The Alabama Council on Economic Education

The Alabama Council on Economic Education
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Friday, March 25, 2011

Statistics Blues


Education statistics in Alabama are staggering.  I realize I am not shocking anyone by saying this but I just googled education statistics in Alabama and what came up really were unbelievable.  Alabama is 45th in the country when it comes to the percent of students above basic reading levels.  Fifty three percent of students can read at a level above basic.  I could go on and on about where we stand, but that isn’t really what I want to say.  It seems that considering where this country just came from, we would be eager to educate our children to make sure that they don’t have to go through the same thing that we did.  Economics is at the heart of this.  Making sure that people understand how money works at a sufficient level sounds really good right about now.  I grew up in a school where I never once had to take a class about economics.  The only training I received was when I made mistakes with money.  That is code for overdrawing my account.  I never knew how or even why the Stock Market worked.  I knew that this country was in debt, but I had no idea how that was even possible.  I am still cloudy on that one.  The point is that even coming out of a recession, we aren’t pushing education the way we should be.  I have a theory on why.  The reason we don’t push education more, specifically economic education, is that there are no immediate, tangible results involved.  It takes years to educate a child.  And a slow process in which a kid systematically learns about how money works is not very sexy.  It is effective, however.  So what if there were some program that would teach our educators how to get the point across to students.  And what if it were free?  Already done.  The Alabama Council on Economic Education supplies Alabama’s teachers with teaching supplies for free.   It’s true.  The website is alcee.org and they are on Facebook.  Just look up Alabama Council on Economic Education.   Get involved.  Help the leaders of tomorrow dodge the bullet. 

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