IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/39883.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

District level mandates and high school students' understanding of economics

Author

Listed:
  • Grimes, Paul W.
  • Millea, Meghan J.
  • Thomas, M. Kathleen

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of district-level course mandates on students’ end-of-course economic understanding. Data were collected from Mississippi high school students studying economics in three different course environments. Students were either enrolled in a one semester economics course required for graduation, enrolled in a one semester course taken as an elective, or studying economics as an infusion subject within a United States history course. A regression-based selection model was estimated to control for students’ demographic characteristics, educational attributes, market experiences, and school attributes. The results indicated that student test scores were significantly less for those students studying economics as an infusion subject and when taking a mandated stand-alone course, ceteris paribus. The authors conclude that course mandates may result in teacher and student issues that reduce the overall observed level of test performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Grimes, Paul W. & Millea, Meghan J. & Thomas, M. Kathleen, 2008. "District level mandates and high school students' understanding of economics," MPRA Paper 39883, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:39883
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/39883/1/MPRA_paper_39883.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William B. Walstad, 2001. "Economic Education in U.S. High Schools," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 195-210, Summer.
    2. William B. Walstad & Stephen Buckles, 2008. "The National Assessment of Educational Progress in Economics: Findings for General Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 541-546, May.
    3. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    4. Becker, William E & Walstad, William B, 1990. "Data Loss from Pretest to Posttest as a Sample Selection Problem," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(1), pages 184-188, February.
    5. William B. Walstad & Ken Rebeck, 2001. "Assessing the Economic Understanding of U.S. High School Students," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 452-457, May.
    6. Grimes, Paul W. & Millea, Meghan J., 2003. "Economic education as public policy: the determinants of state-level mandates," MPRA Paper 39884, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Belfield, Clive R. & Levin, Henry M., 2004. "Should high school economics courses be compulsory?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 351-360, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cynthia Harter & John F.R. Harter, 2010. "Is Financial Literacy Improved by Participating in a Stock Market Game?," Journal for Economic Educators, Middle Tennessee State University, Business and Economic Research Center, vol. 10(1), pages 21-32, Summer.
    2. Kimberly Burnett & Sumner La Croix, 2010. "The Dog ATE my Economics Homework! Estimates of the Average Effect of Treating Hawaii’s Public High School Students with Economics," Working Papers 2010-01, University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
    3. Phillip Saunders, 2011. "A history of economic education," Chapters, in: Gail M. Hoyt & KimMarie McGoldrick (ed.), International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul W. Grimes, 2011. "Economic Education in American Elementary and Secondary Schools," Chapters, in: Gail M. Hoyt & KimMarie McGoldrick (ed.), International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics, chapter 25, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Kimberly Burnett & Sumner La Croix, 2009. "Economic Education’s Roller Coaster Ride In Hawaii, 1956-2006," Working Papers 200901, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    3. Paul W. Grimes & Paul S. Nelson, 1998. "The Social Issues Pedagogy vs. The Traditional Principles of Economics: An Empirical Examination," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 42(1), pages 56-64, March.
    4. William Bosshardt & Peter E. Kennedy, 2011. "Data Resources and Econometric Techniques," Chapters, in: Gail M. Hoyt & KimMarie McGoldrick (ed.), International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics, chapter 35, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. A. J. Reynolds & J. A. Temple, "undated". "Extended early childhood intervention and school achievement: Age 13 findings from the Chicago longitudinal study," Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Papers 1095-96, University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty.
    6. Kimberly Burnett & Sumner La Croix, 2010. "The Dog ATE my Economics Homework! Estimates of the Average Effect of Treating Hawaii’s Public High School Students with Economics," Working Papers 2010-01, University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
    7. Kaiser, Tim & Oberrauch, Luis & Pang, Ming Fai & Seeber, Günther, 2021. "Using the ‘Test of Economic Competence’ with secondary school students in Hong Kong: Results and psychometric properties," EconStor Preprints 236205, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    8. Paul W. Grimes, 1995. "Economic Education for At-Risk Students: An Evaluation of Choices & Changes," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 39(1), pages 71-83, March.
    9. Michael C. Kimmitt & Kimberly M. Burnett, 2006. "Determinants of Success in High School Economics: Lessons from the Field," Working Papers 200609, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    10. Jacob, Robert & Christandl, Fabian & Fetchenhauer, Detlef, 2011. "Economic experts or laypeople? How teachers and journalists judge trade and immigration policies," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 662-671.
    11. Darima Fotheringham & Michael A. Wiles, 2023. "The effect of implementing chatbot customer service on stock returns: an event study analysis," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 51(4), pages 802-822, July.
    12. Song, Wei-Ling & Uzmanoglu, Cihan, 2016. "TARP announcement, bank health, and borrowers’ credit risk," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 22-32.
    13. Raymundo M. Campos-Vázquez, 2013. "Efectos de los ingresos no reportados en el nivel y tendencia de la pobreza laboral en México," Ensayos Revista de Economia, Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Facultad de Economia, vol. 0(2), pages 23-54, November.
    14. Jonathan Gruber & Aaron Yelowitz, 1999. "Public Health Insurance and Private Savings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(6), pages 1249-1274, December.
    15. Campbell, Randall C. & Nagel, Gregory L., 2016. "Private information and limitations of Heckman's estimator in banking and corporate finance research," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 186-195.
    16. Leye Li & Louise Yi Lu & Dongyue Wang, 2022. "External labour market competitions and stock price crash risk: evidence from exposures to competitor CEOs’ award‐winning events," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(S1), pages 1421-1460, April.
    17. Calcagno, R. & Renneboog, L.D.R., 2004. "Capital Structure and Managerial Compensation : The Effects of Renumeration Seniority," Discussion Paper 2004-120, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    18. Son K. Lam & Thomas E. DeCarlo & Ashish Sharma, 2019. "Salesperson ambidexterity in customer engagement: do customer base characteristics matter?," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 659-680, July.
    19. McCausland, David & Pouliakas, Konstantinos & Theodossiou, Ioannis, 2005. "Some are Punished and Some are Rewarded: A Study of the Impact of Performance Pay on Job Satisfaction," MPRA Paper 14243, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Gary F. Peters & Andrea M. Romi & Juan Manuel Sanchez, 2019. "The Influence of Corporate Sustainability Officers on Performance," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 159(4), pages 1065-1087, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mandates; Economic literacy; High School; Education policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A2 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics
    • A21 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - Pre-college

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:39883. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.