Skip to main content

Economics content standards

The first thing I had students do in my Economics for Teachers course is look over California's content standards in economics (the California Council on Economic Education has a great booklet that pulls out the econ-specific standards for every grade), and compare them to the Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics. There were two reactions from my students I found particularly noteworthy. The first, which I sort of expected, was many commented that they did not learn this stuff in high school, although almost all of them went to high school in California after the standards were adopted. While they said that they did talk about some of the topics, most agreed that they didn't really see most of the content until they got to college. Of course, that is exactly what led me to create this class in the first place, but it was nice to have my perceived need for the class reinforced.

The other reaction that I found interesting was that several students asked about the standards in other states. I had mentioned that California is one of the leaders among states in developing high-level content standards, in all subjects, and one of the earliest states to require a full high school course in economics; according to a survey by the National Council on Economic Education, even now, only 17 states have this requirement, though this is up from 13 in 1998. But to be honest, I have never looked at the standards in other states. The Council of Chief State School Officers makes this pretty easy by having a website that compiles links to content standards from the ed departments of all 50 states. Looking over the econ standards for a few of the states that do require econ in high school (e.g., Florida, Michigan, Indiana, Idaho), there's a wide range in what's required, with California on the 'more specific' end of the spectrum. I found a working paper that assesses state standards in economics in the primary grades but if anyone knows of a similar survey of state standards in high school, please let me know. Maybe that will become a project for my class the next time around...
Labels:

Comments

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

This is about getting through, not re-inventing your course

As someone who has worked hard to build a lot of interactivity into my courses, I have never been interested in teaching fully online courses, in part because I have felt that the level of engaged interaction could never match that of a face-to-face class (not that there aren't some exceptional online courses out there; I just have a strong preference for the in-person connection). But the current situation is not really about building online courses that are 'just as good' as our face-to-face courses; it is about getting through this particular moment without compromising our students' learning too much. So if you are used to a lot of interaction in your F2F class, here are some options for adapting that interaction for a virtual environment: [NOTE: SDSU is a Zoom/mostly Blackboard campus so that's how I've written this but I am pretty sure that other systems have similar functionality] If you use clickers in class to break up what is otherwise mostly lect...
2 comments
Read more

Designing effective courses means thinking through the WHAT and the HOW (in that order)

I think most folks have heard by now that the California State University system (in which I work) has announced the intention to prepare for fall classes to be primarily online. I have to say, I am sort of confused why everyone is making such a big deal about this - no matter what your own institution is saying, no instructor who cares about their own mental health (let alone their students) should be thinking we are going back to 'business as usual' in the fall. In my mind, the only sane thing to do is at least prepare  for the possibility of still teaching remotely. Fortunately, unlike this spring, we now have a lot more time for that preparation. Faculty developers across the country have been working overtime since March, and they aren't slowing down now; we are all trying to make sure we can offer our faculty the training and resources they will need to redesign fall courses for online or hybrid modalities. But one big difference between the training faculty needed ...
Post a Comment
Read more

THE podcast on Implicit Bias

I keep telling myself I need to get back to blogging but, well, it's been a long pandemic... But I guess this is as good an excuse as any to post something: I am Bonni Stachowiak's guest on the latest episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, talking about implicit bias and how it can impact our teaching.  Doing the interview with Bonni (which was actually recorded a couple months ago) was a lot of fun. Listening to it now, I also realize how far I have come from the instructor I was when I started this blog over a decade ago. I've been away from the blog so long that I should probably spell this out: my current title is Associate Vice President for Faculty and Staff Diversity and I have responsibility for all professional learning and development related to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as inclusive faculty and staff recruitment, and unit-level diversity planning. But I often say that in a lot of ways, I have no business being in this position - I've ne...
Post a Comment
Read more