The new National Assessment of Educational Progress report card for economics is out. There are some sample questions set up for you to try. Real Time Economics describes some of the results (I've added a few more):

• 72% were able to describe a benefit and a risk of leaving a full-time job to further one�s education
• 60% identified factors that lead to an increase in the national debt
• 52% know that commercial banks use deposits from checking accounts to make loans to other customers, while most of the rest believe the deposit simply sits in a bank vault until depositors withdraw the funds.
• 36% identified the federal government�s primary revenue source
• 36% could do a marginal benefit = marginal cost calculation
  
• 33% explained the effect of an increase in real interest rates on consumers� borrowing
• 32% understood that a country with more education, all other things equal, will grow faster
  
• 11% analyzed how a change in the unemployment rate affects income, spending and production

As it is the first report card in economics we can't tell if we're getting a return on our investment. We do know that 2/3 of high school students now get a course in economics in high school, compared to less than half 25 years ago.

Here's the full report.

UPDATE: Greg Mankiw notes that those 2/3 who took the course did not do significantly better on NAEP than the third that did not. He thinks it has to do with the non-AP classes. My experience meeting AP teachers at economics challenges here at SCSU would support him regarding the AP teachers being of very high quality. I only watched a sample of one in a non-AP course: my son. Not exactly a representative sample.

Labels: economics, education