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Abstract
High school transcript data were used in this study to estimate the percentage of high school graduates who complete an economics course, and to examine course-taking trends in economics from 1982 to 2009. In 2009, 58 percent of high school graduates took an economics course, up from about 45 percent from 1990 to 2005. The increases in economics enrollments over the years included in this study are consistent with the trends in the number of states mandating an economics course to be taken for graduation. Estimated percentages are reported across the demographics of high school students. Enrollments in economics are compared to enrollments in other high school social studies courses.
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Notes
1. Results reported in this study for 2005 and 2009 were calculated with the use of the HSTS restricted-use data sets. The HSTS user's guides and technical reports (Shettle et al. Citation2008; Nord et al. Citation2011) contain detailed information on sampling of schools and graduates, data collection procedures, and weighting procedures. Results for the years 1982 to 2000 were taken from The 2000 High School Transcript Study Tabulations: Comparative Data on Credits Earned and Demographics for 2000, 1998, 1994, 1990, 1987, and 1982 High School Graduates (NCES Citation2007), and from direct contact with NCES. NCES no longer publishes a detailed tabulations report for the HSTS program.
2. The Council for Economic Education (CEE) conducts a “Survey of the States” every few years to monitor content standards in economics and economics courses that are being offered and required across the United States. We used the 2009 CEE survey for this study to be consistent with our use of the 2009 HSTS data set. The current survey (CEE Citation2012) shows that 22 states have a course mandate for economics, with Utah being added since the 2009 survey.
3. The HSTS data can be used to calculate the percentages for the year in school that students took a basic economics course in high school for the most recent HSTS years (2005, 2009): grade 9 (2.9, 2.0); grade 10 (8.8, 5.0); grade 11 (12.6, 12.0); and grade 12 (75.8, 80.9).
4. The HSTS data can be used to calculate the percentages of students by grade level who took a college-level course in economics in high school for the most recent HSTS years (2005, 2009): grade 9 (0.0, 0.0); grade 10 (0.6, 0.6); grade 11 (4.4, 12.7); and grade 12 (94.9, 86.8).
5. Similar breakdowns for the HSTS years 1982 through 1994 can be found in Walstad and Rebeck (Citation2000).
6. NCES's definition of community type changed from (1) urban, (2) suburban, and (3) rural in 2005, to (1) urban, (2) suburban, (3) town, and (4) rural in 2009. We combined the 2009 categories “town” and “suburban” for this table, which made the percentages in each of the three categories roughly consistent across the two years. Caution should be taken before making strong comparisons across years for this category. See Shettle et al. (Citation2008) and Nord et al. (Citation2011) for detailed descriptions of categories.