During Monica Goldson’s 32 years of service at Maryland’s Prince George’s County public schools, where she started as a high school math teacher and rose to chief executive officer, she grew tired of hearing students ask the question: Why am I learning this?
In response, Goldson sought ways to link learning to real-world experiences. She played a pivotal role in forging a partnership between the 133,000-student district and JA Finance Park, a capstone experience of the nonprofit Junior Achievement for middle school students that simulates the adult world of work and financial responsibility. Her involvement in this partnership proved prescient.
This fall, Junior Achievement of Greater Washington selected Goldson to serve as its next CEO and president. In succeeding the three-decade tenure of former head Ed Grenier, Goldson became the first Black woman in the regional organization’s history to hold the position.
Education Week caught up with Goldson to find out more about the work of Junior Achievement to give students real-world experiences, why it felt like a natural transition for her, and what early statistics reveal about the program’s influence on teen participants.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You retired from Prince George’s County schools at the end of the 2022-23 school year. In October 2024, you accepted the position of CEO and president of the Junior Achievement of Greater Washington. Why not just slide into retirement and relax?
Education has always been my passion, and the work has never been about just having a job. It really is about making an impact. I still live in the same community that I served for 32 years, and after being off for a year-and-a-half after retiring, I still felt the need to give back. And Junior Achievement was one of those organizations that I supported and truly fell in love with when I was chief of operations at Prince George’s.
What hooked you on Junior Achievement?
Well, if we really listen to what students are saying to us—especially when they say, “Why do I have to learn this?”—then we know that we have to do something different in how we educate them. Junior Achievement directly addresses this disconnect by bringing in real-world experiences into the classroom.
Junior Achievement partners with corporations that are willing to share their expertise about the world of work with students. What are you hearing from these business partners about the skills that will make students “workforce ready?”
There’s a lot of talk about soft skills, what I like to call “power” skills. These include things like working in groups, team-building, collaboration, the ability to create a PowerPoint and then to execute that PowerPoint presentation, flexibility, adaptability—all those skills that we [professionals] sometimes take for granted because we’ve been in the world of work for so long.
It’s those skills that we want to make sure are integrated into the classroom experience that students can then transfer over into the work environment.
Students can participate in Junior Achievement as early as middle school, right?
That’s right. In the three largest school districts in our area—Prince George’s County, Montgomery County, and Fairfax County public schools—7th or 8th grade students go to JA Finance Park for a day, where every student is given a persona. They could be single parents, they could be married, they could have kids, they may not have kids. They get handed down a job with a specific income.
Based on their personal and professional situations, students must navigate making financial decisions such as housing, transportation, paying bills, creating savings, dealing with debt. The goal is to leave at the end of that experience in the black, with some savings.
This must be eye-opening for middle school students.
Yes! There are times where students’ personas challenge them, and they’ll say things like, “Hey, I don’t want any more kids because they’re expensive. Can I give my kids back?”
And the answer is: “No, you cannot. Your parents can’t give you back, and we can’t give you back.”
What preparation do students receive before attending JA Finance Park?
Students complete a classroom curriculum that covers budgeting, credit, savings, and decisionmaking before they go to the finance park, where they get to apply everything they learned in class through these real-world simulations.
Does Junior Achievement offer any personal finance education beyond middle school?
Junior Achievement offers course content for any district that wants to offer financial literacy as a graduation requirement. Prince George’s County is a great example of that. Every one of their high school students now must earn a half a credit of financial literacy in order to graduate. The District of Columbia is moving in that direction as well.
Students whose schools participate in Junior Achievement experience its marquee high school program, 3DE. Tell me about that.
It’s an instructional model that really transforms high school education by integrating real-world challenges from actual businesses and organizations into students’ daily learning; some notable corporate partners include Arby’s, Deloitte, Truist, and the Home Depot.
These case challenges start in grade 9 and continue for four years. As students engage in case-based learning, they solve real-world business problems, working collaboratively and presenting their solutions in competitions before a panel of judges.
How does 3DE fit into the high school curriculum? Is it an elective?
It actually fits into the existing curriculum. So for example, in grade 9, students get a total of six case challenges that are interdisciplinary, meaning they integrate with multiple academic subjects and are tailored to each school district’s requirements.
A business data-related challenge might lean more heavily on math and economics, while a sustainability challenge could draw more circular connections to science and environmental studies.
Can you share a memorable winning competition?
Students from West Forsyth High School in Cumming, Ga., won the Home Depot National Case Competition, a 3DE Schools event that challenged students from 35 schools across the nation to expand Home Depot’s DIY customer base by creating an innovative shopping experience focusing on one of the Home Depot’s best-selling departments.
The winners proposed adding a display of renter-friendly items like peel-and-stick flooring, backsplashes, and wallpaper. They also suggested promoting these items via social media collaborations with DIY influencers to target a new customer base.
What do the winning competitors receive?
They get a trophy, and they get bragging rights. A lot of times, they also get to see the fruits of their labor. Corporations actually execute students’ solutions, which then means that their voice matters, and they can see how they play a role in their community.
Anecdotally, it sounds like Junior Achievement helps students gain real-world experiences. Do you have any data to support these success stories?
We just got our first set of data points. They reflect statistics based on a cohort of students from Potomac High School and Surrattsville High School in Clinton, MD.who completed four years of the Junior Achievement program, from 9th through 12th grades.
We saw there was a 24 percent reduction in chronic absenteeism, which is amazing, a 25 percent increase in graduation rate, a 30 percent higher rate in first-generation college enrollment, a 35 percent increase in students having a feeling of a sense of belonging, and 100 percent of staff members—principal and teachers—agreeing that they would recommend this program to their colleagues. That’s big.
What do you see as the most exciting takeaway?
The drop in chronic absenteeism is significant. I believe it came from students starting to have this commitment to the other members of their group.
They also realized that going to class was more than learning something from a textbook. They were excited to come into class to work on their projects. Some did surveys for their projects, and they were excited to get the results back. Overall, they felt like they were working in a corporation.
There was that sense of belonging that makes them want to be at school.
