The COVID-19 pandemic made it necessary for instructors to innovate, and some of the innovations will persist and be refined post-pandemic. An economics elective at Claremont McKenna College provides examples. Innovations likely to persist include replacing in-class exams with context-rich assignments and conducting a set of student presentations…

We surveyed high school students in Southern California to investigate whether there is an improvement in financial attitudes from eight class periods of financial literacy intervention in a high school economics course. We examine whether the money management (MM) and financial investing (FI) components of financial instruction influence…

The principal investigator of a National Science Foundation project, "Economics at Community Colleges," surveyed community college economics faculty and organized workshops, webinars, and regional meetings to address community college faculty isolation from new ideas in economics and economics instruction. Survey results, combined with…

Faced with shrinking state funds and pressure to raise graduation rates, California State University, Northridge piloted an early alert system in courses with high failure rates. One section of introductory microeconomics was selected for participation in the campus pilot. The early alert system is intended to flag at-risk students and provide…

This paper reflects on the experience of the 1999-2002 minority pipeline program (MPP) at the University of California, Riverside. With support from the American Economic Association, the MPP identified students of color interested in economics, let them explore economic issues affecting minority communities, and encouraged them to consider…

Faced with shrinking state funds, rising student demand, high failure rates, and racial and ethnic achievement gaps, the introductory microeconomics course became a bottleneck for business students at California State University, Northridge. The Economics Department responded with the creation of a flipped, introductory microeconomics course where…

The University of California, Berkeley sends more undergraduate students to economics PhD programs than any other public university. While this fact is surely a function of its size, there may be lessons from the Berkeley experience that others could adopt. To investigate why Berkeley generates so many economics PhD students, the author convened…

The study described in this report included 128 high school economics teachers from 106 schools in Arizona and California, half of whom were randomly assigned to the "Problem Based Economics Instruction" condition and half of whom were randomly assigned to the comparison condition. High levels of teacher attrition occurred after…

The authors extend the literature on the efficacy of high school economics instruction in two directions. First, they assess how much economic knowledge that California students acquired in their compulsory high school course is retained on their entering college. Second, using as a control group some college students from the state of Washington,…

This article concerns textbook analysis regarding the presentation of socialism in four leading high school social studies books, one in each of the following subjects: United States history, world history, United States government, and economics. Findings indicate that students relying on these texts to gain understanding of socialism and…

What is the best way to allocate students to small teams in those economics courses that rely on small group work to enhance individual student learning? While experts in collaborative learning provide many suggestions, little empirical work has been done. This article begins to fill the gap. It examines whether a variety of characteristics of the…

The issues surrounding the federal budget, national debt, and budget deficit are complex, but not beyond the reach of young students. This study finds scant treatment of the federal budget, national debt, and budget deficit in high schools today. It is hardly surprising that high school teachers spend so little time discussing these topics in…

Larger classes are often associated with lower student achievement. The author tested the hypothesis that the introduction of personal response systems significantly improves scores in a 250-seat classroom, through the channels of improved attendance and engagement. She focused on how continuous participation with the technology could change…

The primary purpose of this study is to assess student-level impacts of a problem-based instructional approach to high school economics. The curriculum approach examined here was designed to increase class participation and content knowledge for high school students who are learning economics. This study tests the effectiveness of Problem Based…

Since 1995, the Buck Institute has partnered with university economists and expert teachers to create the Problem Based Economics curriculum. The curriculum was developed to respond to NCEE (National Council on Economic Education) standards, and it is supported by professional development for teachers. This study examines whether the Problem Based…