By April Somboun

Thousands of high school students nationwide competed in the National Economics Challenge! We are delighted to share with you the 34 teams from the Adam Smith Division and 33 teams from the David Ricardo Division who have made it to the semi-finals.

The teams will now compete in the semi-finals for a chance to advance to final round which will be held in New York City! Four teams from each Division with the highest scores will advance to compete for the grand prize and be crowned the National Economics Challenge Champions.

Thank you to all the students and their coaches who participated in the first round of competitions. We hope this was a valuable experience to all of you. And, good luck to the semi-finalists!

To learn more about the National Economics Challenge and keep tab on the finalists, please visit our site: www.nationaleconomicschallenge.org.

The post 2016 Semi-Finalists: National Economics Challenge appeared first on Council for Economic Education.

POSTED: April 20, 2016 | BY: brendan

By April Somboun

Written by: Brian Page, Chair, Council for Economic Education Teacher Advisory Council

Later this spring, high schools across the country will be graduating students from a world of test scores to a world of credit scores. Many teens will unknowingly be making decisions that will impact them in the decade to come. Yet most lawmakers have fallen short of respecting personal finance as a dedicated subject worthy of stand alone classes required for graduation, taught by teachers trained to teach it well. It’s time we work together to advocate on behalf of high school students to prepare them for the real world.

High school science, math and language arts teachers receive content specific instruction in college, and are required to pass content specific tests to earn teacher certification. Personal finance… not so much. Often times when mandates are passed, they require the integration of personal finance into other coursework. The mandate is often dumped into the laps of teachers who have never been trained to teach personal finance.

A FINRA Investor Education Foundation-funded study, State Financial Education Mandates: It’s All in the Implementation, examined the effectiveness of state mandates on financial education for high-school students. The study noted that if a rigorous financial education program is carefully implemented, it can improve the credit scores and lower the probability of credit delinquency for young adults. In other words, we need to train our teachers, require semester courses devoted to personal finance, and use hands on teaching methods that focus on relevant content.

NCLB aside, our country has historically been a locally controlled education system. This changed following the financial collapse in 2008. Somehow a banking collapse led to education “reform”, and schools were faced with a multitude of new evaluation systems and testing requirements. Subsequently, schools and lawmakers now seem to lack the appetite to pass further education mandates. This should not preclude us from trying, using a common sense approach that does not further burden our schools. I’m confident that if asked, parents and teens would be much happier about recent reform efforts if standardized test scores were a little less important, and helping them build their own credit scores were a little more important.

The post Graduating From Test Scores to Credit Scores appeared first on Council for Economic Education.

POSTED: April 7, 2016 | BY: brendan

By April Somboun

Written by: Matthew Gherman 11/12th Grade Teacher of AP Economics, American History, ELL Global History at Edward R. Murrow High School, Brooklyn, NY. Matthew received the 2015 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Teaching Champion Award.

Personal finance is a lot like relationships. They’re both taboo subjects in which everyone professes their advice and expertise, but in reality each is a very imprecise science. For high school students, these two topics are numbers one and two in terms of their curiosity (personal finance is probably a distant, but strong, second place). The curiosity and eagerness that surround this topic are what makes it fun to teach. Students are familiar with many of the terms: interest rates, stocks, bonds, checking account, credit cards, credit score; yet there is so much room for exploration and enlightenment. For both finance and relationships there is wisdom that would be helpful to know at the age of 18, but is only earned from life experience. Therefore, the best approach to teaching the subject incorporates knowledge learned by trial and error, paving the road for the next generation.

Also at the age of 18, these are topics that might seem far away, but really they are much closer and include situations that students need to be ready for. Students need to understand that their credit score is their life GPA, and they need to start building it now and learning how to build it now. At 18, they can open up an investment account and learn how to begin to grow their money at a rate faster than a savings account. They need to begin building that big savings for important purchases that will all possibly come within a decade: college, car, apartment, engagement ring, marriage, home and children. Many of these are concepts that they probably shrug at as “not my problem now,” but that decade goes by fast, and with it a lot of missed opportunity to improve their futures. The savings and investing which will make each stage of their lives easier starts at 18 (or even earlier) and the teacher is the provider of all of this information. The questions and enthusiasm that they bring to class enhance the teaching experience exponentially.

