Textbooks for AP Economics

Summary: AP reader and teacher, Wayne McCaffery shares his exhaustive research on Acorn standards and textbooks

If you are selecting a textbook for AP microeconomics or AP macroeconomics, you might want to consider the exhaustive research that Mr. Wayne McCaffery has complied relating economic concepts to textbooks. (The graphic can be enlarged by clicking on the image. )

Mr. McCaffery teaches a summer session on AP Macroeconomics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. At this summer institute, he made available several different textbooks for review. His matrix is a guide for new teachers when considering what textbook to adopt. In my first year of teaching AP Economics, I was fortunate to have Amy Shrout as an instructor at the University of Iowa leading a summer session. Ms. Shrout gave me a matrix like the one here to make my selection easier. I have forever thanked both for helping through that first year.

I have used the Arnold, Krugman-Wells, and McConnell-Brue texts will equal success. I think a textbook is a teaching tool. How a teacher employs the text might be what MIT professor, Eric von Hipple meant when he discussed innovation as "End-user innovation." A skillful teacher can give the textbook a deeper meaning and go beyond the words on the page.

I want to thank Mr. McCaffery for his contribution to this blog. He is a prolific contributor on the AP discussion board and still takes the time to answer my questions.

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About the Author: Mike Fladlien is an AP Economics teacher from Muscatine High School in Muscatine, IA. He is an EconEdLink.org author, and also publishes the Mikeroeconomics and iMacroeconomics VB blogs.