Published: January 15, 1997

Voluntary Standards for Economics Released

America's schoolchildren will be better equipped to handle personal-finance decisions throughout their lives, from managing their allowances to making sound investments, if the new voluntary national standards for economics are adopted in schools countrywide, authors of the guidelines say.

"This is a framework for students to analyze problems that come up in their lives, from buying a house to getting married ... to making career choices," said John J. Siegfried, the chairman of the writing committee for the standards and a professor of economics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

Released at the American Economic Association Conference in New Orleans this month, the document identifies in layman's terms 20 overarching standards that outline what children need to know and be able to do in the discipline by the time they...