Economic education for at-risk students: an evaluation of Choices & Changes

This paper presents an evaluation of Choices & Changes, an economics education program designed to teach "at-risk" children in elementary and junior high school that they can control their future by making wise choices and investing in themselves. Using program-specific instruments and a national sample of approximately 1600 students, a controlled experiment was conducted to determine the effect of Choices & Changes on student learning and attitudes. The experimental data were analyzed using a simultaneous model estimated by 2SLS with correction for self-selection due to sample attrition between pre- and post-test observations. The results indicate that Choices & Changes had a positive effect on economic understanding for each grade level examined, ceteris paribus. Significant positive effects on attitudes were found in only one of the four student groups. These findings suggest that Choices & Changes is meeting its short-run objective of producing cognitive understanding of economic concepts and that the attitudes of at-risk students can be altered but may require additional intervention.