Jackson Cronin, center, with his parents, teacher Pat Page and Rep. Jim Langevin and R.I. Treasurer Seth Magaziner.

There’s something about that Personal Finance class at EGHS – it keeps churning out writers who win the InvestWrite competition in Rhode Island and often go on to place within the top five nationally.

This year, the winner was sophomore Jackson Cronin, who learned his essay had won the state and placed fourth in the country – out of 20,000 entrants – last week, during “Financial Frenzy,” a forum at the high school with Personal Finance students and U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin, Rhode Island Treasurer Seth Magaziner and local state legislators Rep. Anthony Giarrusso and Sen. Mark Gee, and representatives from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Assoc. (SIFMA).

The elected officials were there in part to recognize the role students from EGHS played in getting the state Dept. of Education to adopt personal finance standards for high schools.

But they were also there to recognize Cronin, who wrote about why he thought investing in Lockhead Martin was a good long-term choice.

“I knew that I needed a company that had a strong foundation and had a plan for growth in the future. Lockheed Martin had exactly what I was looking for. Recently Lockheed Martin had established Lockheed Martin international which is an international branch of their company. For this reason in addition to being the most beneficial statistically I chose Lockheed Martin,” Cronin said via email.

“What was unique about Jackson’s was the fact he wasn’t looking at a company that was in the business-to-consumer market,” said business teacher Patricia Page. Instead, Lockhead Martin does business with governments, the U.S. government in particular.

Page said the InvestWrite assignment is not easy. Yet, in the past five years, EGHS has had five winning essayists: Bobby LePres, Charlotte Palmer (who also placed fifth nationally), Galen Riley, Andrew Miner (who placed second nationally) and now Cronin.

“This class has probably been one of the most influential classes that I have taken so far in my high school career,” he said of the Personal Finance course.  “This class exposed me to the world of finance and economics, which is a field that I have come to enjoy learning about. I believe that this course is very important to take during high school. This is because the topics covered in the class like investing, banking, and insurance are topics that I will need to know for the rest of my life.”