The undergraduate economics coursework of elementary and secondary school teachers

Abstract

In this study, the authors analyze the undergraduate economics coursework of U.S. college graduates who became pre-college classroom teachers. The results show that teachers successfully completed on average the equivalent of about half an economics course in their undergraduate coursework. About 6 in 10 teachers earned no course credits in economics. Of teachers certified to teach social studies—the ones most likely to teach economics—40 percent did not take an undergraduate course in economics. The percentages are 19 percent for high school teachers, 48 percent for middle school teachers, and 76 percent for elementary school teachers. High school teachers certified to teach social studies completed an average of only about one and a half economics courses as undergraduates.

Keywords:

• Baccalaureate and Beyond
• coursework in economics
• economics credits
• pre-college teachers
• undergraduate transcripts

JEL code:

• A2

Notes

Notes

1 All numbers of observations are rounded to comply with NCES requirements.

2 Sensitivity analysis was conducted to see if the primary overall results (specifically, proportion of teachers without economics courses, economics course count for teachers, and economics credits for teachers) were sensitive to our decisions as to whom should be included in the sample. The results of two analyses are reported here. In the first analysis, instead of restricting the sample to teachers with a complete transcript, the sample is widened to include all teachers. The estimate of teachers without an economics course should increase because incomplete transcripts have fewer courses reported; some of the unreported courses are, of course, economics courses. The second analysis addresses the fact that table 3 uses a teacher’s grade level to break down the results. The problem is that no grade level is reported for 380 teachers. To see if omitting these teachers biased the results in some way, the overall results were estimated with the 380 teachers omitted. This selection was likely random, and so significant differences were not expected. The table below summarizes the results.

Table

The analysis confirmed our suspicions. Including incomplete transcripts increased the estimate of those with no economics courses from 0.643 to 0.675, an increase of 0.032, which is close to twice the standard error of the original estimate. Omitting those teachers for whom the grade level is not known increased the proportion with no economics course by 0.007, which is considerably smaller. The other estimates reported above show a similar pattern. In any case, all of these estimates support the general conclusion that many teachers do not have economics courses on their transcripts.