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 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…

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…

This study examines whether the Problem Based Economics curriculum developed by the Buck Institute for Education improves grade 12 students' content knowledge as measured by the Test of Economic Literacy, a test refined by the National Council on Economic Education (NCEE) over decades. Students' problem-solving skills in economics were also…

This study compared the effectiveness of problem-based learning (PBL) and traditional instructional approaches in developing high-school students' macroeconomics knowledge and examined whether PBL was differentially effective with students demonstrating different levels of four aptitudes: verbal ability, interest in economics, preference for group…

During the month of December, 1914, representatives of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce conferred with the Commissioner of Education in Washington concerning the possibility of a survey of the San Francisco public school system under the direction of the Bureau of Education. At that time the Commissioner of Education drafted a statement of…