The ease with which these topics can be differentiated is also a great selling point for teaching it. Depending on student strengths, your lessons can range from just reviewing the basics to dissecting and debating scholarly articles and evaluating political implications. There is also opportunity for independent research, web-quests and presentation projects which add a different flavor to the class. Additionally, teachers aren’t limited by being shackled to a state test at the end of the year. This subject allows creativity for both teachers and students.

Personal finance is strongly connected to the civic responsibility of voting. So many times politics is reduced to sound bites, preying on an uneducated class of voters. There are many social political issues that are shades of gray and fun to debate, but ultimately, the questions all students should have on their minds are what does the government do with our money and what are the implications of government actions on our wages, healthcare, investments, mortgages, and income taxes. Teaching personal finance creates a better informed and responsible citizenry.

The most important aspect of teaching personal finance is that these are life skills. This is the most useful course that students will take in high school because it will help them to be college ready, career ready, and life ready.

The post Personal Finance Is A Lot Like Relationships appeared first on Council for Economic Education.

POSTED: April 5, 2016 | BY: brendan

By April Somboun

As you may already know, today is the first day of Financial Literacy Month and we have kicked off our #MySavingsStory video series with mom and entrepreneur, Rosie Pope.

Check her video on our Facebook page and find out how what her father taught her about savings and her one money advice to everyone.

Learn more about the #MySavingsStory campaign and who we’ve enlisted throughout the entire month of April.

The post Rosie Pope’s #MySavingsStory appeared first on Council for Economic Education.

POSTED: April 1, 2016 | BY: brendan

By April Somboun

Happy Financial Literacy Month!

The Council for Economic Education (CEE) is thrilled to announce the launch of the #MySavingsStory Video Campaign to inform and inspire kids to understand and take control of their financial lives. We’ve enlisted fashion designer Elie Tahari, best-selling author of Diary of A Wimpy Kid, Jeff Kinney, entrepreneur Rosie Pope, and others to share, via videos, what they’ve learned about the importance of financial literacy and saving.

Below you will find the names of those involved and dates when their videos will be released throughout Financial Literacy Month. Make sure to check our Facebook page to watch their #MySavingsStory videos and hear their personal finance stories and savings advice firsthand!

We are so grateful to all who have joined the cause:

• April 1: Rosie Pope, Entrepreneur
• April 3: Brian Kelly, The Points Guy, Entrepreneur and Blogger
• April 6: Melissa Giannini, Editor-in-Chief, Nylon Magazine
• April 8: Noelle Scaggs, Fitz and The Tantrums Vocalist
• April 9: Jeff Lacker, American Economist and President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
• April 10: Natalie Zfat, Social Media Entrepreneur
• April 13: Nan J. Morrison, President & CEO, Council for Economic Education
• April 16: John Dioso, Managing Editor, Glamour Magazine
• April 18: Jeff Kinney, Author, Diary of A Wimpy Kid
• April 20: Elie Tahari, Fashion Designer
• April 22: Mona Patel, CEO & Founder, Motivate Design
• April 23: Annamaria Lusardi, Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Economics and Accountancy, George Washington School of Business
• April 24: Dan Kadlec, Journalist, Time Magazine
• April 26: Veeral Rathod, CEO & Founder, J. Hilburn
• April 28: Kelli Grant, Consumer Reporter, CNBC.com

Through these personal stories, we hope to demonstrate how critically important financial literacy is for our nation’s students.

Also, we encourage you to share your own #MySavingsStory with us! You can do so by creating your own video (60 seconds or less) or by posting a personal finance story/lesson to your Facebook page and/or blog. Make sure to use the #MySavingsStory hashtag when sharing and tweet us at @council4econed so, we can further spread your story.

