By Andrew Hill, Economic Education Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia; and Adjunct Professor of Economics at Temple University.

Cocktail party conversation can often be difficult for even the most adept conversationalists among us. When meeting new people, an unavoidable topic is always what you do for a living. I was trained in graduate school to expect people to respond in unpredictable ways when I explain that I am an economist. Read more…

POSTED: April 30, 2013 | BY: Leslie Rasimas | TAGS: Councils & Centers, economics, Federal Reserve, Financial Literacy, financial literacy month, parents, partners, personal finance, Students, teachers

By Joan Rosenbaum, 5th Grade Social Studies and Economics Teacher, North Star Public Charter School, Idaho.

Every year I take my students through a personal financing/budgeting unit, and I try to make it as real as possible. I am fortunate to have a guest speaker come to my classroom and explain the importance of having good insurance, which is definitely an important part of one’s budget.

One year I had a student who came to me and told me he didn’t want to pay for insurance. I asked him if he was really sure he wanted go through life without insurance. He told me he thought it would be a waste of his money. Since economics has everything to do with choices, I agreed to let him not pay insurance, but asked him if he was really sure about his choice he was making. He assured me that he did not want to include that in his budget. Read more…

POSTED: April 26, 2013 | BY: Leslie Rasimas | TAGS: economics, Financial Literacy, financial literacy month, insurance, Lessons, personal finance, Students, teachers

Live Webinar: The Nation’s Report Card: Economics 2012, Grade 12
April 24, 2013, at 11 am EDT

Register here (we encourage you to submit a question in advance through the registration page). Join the conversation on Twitter by using #NAEPtalk during the webinar.

Nan J. Morrison, President and CEO of CEE, was an adviser on the project, and she will take part in the webinar.

Are American students equipped to negotiate economic realities?

With constant changes in the housing, job, and stock markets, not to mention international trade, American students more than ever need to know how our economy connects with the world around us. As tomorrow’s consumers, investors, and voters, are students equipped to interpret financial news, make decisions about negotiating a college loan, and understand how economic policies affect their wallets?

The Nation’s Report Card: Economics 2012, Grade 12 reveals how well 12th-grade students know and apply the concepts of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and international trade in real-world contexts, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Join the National Assessment Governing Board for a webinar exploring the results of this timely report. Webinar panelists include Nan J. Morrison, CEE’s President and CEO; and Edward Alvarez, Assistant Principal, Thomas A. Edison Career & Technical Education High School, who was honored at the 2012 Visionary Awards as one of CEE’s Teacher Champions.

POSTED: April 22, 2013 | BY: Leslie Rasimas | TAGS: 9-12, CEO, economics, Panel Discussion, Research, Students, visionary awards, webinar

By Scott Wolla, Senior Economic Education Specialist, Federal Reserve Bank of St.Louis.

In a general sense, to be “literate” is to have knowledge or skill in a particular field. So literacy in reading, for instance, involves developing the skill of reading. If you are literate in this sense, you can read a novel by Charles Dickens, your local newspaper, or a comic book. But it does not usually involve the student memorizing facts about reading, such as how many books the typical child reads (or should read) in a given year. While those facts might have value, they probably have little value for learners. Read more…

POSTED: April 18, 2013 | BY: Leslie Rasimas | TAGS: economics, Federal Reserve, Financial Literacy, financial literacy month, macro, micro, National Standards for Financial Literacy, personal finance

By Lori Berkes-Nelson M.S.Ed., President, Econ Illinois.

I had not heard the word “economics” until I was in high school, and then it was attached to Consumer Economics and I walked away from that class with an understanding of how to write a check and how to keep a checkbook balanced – both very important skills as I became an adult.  But, what if I had been taught the economic way of thinking from the time I was in kindergarten?  If I had understood “opportunity cost” when I was in grade school or scarcity when I was in high school or compounding interest rates when I graduated college, perhaps I would have been better-prepared to avoid debt. Read more…

POSTED: April 16, 2013 | BY: Leslie Rasimas | TAGS: Councils & Centers, economics, Financial Literacy, financial literacy month, partners, personal finance, Students

By Max Isenberg, student at the University of Pennsylvania.

Education comes in all sorts of forms. In college, your main duty is to learn, be it in the classroom, through extra-curricular activities, or while hanging out with your friends. As a student, however, I have noticed things I never realized I needed to know. Living independently involves a lot of learning on the fly about what your parents once handled for you. Laundry, for example, was this nebulous process in which my mom turned my dirty, worn clothes into fresh clean ones; only when I had to run my first load in my dorm could I appreciate the nuances of the task. Read more…

POSTED: April 5, 2013 | BY: Leslie Rasimas | TAGS: College, Credit Cards, economics, economics challenge, Financial Literacy, financial literacy month, personal finance, Students