Grade 12 · secular
This is a one-semester economics course for a senior. It builds one way of thinking"everything has a real cost, and that cost is what you gave up, not what you paid", and applies it three times, at three different zoom levels: personal decisions, markets, and then whole countries and the global economy. By the end your child should be able to read a news story about jobs, prices, or trade and tell you which parts are facts you could check and which parts are opinions dressed up as facts. That last skill, separating "what's true" from "what's fair", is the thing this course cares about most, more than any formula.
The whole year, in plain English. Tap any unit to see every skill inside, nothing is hidden.
This is where your child learns the core habit of the whole course: the real cost of anything is the best thing you gave up to get it, not the money you handed over. They'll also build a graph called the production possibilities curve, which is just a picture of 'if I make more of this, I have to make less of that,' and they'll meet a genuine human bias, the sunk cost fallacy, where people keep throwing good time or money after bad because they can't let go of what they already spent.
Given a scenario describing a resource shortage, state whether the situation is an example of scarcity (a permanent condition) or a shortage (a temporary market condition at a given price), and justify the distinction using the definition of each.
Calculate the opportunity cost of a stated decision by identifying the single best forgone alternative from a list of options, distinguishing it from the sum of all alternatives given up.
Explain why opportunity cost, not monetary price, is the economically correct measure of cost for a decision, using an example involving a 'free' or already-paid-for good.
Given a two-good production dataset, construct a production possibilities curve, correctly plotting points and connecting them to show the trade-off frontier.
Interpret a novel, previously unseen PPC graph (including one showing a shift and one showing a point inside/outside the curve) to determine whether an economy is operating efficiently, growing, or facing increasing opportunity costs, and justify the interpretation using features of the curve.
Compare a rational-choice prediction about a sunk cost to the sunk cost fallacy as it actually shows up in a described human decision, identifying which piece of information the decision-maker incorrectly treated as relevant.
Apply marginal-benefit/marginal-cost reasoning to determine the optimal quantity of an activity in a scenario providing a table of marginal values, identifying the point where marginal benefit equals marginal cost.
Generate an original, previously unmodeled real-world or civic decision (not one demonstrated in class) and produce a written opportunity-cost analysis of it that correctly identifies the best forgone alternative and explains why it, rather than another option, is the true cost.
Using a simple two-producer, two-good scenario with given output data, distinguish absolute advantage from comparative advantage by identifying which producer has the lower opportunity cost for each good.
This is the biggest unit and the one the rest of the course leans on hardest. Your child builds the supply-and-demand model from scratch, learns to tell 'the whole curve moved' apart from 'we just moved along the curve because price changed,' calculates how sensitive buyers are to price changes (elasticity), compares competitive markets to monopolies, and finishes with price controls and market failure, the two ways markets can go wrong that the basic model doesn't fix by itself.
Given a change in a market condition (e.g., input cost, consumer income, related-good price), state whether the demand curve or the supply curve shifts, and in which direction.
Distinguish a shift of an entire supply or demand curve from a movement along a fixed curve, given a scenario describing either a change in price or a change in a non-price determinant.
Given supply and demand schedules or curves for an unfamiliar good, determine the equilibrium price and quantity and explain why a price above or below equilibrium is unsustainable.
Calculate price elasticity of demand from percentage-change data and classify a good as elastic, inelastic, or unit elastic based on the resulting coefficient.
Predict, for a good with unfamiliar demand characteristics (novel product, no taught example), whether it is more likely elastic or inelastic based on the presence of substitutes, necessity status, and share of budget, and justify the classification.
Compare perfect competition and monopoly on the dimensions of number of firms, barriers to entry, price-setting power, and long-run economic profit.
Classify a real-world industry example (not used in instruction) as closer to perfect competition or monopoly and justify the classification using at least two structural criteria.
Explain why a market with a negative externality (e.g., pollution) produces more than the socially optimal quantity, using the distinction between private cost and social cost.
Given an unfamiliar scenario combining a market shock and a possible externality or public-good element, determine whether the situation is best explained by an ordinary equilibrium shift or by a market failure, and identify what evidence in the scenario supports that call.
Predict the effect of a price ceiling set below equilibrium or a price floor set above equilibrium on quantity supplied, quantity demanded, and the resulting shortage or surplus, using a labeled supply-and-demand diagram.
Generalize, from contrasting cases of a successful price control and a failed one, a rule for predicting when a price control will create a persistent shortage or surplus versus when it will have little effect.
