A Survey of Economic Understanding in U.S. High Schools

Abstract

The recent widespread adoption of online competitions in economic education provides a unique opportunity to make frequent assessments of economic literacy in U.S. classrooms. In this survey, student responses to test items from the Test of Economic Literacy (TEL) are used to create economic concept and content area achievement benchmarks. These benchmarks provide an interim renorming of the TEL and allow the authors to gauge the status of economic understanding among high school students. The data also allow the authors to compare learning outcomes between regular and advanced economics classes. Finally, the authors find that students in advanced economics classes significantly outperform students in regular classes.

Keywords:

• assessment
• K–12
• survey
• TEL

JEL codes:

• A10
• A21

Acknowledgments

The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions that greatly contributed to the final version of this manuscript.

Notes

*Difference of means is statistically significant at the 1 percent level.

1. Updating the TEL norms allows us to make a correction to a test item. Specifically, due to changes in the composition of the money supply, the answer to question 14 on the TEL form B exam is no longer correct. Fortunately, an existing distracter is now an appropriate answer. Test results for this survey reflect the new, correct answer.