Once regulators' $1.4 billion agreement in principle with Wall Street firms is formally approved by the SEC next month, $85 million of that total will be set aside for investor education, with a special emphasis on educating high school teens on the basics of saving and investing. The education portion, like the $450 million going to independent research, is expected to be paid over five years.

"The best investor is an educated investor," says Cynthia Glassman, the SEC commissioner who was the driving force behind the education set-aside. ''Hopefully, we'll have kids graduating from high school who know the financial facts of life. The better educated they are, the less likely that they will be duped, or that they will make inappropriate investments.''

A variety of government groups and financial services companies provide investor-education training to employees who manage their own 401(k) portfolios, but teaching financial life skills to teens has largely been left to educators who pursue the topic on their own. With access to an $85 million pot, a number of high schools are expected to add investor-education programs to their curricula.

The American Financial Services Association will test a course called Money Skill from January through May. It is designed for 11th- and 12th-graders, says AFSA President Randy Lively, and will be available for national rollout next September. Some high schools in South Carolina, Wisconsin, Illinois and California have agreed to try the course.

AFSA studies show that many Americans have trouble managing money because they were never trained properly.

''They don't get life skills training when they're young and in school, so they end up learning from the trial and error method, which frequently leads to bad choices,'' Lively says.

Another problem is that about a third of high school graduates don't go on to college immediately after graduation, a study released earlier this year found.

When those young people join the workforce and begin saving, they learn the financial rules of the road the hard way -- in the school of ''hard knocks,'' Lively says.

For those opposed to the commercialization of public schools, which have allowed soft-drink companies and fast-food chains to sell products in high schools, don't worry. The SEC says none of the materials in the new education curriculum will be branded by financial-services firms like Merrill Lynch or Charles Schwab.

-- Greg Farrell