Ten Observations on High School Economics Textbooks

Abstract

This study focuses on the content of eleven high school economics textbooks currently being used throughout the United States. We reviewed them with regard to their attention to the Voluntary National Standards in Economics developed under the auspices of the National Council on Economic Education. In the process of our analysis we made ten observations about these texts, including the statement that these books fall into one of two categories: large, encyclopedic volumes which we label as ‘Comprehensive’ or shorter books aimed at a specific audience which we label as ‘Specialty’ textbooks. While many of the texts have specific shortcomings, we see that the majority of them include more material than the national standards require. Overall there is less variation in the quality of high school textbooks today than was seen in earlier generations of texts; and we argue that the majority of the current crop of comprehensive high school economics texts provides a solid introduction to the economics discipline.