Here the course zooms out from single markets to the whole economy: GDP, unemployment, inflation, and the two sets of tools, fiscal policy (Congress and the President taxing and spending) and monetary policy (the Federal Reserve managing money and interest rates), used to steer it. The hard idea underneath the whole unit: every big-picture number (GDP, the unemployment rate) is an average that hides real variation, and the tools that fight unemployment often make inflation worse, and vice versa.
Given a table of nominal GDP and a price index for two years, calculate real GDP for each year using the deflator formula.
Classify a described worker's job loss as frictional, structural, or cyclical unemployment based on the cause stated in the scenario.
Compare a new, previously unseen unemployment vignette (with an ambiguous cause combining automation and a recession-driven layoff) to the three taught categories and justify which type dominates or whether it is mixed.
Explain why a rising national GDP figure can coexist with a specific region's unemployment rate remaining unchanged, using the concept of aggregation.
Given a completely novel country-year dataset (GDP growth, disaggregated unemployment by demographic group, and CPI) never used in instruction, determine whether the economy has 'recovered' and identify which population the aggregate numbers likely hide.
Distinguish which entity (Congress/President vs. the Federal Reserve) controls a described policy action and which broad tool category (fiscal or monetary) it represents.
Given a new (unpracticed) government action description, infer whether it represents expansionary or contractionary policy and which category (fiscal/monetary) it belongs to.
Given a scenario describing simultaneously high unemployment and high inflation (stagflation-like conditions never presented in instruction), explain why standard fiscal and monetary tools conflict and propose which priority the student would choose, labeling that choice as a value judgment rather than an empirical claim.
Recall the definition and one real-world tool for each of fiscal policy and monetary policy.
In a written policy-argument essay, label each claim made as either an empirical claim (testable against data) or a value trade-off (a matter of priorities), and justify each label.
The course closes by turning Unit 1's opportunity cost into real numbers, this is the theory of comparative advantage, and then asks the harder question: even when trade grows the total pie, who inside a country actually gets more, and who gets less? Tariffs, quotas, and exchange rates come next as the tools that change trade's outcome, and the unit ends with global problems like climate change that no single government can be forced to fix.
Given a numeric table of resource costs for two countries producing two goods, calculate each country's opportunity cost for each good and identify which country holds the comparative advantage in each good.
Explain why a country can gain from trade even when it has an absolute disadvantage in producing every good, using the distinction between absolute and comparative advantage.
Given an unfamiliar two-country, two-good numeric scenario with unseen numbers, determine which country should specialize in which good and predict the range within which mutually beneficial terms of trade must fall.
Using a supply-and-demand diagram, identify the effect of a tariff on domestic price, quantity, consumer outcomes, producer outcomes, and government revenue.
Compare the mechanisms and typical uses of tariffs, quotas, and trade agreements as tools that alter the outcome of otherwise free trade.
Given a real trade or development policy dataset (GDP growth, sector employment, regional unemployment) covering a case not discussed in class, identify at least one specific group that benefited and one that was harmed, citing the data.
Sort a set of contested statements about trade or development policy into 'empirical claim' (resolvable by evidence) and 'values trade-off' (not resolvable by evidence alone), and justify each sorting decision.
Explain why global public goods such as climate stability or pandemic control are underprovided by uncoordinated national markets, using the public-good and externality concepts from Unit 2.
Construct an argumentative essay on a contested trade or development policy question that explicitly separates empirical claims from value judgments and supports claims with cited evidence.
Given a novel comparative-advantage numeric problem and an unfamiliar country's trade/GDP/unemployment dataset on the cumulative final, apply opportunity-cost reasoning and macro-aggregate interpretation without any unit-labeled cue as to which method applies.
From the parent guide
This is a one-semester economics course for a senior. It builds one way of thinking"everything has a real cost, and that cost is what you gave up, not what you paid", and applies it three times, at three different zoom levels: personal decisions, markets, and then whole countries and the global economy. By the end your child should be able to read a news story about jobs, prices, or trade and tell you which parts are facts you could check and which parts are opinions dressed up as facts. That last skill, separating "what's true" from "what's fair", is the thing this course cares about most, more than any formula.
Unit 1 · what to expect
This is where your child learns the core habit of the whole course: the real cost of anything is the best thing you gave up to get it, not the money you handed over. They'll also build a graph called the production possibilities curve, which is just a picture of 'if I make more of this, I have to make less of that,' and they'll meet a genuine human bias, the sunk cost fallacy, where people keep throwing good time or money after bad because they can't let go of what they already spent.
The full guide covers all 4 units: where kids get stuck, what to say, and how to tell it's working. Included with the course.
Ready when you are
Free for 30 days · then $29/mo or $290/yr for the whole family · Cancel anytime, no questions asked.
Start your family's account