Skip to main content

Do high school econ courses prepare students for college econ courses?

I’m currently preparing to teach a course called Economics for Teachers for the first time this coming fall. I’ll explain much more about the course in future posts but the main idea is that it is for students who are planning to be high school teachers, perhaps in economics (though more likely another social science, like History). The idea for the class really started when I happened to see California’s content standards for 12th-grade economics. California is one of the leading states in the country when it comes to having well-developed and rigorous standards for its K-12 schools, and we were one of the first states to require all high school students to take a semester of economics, so I wasn’t surprised that we have standards that align fairly well with the voluntary National standards. But what struck me is that the standards really don’t look all that different from the learning objectives I lay out for my own principles classes. That led to me to wonder if students are actually learning what is laid out in the 12th-grade standards. If they are, I think my principles classes would be a lot different [I should note that almost all my students went to high school in California so from that perspective, it should be safe to assume that they have all had at least one semester of economics that ‘covered’ the state standards]. Given that most students seem to walk into my classroom with relatively little understanding of economic principles, why is that? When I think back to my own high school economics class, the only thing I really remember is playing some stock market game where we followed a particularly stock throughout the semester – I have no recollection what the point was or what I learned from that, nor do I remember seeing any connection to the economics course I took a year later in college. But is the problem with the classes (i.e., they aren’t actually covering the standards)? Or is it that students don’t retain much (particularly when senioritis has set in)? Or maybe a little of both?
Labels:

Comments

  1. Premika RatnamApril 29, 2011 at 7:30 AM

    Hi

    I was interested in relearning my economics to be a high school economics teacher. Where do I get the material to prepare and how do I go about getting prepared for the Cset exams etc.

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jennifer ImazekiMay 8, 2011 at 8:22 PM

    I don't know a whole lot about the exams but the best place to start is probably the National Council for Economic Education (http://www.councilforeconed.org/) or your state's local economic education organization.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AbrhaleyAugust 24, 2016 at 2:09 AM

    hi,
    i understand right now that i haven't properly learn economics in my prior university classes, thus it was challenging in my year university class. right now am university lecturer in economics, and am happy to teach economics but i don't believe that i have completely internalized economics.
    thanks

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Comments that contribute to the discussion are always welcome! Please note that spammy comments whose only purpose seems to be to direct traffic to a commercial site will be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

What are the costs?

I came across an interesting discussion about a 19-year-old intern who was fired from The Gazette in Colorado Springs for plagiarism. There appears to be some controversy over the fact that the editor publicly named the girl in a letter to readers (explaining and apologizing for the plagiarism), with some people saying that doing so was unduly harsh because this incident will now follow her for the rest of her career. I was intrigued by this discussion for two reasons - one, it seems pretty clear to me that this was not a case of ignorance (as I have often encountered with my own students who have no idea how to paraphrase or cite correctly) and two, putting aside the offense itself, I have often struggled with how to handle situations where there are long-term repercussions for a student, repercussions that lead the overall costs to be far higher than might seem warranted for the specific situation. As an example of the latter issue, I have occasionally taught seniors who need to p
5 comments
Read more

What was your high school economics experience like?

As I mentioned in my last post , I am asking my Econ for Teachers students to reflect on their reading by responding to discussion prompts. It occurred to me that it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to share my thoughts on those issues here and see if anyone wants to chime in. For this week, the students were asked to read the California and national content standards , an article by Mark Schug and others about why social science teachers dread teaching economics and how to overcome the dread, an article by William Walstad on the importance of economics for understanding the world around us and making better personal decisions (with some evidence on the dismal state of economic literacy in this country), and another article by Walstad on the status of economic education in high schools (full citations below). The reflection prompt asks the students to then answer the following questions: What was your high school econ experience like? What do you remember most from that class? How do
2 comments
Read more

When is an exam "too hard"?

By now, you may have heard about the biology professor at Louisiana State (Baton Rouge) who was removed from teaching an intro course where "more than 90 percent of the students... were failing or had dropped the class." The majority of the comments on the Inside Higher Ed story about it are supportive of the professor, particularly given that it seems like the administration did not even talk to her about the situation before acting. I tend to fall in the "there's got to be more to the story so I'll reserve judgment" camp but the story definitely struck a nerve with me, partly because I recently spent 30 minutes "debating" with a student about whether the last midterm was "too hard" and the whole conversation was super-frustrating. To give some background: I give three midterms and a cumulative final, plus have clicker points and Aplia assignments that make up about 20% of the final grade. I do not curve individual exams but will cu
3 comments
Read more