View Press Release.

The post CEE Launches #MySavingsStory Campaign to Celebrate Financial Literacy Month appeared first on Council for Economic Education.

POSTED: April 1, 2016 | BY: brendan

By April Somboun

On March 8th, people all over the world will be celebrating International Women’s Day and its theme of gender equality. While women have made progressive strides economically, there is still a long way to go.

According to the World Economic Forum the United States ranks 20^th when it comes to the economic gap between men and women. Even Iceland, ranked number one, does not have complete gender parity.

Here are some lessons for middle school and high school students that highlight women in the economy.

The Gender Gap

• Making Sense with Paul Solman: Women’s Fund Seeks Share of Prosperity for Female-Focused Firm: In this video (8:49), Solman puts the spotlight on the lack of women in high positions in business today despite the fact that nearly half of advanced business degrees are earned by women. Solman interviews Sallie Krawcheck, Chair of Ellevate, about her new direction—investing in businesses that have a large proportion of women in high positions.

Women Workers

• Lowell Workers and Producers Respond to Incentives: At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, Francis Lowell built textile factories that only employed women. Documents attached to this lesson describe how the women evolved from being complacent to protesting the unfairness of their working conditions. The lesson highlights how economic incentives for factory owners and workers affect their behavior.
• Worker Safety: The Triangle Fire Legacy: The employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory were predominantly young women. When the factory caught fire in 1911, about 150 workers died because most exits were blocked. This tragedy led to new government policy supporting the safety of workers in all industries. In this lesson, students assess the potential costs, benefits, and effectiveness of government and labor actions that can be used to improve worker safety.

We hope you’ll celebrate International Women’s Day with us and use these lesson plans as a teachable moment in your classroom.

The post Celebrating #IWD2016 | Lesson Plans Highlighting Women in the Economy appeared first on Council for Economic Education.

POSTED: March 2, 2016 | BY: brendan

By April Somboun

“There are so many resources out there on how to teach and what materials to use. How do I narrow it down to get the best of what I need?”

If these thoughts resonate with you, then you definitely have to bookmark BloomBoard. The educators at BloomBoard know that curation of relevant content is one of the most valuable services one can offer on the Internet.

Starting this month, BloomBoard has invited the Council for Economic Education (CEE) along with other experienced educators to create Collections of resources targeted to specific teaching objectives. As the leader of a national movement to bring economics education and financial literacy to every child, we know how to tackle the challenges involved in teaching these subjects to children in grades K-12.

For our debut Collection on BloomBoard, we decided to focus on teaching financial literacy to young learners in kindergarten through fifth grade. There’s good reason to start teaching finance early. Researchers have found that when elementary students study financial literacy, they develop more positive financial attitudes and behaviors such as saving that will continue throughout their lives.

Our Collection recommends teaching financial literacy with a wide range of resources including lesson plans, activities, songs, videos, professional development, and research.

Here are some of the resources that we recommend in this Collection:

Getting Started: EconEdLink: Join thousands of K-5 teachers successfully using these lessons to teach concepts such as the cost of choosing between “this and that” and how scarcity influences their world to young learners.

Kiddynomics: An Economics Curriculum for Young Learners Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis: Kiddynomics introduces young children to economic thinking with five lessons based on popular storybooks.

Playful Economics: Scarcity, EconEdLink: Award-winning 5^th-grade teacher, Shanan Reigle, shows how she teaches scarcity in this instructional video. Students move from creating products with play dough to tweeting about their new understanding.

Creating a Classroom Economy Unit Plan by Beth Newingham, Scholastic: Students build a class economy replete with specific jobs, salaries, and currency. As class citizens, they must manage their money, using credits, debits, and checks.

Visitors to Bloomboard can save, share, and follow Collections. They will also be able to earn micro-credentials for their skills.

