And for that matter hail Seth Weidman:
It was a classic case of supply and demand.
Entering his senior year at Pittsburgh Allderdice High School, Seth Weidman felt there was demand for an Advanced Placement economics class.
So he decided to supply one.
At least one night a week for nine months, Seth taught college-level economics to a group of his fellow Allderdice students, traveling from living room to living room with his dry-erase board in tow.
Fueled by Doritos, pretzels and the occasional homemade tiramisu, Seth’s students in the "Weidman School of Economics" numbered 18, with nine of them eventually taking at least one of the two AP economics tests offered.
Thus far, the results have been spectacular. The students took 12 total tests, and of the eight scores that have come in this month, six are 5′s — the highest possible on a scale of 1 to 5 — and two are 4′s.
Greg Mankiw and Aplia appear in the story as well. Seth loves Hayek’s Road to Serfdom: ""It made me see that economics isn’t just about a bunch of guys sitting on CNBC," he said. "It’s more about incentives. It gives you a cool perspective to understand the world."
Here is the full story. Seth will be attending the University of Chicago next year. Here is material on Joseph Lancaster and I thank Eric Crampton for the pointer.
Awesome. Well done Mr. Weidman. And good luck in Chicago.
Great story. It is kind of a shame that his AP exam will only earn him general elective credit, but I am sure a student of Seth’s initiative will enjoy taking the core econ series even if there is some review involved. Congratulations!
O lawdy. A big fan of “Road to Serfdom” and he totes a copy of “Atlas Shrugged.”
I’m having flashbacks to when I graduated from high school. Better get this young man reading Economist’s View, stat!
Big congrats to him, though. Color me impressed. And I don’t get impressed easily.
Great story, thanks for posting.
And for the bad news, Seth probably asked five girls to the senior prom and got rejected by all of them.
I was required to take a Consumer Ec class in high-school, but I took Microeconomics because it was equivalent and I could use it as a study-hall. They let me take the test both for that and Macroeconomics, which I never actually learned in school. I got 5s on both, indicating to me that the AP tests for economics have a much lower bar than the other AP tests.
The economics joke on the back of the shirts is:
“Marginal benefit exceeded marginal cost.
(that’s what she said)”
During the first half of the school year, we had class Thursday nights from 7:00-9:00, after which we would watch The Office; thus, I started throwing in occasional “That’s what she said” jokes into my lectures.
Also in response to TGGP: I agree that the bar is set too low on the econ APs–I thought they were easy and I hadn’t taken an economics class–however, not only did most of my students knew little or nothing about economics entering the class, but also only 10-15% of students who take the tests each year get 5s, and it’s looking like we’ll end up with ten 5s and two 4s.
Finally thank you Tyler for the mention; your blog is fantastic, and one of the few I read regularly.
A perfect example of what students can accomplish when they are engaged and interested in what they are learning. Nice job Seth.
About the rigor of the AP Economics exam (TGGP comment above). He said that he got five’s on both AP Econ exmas. I would agree it isn’t the hardest AP Exam if you learn the concepts. That is the beauty of economics. A lot the other AP tests require a lot of factual memorization, where a lot of the AP Econ test is application. I think that is a good thing.
As Seth mentions, only around 10-15% of the 30,000 students taking the test score a 5 (which is the highest score possible). The test is curved.
What I can attest to is the fact that I believe that the test and curriculum for AP Microeconomics is more rigorous than the Intro Mirco/Macro classes that I took at the college level. Maybe I just had poor teachers.
It’s kind of shocking that Allderdice doesn’t have AP Econ, it’s like the crown jewel of the Pgh public schools.
Well done Mr. Weidman. You too Ms. Petzinger.
Tyler, this may just be my favourite of all the blog posts you’ve written.
I was also a student of Seth’s this past year, and I wanted to thank Tyler as well for the publicity. Seth honestly deserves all the praise in the world for putting so much of his time and heart into the class. He spent way more time preparing for our class than any of my actual teachers do, and he knew the material just as well, if not better. He also made economics easy to understand by using simple explanations with personal, usually humorous examples. The class was the most fun and satisfying academic adventure I’ve ever been a part of. I took the Micro AP and got a 4 on it, with no prior knowledge of the subject, taught only by Seth and N. Gregory Mankiw’s textbook, which is certainly a testament to Seth’s teaching methods. To update the information as well, our class recieved eight 5s and four 4s out of the twelve tests that we took.
Thank you so much Seth. It was truly an amazing experience, and I hope this inspires more high school students to do something similar.
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