Closing the Curriculum Gap by Updating Content Standards and Guidelines for Teaching Monetary Policy

Abstract

The topic of the Federal Reserve’s (the Fed’s) implementation of monetary policy has a significant presence in economics teaching resources. Over the past decade or so, the Fed has purposefully shifted the way it implements monetary policy, introducing a new methodology with new policy tools. Unfortunately, many teaching materials are out of date with the Fed’s current ample-reserves regime and classroom teachers are often guided to teach old content. This guidance often comes from the Voluntary National Content Standards (VNCS) in Economics and the Advanced Placement (AP) Course and Exam Description that are sadly outdated. The VNCS influences the treatment of economics content in K-12 curriculum and textbooks, and the AP course framework determines the content taught in thousands of high school classrooms every year. As such, revising these influential documents is instrumental for closing the curriculum gap. We provide recommendations for how these materials can be updated.