For more than 60 years, the Council for Economic Education has been calling attention to the need to educate our young people effectively in the skills of economics and personal finance and showing how that need can best be met. This new publication, developed by the Council for Economic Education and funded by the US Department of Education, provides an excellent step in the direction of improving economic and financial literacy.

The Council for Economic Education envisions a world in which people are empowered through economic and financial literacy to make informed and responsible choices throughout their lives as consumers, savers, investors, workers, citizens, and participants in our global economy.

The mission of the Council for Economic Education is two-fold: To advocate for better and greater school-based economic and personal finance education at the K-12 level; and to educate young people in the United States and around the world, primarily through well-prepared teachers, so they may become empowered with economic and financial literacy.

The Council for Economic Education offers comprehensive, best-in-class K-12 economic and personal finance education programs, including the basics of entrepreneurship, consisting of teaching resources across the curriculum, professional development for teachers, and nationally-normed assessment instruments. Each year, the Councils programs reach more than 150,000 K-12 teachers and over 15 million students in the United States and in more than 30 other countries. These programs are delivered through a diversified system: directly from the Council, through a network of affiliated state Councils and university-based Centers for Economic Education, and through other partner organizations.

The Council for Economic Education gratefully acknowledges the funding of this publication by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement, Excellence in Economic Education: Advancing K-12 Economic & Financial Education Nationwide grant award U215B050005-09. The contents of this book developed under the grant from the Department of Education do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.