teachers and schools in their respective congressional districts. CHC gives priority consideration to Title I public middle and high schools. Students manage a hypothetical $100,000 investment portfolio of listed stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, and impact investments. The competition uses the SIFMA Foundation’s curriculum-based Stock Market Game, a financial-education program that has proven to statistically advance students’ performance on math and economics tests and improve students’ and teachers’ financial behavior.

“They want to give students exposure to the stock market because there are kids who don’t have that exposure, and sadly in our community we are trained to be afraid of it,” McLaurin Cyber Foundations teacher Eric Hite told the Mississippi Free Press on May 29. “We don’t know anything about it, and we’re scared to touch it.”

During the competition, teams learned the fundamentals of investing and capital markets. Students invested in stocks, bonds and mutual funds. The challenge included buy-and-trade simulations and moved in concert with the actual stock market. Each team had five months to manage its portfolio and outpace the Standard and Poor’s 500.

Up to two public middle or high schools per congressional district may participate each year, and each school may have up to 10 student teams with three to five students per team. All 10 McLaurin teams finished in the top 300. Seven finished in the top 100, four finished in the top 20, and two finished in the top 10.

Micheal Guest congratulated Cameron Jefferson, Kalia Nickerson, Shaniah Mcintosh, Isaiah Hughes and their teacher Eric Hite on their performance in the 2024 Stock Market Challenge during their trip to Washington, D.C. Walter Gainwell (not pictured) also took home a third-place honor for McLaurin High School for his performance. Photo courtesy Mississippi Council on Economic Education

Hite has been playing the stock-market game with students for 18 years. He has had teams at Jim Hill High School and in Memphis, Tenn. However, this is his first team to place this high in the competition.

“They’re all friends, and they are some go-getters,” Hite said. “They are sharp. They are fun and funny.”

Hite begins teaching students about stocks and bonds in the fall semester of his class. He introduces students to the ease of investing by showing them his personal stock portfolio. The students participate in the stock-market challenge, selecting stocks to monitor and learning about value and capital appreciation. Teams qualify for the national tournament based on their performance in the fall challenge. However, for Hite, the experience is about more than a competition. He stresses that the knowledge they are gaining can cause generational change.

“Your parents aren’t stressing about Shakespearean plays. They aren’t stressing about the periodic table,” Hite tells students. “Parents aren’t stressing about the Pythagorean Theorem. I know all those things are important in school, but your parents are not stressing about the Vietnam War. It’s good information to know to make you a well-rounded person, but they’re stressed about finances. I want to show you how that can not be a stressor. You don’t have to have that same stress and finances that your parents have if you build wealth to invest.”

It’s Never Too Early to Learn to Invest

Felicia Johnson remembers playing the stock-market game when she was in high school. At the time, only students in the gifted and talented class participated. She doesn’t remember how successful she was in the game and had completely forgotten about the experience until she received word that her daughter Kalia’s team had placed high in the competition.

Johnson began researching how teams from the state have fared in competition over the years and was not shocked to learn that what her daughter’s team has done is impressive.

“(We) just found out we are the third team from Mississippi in the last 20 years to win and the youngest in those,” she sent via text on June 1.

The accomplishment is even more special for a small rural community school in south Rankin County.

“Nobody knows about McLaurin. It’s not a city. It’s not a town,” Johnson said. “It’s just us, and of course, while we’re proud of the school and the students coming through, to be able to see these kids doing this really makes it even better for me.”

Johnson, a team lead at Regions Bank, sees the importance of financial knowledge daily. She taught her daughter about saving early but admitted that she had yet to consider that she was old enough to learn about investing.

“One of the biggest things I see in banking are students coming in and even people just in general that have no knowledge of managing money, savings, credit or any of that,” Johnson said. “So of course I try to get out into the community as much as I can, giving those financial classes. But the investing side is not something that I typically would have a conversation with a seventh grader on. To have that information being pushed to them now … is setting them up for success.”

Kalia Nickerson, a seventh grader at McLaurin High School during the 2023-2024 school year, is one of five students who traveled to Washington, D.C., after their team secured a third-place national win in the Capitol Hill Challenge. Photo courtesy Felicia Johnson

Nickerson said she and her classmates gained valuable knowledge from Hite and the game.

“We all learned how to save,” Nickerson said. “So now we won’t be spending all our money on concessions, food and stuff like that. We just learned how to manage our money better and easier.”

Johnson plans to allow Nickerson to invest in the stock market to see how she handles investments on a long-term basis.

“I do plan to give her some money to invest,” Johnson said. “So we’ll be visiting with one of my financial agents to help us get an account set up. Then I can actually give her the login information, and she can see with real money what it looks like and how it works.”

More Opportunities for New Experiences

This trip was Nickerson’s first to Washington, D.C., but she hopes not her last.

“I loved it. We met some really nice people. It was motivational,” Nickerson said.

Hite was excited to experience the honor with his students.

“I want my kids to be exposed to things that I wished I had learned in high school,” Hite said. “One of those things being wealth building, and not just budgeting and financial management, but wealth building through investing.”

Learn more about the Capitol Hill Challenge at stockmarketgame.org.

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McLaurin High School Students Place High in Capitol Hill Challenge Stock-Market Game, Visit D.C.

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