We would also like to introduce Buck Institute for Education (BIE) who posted the Collection, Gold Standard Project Based Learning: An Overview, on BloomBoard following ours. BIE creates, gathers, and shares high-quality Project Based Learning (PBL) instructional practices and products and provides highly effective services to teachers, schools, and districts.showing teachers how to use Project Based Learning in all grade levels and subject areas. Their comprehensive overview will help teachers get started with PBL.

We hope you will take a look at BIE’s Collection as well as others on BloomBoard. And, join us on BloomBoard in using and providing content that is relevant for our teachers today.

The post CEE Teams Up with BloomBoard appeared first on Council for Economic Education.

POSTED: February 17, 2016 | BY: brendan

By April Somboun

By: Marc A. Johnson, Education Program Director, Colorado Council for Economic Education

Professional development (PD) for teachers has sometimes been characterized as unappreciated and ineffective. Those of us who have taught long enough can certainly recall mandated PD experiences that were less than engaging, uninspiring and downright tedious.

But it’s unfair to apply that broad brush to all PD. In our experience, both as recipients and deliverers of workshops and seminars from our respective state councils for economic education, PD can be stimulating and rewarding for teachers and have a strong chance of leading to greater student achievement.

Among the deliverers of PD in economics and/or personal finance, state councils and centers seem to be best suited to provide the best opportunities for teachers. The model varies from state to state, but there are commonalities. Most can boast a stable of credible academics whose guidance can be relied on by teachers – they can take this stuff back into their classrooms with great confidence in the integrity of the message. Second, most workshops help teachers with the pedagogy. Classes/workshops are generally infused with exemplary demonstrations of methods – often by mentor teachers who show us the best ways to teach this stuff to kids. Finally, most PD from state councils and centers includes excellent resources, often provided from the vast library of carefully developed and well-vetted lessons from the national Council for Economic Education.

It’s this three-tiered construction of PD – expertise, pedagogy and resources – that make targeted, customized PD by centers and councils for economic education well worth their while. Individual teachers, departments, schools and school districts would be well-advised to seek out their state councils/centers and explore the possibilities of participating in high quality, efficacious PD in economics and/or personal finance.

To learn more about your local state councils/centers visit: http://councilforeconed.org/resources/local-affiliates.

The post Effective Professional Development via CEE’s State Council and Centers appeared first on Council for Economic Education.

POSTED: February 10, 2016 | BY: brendan

By April Somboun

By: Derek D’Angelo, President, Michigan Council on Economic Education

Why do you wear your seat belt while in a motor vehicle? I don’t wear my seat belt because of a government requirement, I wear it because my mother was in a horrible accident. It was a cold February morning in 1993 and my mother was on the way to work when her mini-van caught a patch of ice. The vehicle began to slide uncontrollably and she was t-boned on the passenger side by a truck. She was wearing her seat belt, spent a week in the hospital, and eventually made a full recovery.

Michigan was the first state to enact a seat belt law in July of 1985. Initially the legislation was met with much resistance from legislators and a populace whose seat belt usage was less than 20%. In the year of my mother’s accident the seat belt usage rate in Michigan had climbed to 64.4%. Merely establishing a requirement was only a first step toward moving the seat belt usage rate to the 93.3% it sits at today. Just as important was the research that showed people how many lives were saved, the graphic pictures of those who were not, enforcement efforts, and technological improvements to vehicles that followed enactment of the legislation.

Now that 20 state legislatures have jumped the hurdle to require high school students take a course in economics and lawmakers in 17 states require high school students take a course in personal finance, the work has just begun. Seldom do we put enough focus on the importance of the steps following legislative action. Establishing a state requirement is only the first step in the process of building a citizenry equipped to make financially sound decisions. Teachers must be supported through an investment in high-quality professional development. The delivery of this professional development must be strategically designed to target the needs of the teacher within the subject they teach. The model of large auditorium sit-and-get district required professional development should be abandoned for a more differentiated approach that encourages a growth mindset in teachers.

