National Voluntary Content Standards for Pre-College Economics Education
介绍了美国为1-12年级制定的经济学自愿内容标准，说明其性质、制定过程及对课程设置的意义，帮助教育者理解这些标准如何指导教学。
After economics was included in the Goals 2000 Educate America Act in 1994, the National Council on Economic Education (NCEE) constructed a coalition of organizations to write voluntary content standards to guide economics instruction in American schools.' The coalition includes representatives from the NCEE and its network of affiliated councils and centers, the National Association of Economic Educators, the Foundation for Teaching Economics, and the American Economic Association's Committee on Economic Education. The goal of the coalition is to write content standards for the teaching of economics in grades 1-12. Such as developed for other disciplines, are not standards in the usual use of the word. Rather than identifying required performance levels on specified criteria, these standards specify the criteria. As such, the standards consist of what economists usually call principles. They are, in fact, the fundamental propositions of economics. To avoid confusion among teachers, however, the standards-writing committee calls these principles National disciplinary content standards are not mandates from the federal government. Rather, they are a resource for states and local school districts, for individual schools, and for teachers, who are responsible for specifying and integrating the curriculum into their schools. Content standards have public-good characteristics: they are nonrivalrous in consumption, and it is difficult to preclude access to them. In addition, their production relies on fixed development costs rather than variable reproduction costs, implying substantial scale economies. To develop similar standards at the state or local level would duplicate efforts. Consequently, there is a case (as is argued in standard 16) for collective provision of national standards. There is a practical reason to develop national economics content standards as well. Without these standards, some states may omit economics from their curriculum entirely. Some may give economics cursory attention, or write vague standards that are difficult to implement, or focus their economics standards on insignificant content. Some curriculum designs may include other subjects (e.g., personal finance, business, or marketing) under the economics rubric, thereby marginalizing economics. Voluntary national standards increase the probability that economics is included in school curricula. Without them, economics risks the prospect of being dropped from the curriculum. Teachers responsible for economics instruction are often overwhelmed when asked to teach a subiect in which they have little t Discussants: Cecilia Conrad, Pomona College; W. Lee Hansen, University of Wisconsin; Robert Highsmith, Pace University.