It’s time for a new conversation about teacher improvement. Teachers should receive ongoing professional development, tailored to their unique needs as lead learners in their classrooms. State Councils and Centers for Economic Education are uniquely positioned to provide high-quality, low cost professional development to those teaching economics and financial literacy. Across the nation, State Councils and Centers for Economic Education are equipped to provide the curriculum tools, the pedagogical support, and the community of peers needed for teachers to successfully implement and create the change sought by establishing state standards in economics and financial literacy.

We know that states with economic and financial literacy requirements are more likely to save, more likely to pay off credit cards in full each month, and less likely to be compulsive buyers. In 1985, the establishment of a state requirement in Michigan jumped seat belt usage to 60%, before falling back to 45% shortly thereafter. It is not enough to merely establish a state standard and believe all the problems will go away. The establishment of state standards in economics and financial literacy must be followed by a proper investment in the educators who will be delivering the messages to our children. It seems a much better and more cost-effective option than just hoping children learn from the accidents they witness.

The post State Leaders Should Provide Professional Development for Our Teachers appeared first on Council for Economic Education.

POSTED: February 8, 2016 | BY: brendan

By April Somboun

By: Derek D’Angelo, President, Michigan Council on Economic Education

Why do you wear your seat belt while in a motor vehicle? I don’t wear my seat belt because of a government requirement, I wear it because my mother was in a horrible accident. It was a cold February morning in 1993 and my mother was on the way to work when her mini-van caught a patch of ice. The vehicle began to slide uncontrollably and she was t-boned on the passenger side by a truck. She was wearing her seat belt, spent a week in the hospital, and eventually made a full recovery.

Michigan was the first state to enact a seat belt law in July of 1985. Initially the legislation was met with much resistance from legislators and a populace whose seat belt usage was less than 20%. In the year of my mother’s accident the seat belt usage rate in Michigan had climbed to 64.4%. Merely establishing a requirement was only a first step toward moving the seat belt usage rate to the 93.3% it sits at today. Just as important was the research that showed people how many lives were saved, the graphic pictures of those who were not, enforcement efforts, and technological improvements to vehicles that followed enactment of the legislation.

Now that 20 state legislatures have jumped the hurdle to require high school students take a course in economics and lawmakers in 17 states require high school students take a course in personal finance, the work has just begun. Seldom do we put enough focus on the importance of the steps following legislative action. Establishing a state requirement is only the first step in the process of building a citizenry equipped to make financially sound decisions. Teachers must be supported through an investment in high-quality professional development. The delivery of this professional development must be strategically designed to target the needs of the teacher within the subject they teach. The model of large auditorium sit-and-get district required professional development should be abandoned for a more differentiated approach that encourages a growth mindset in teachers.

It’s time for a new conversation about teacher improvement. Teachers should receive ongoing professional development, tailored to their unique needs as lead learners in their classrooms. State Councils and Centers for Economic Education are uniquely positioned to provide high-quality, low cost professional development to those teaching economics and financial literacy. Across the nation, State Councils and Centers for Economic Education are equipped to provide the curriculum tools, the pedagogical support, and the community of peers needed for teachers to successfully implement and create the change sought by establishing state standards in economics and financial literacy.

We know that states with economic and financial literacy requirements are more likely to save, more likely to pay off credit cards in full each month, and less likely to be compulsive buyers. In 1985, the establishment of a state requirement in Michigan jumped seat belt usage to 60%, before falling back to 45% shortly thereafter. It is not enough to merely establish a state standard and believe all the problems will go away. The establishment of state standards in economics and financial literacy must be followed by a proper investment in the educators who will be delivering the messages to our children. It seems a much better and more cost-effective option than just hoping children learn from the accidents they witness.

The post State Leaders Should Provide Professional Development for Our Teachers appeared first on Council for Economic Education.

POSTED: February 8, 2016 | BY: brendan