Persuading state representatives to make amendments to a bill and dealing with a decrease in enrollment were not tasks James Martin, who teaches AP Microeconomics and AP Macroeconomics, expected to deal with when he became a teacher.

“I knew I wanted to teach economics because I think that it’s so important for students to understand not only the way economics works, but the way people often think in economics,” Martin said. “It’s a way of thinking more than it is about having knowledge of marketing or advertising.

Martin believes that economics is applicable to every student no matter their future aspirations.

“There’s a cost and a benefit to every choice you make,” Martin said. “I’ve had students write back to me, graduated from college, who have gone on and said, ‘My husband and I were thinking about buying [a] house. We realized that schools were bad [there] and I remembered what you taught us. So, we looked somewhere else where the schools are better and I used my economic way of reasoning to make the decision.’”

As of Feb. 7, Ohio State Bill 17 was passed, adding free-market capitalism to high school financial literacy and economics standards. Initially, the bill did not qualify AP Economics for a financial literacy credit, so Martin took matters into his own hands.

“I started talking to state senators and legislative assistants,” Martin said. “‘Why are you trying to hurt the Advanced Placement Program especially when it’s been as successful as it has at Walnut?’ State Senator Wilson responded to me and said that wasn’t the intent, and that’s how AP Econ got added to the bill.”

Martin believes that there are valuable benefits to taking AP Economics rather than college credit.

“Just about everything they talk about in [regular economics] I go further into,” Martin said. “I think in AP there’s more emphasis on graphing and math. I’m trying to get the word out that once the governor signs the bill, [students] can tell their counselors they want a schedule change and see what happens.”

On March 13, Governor Mike DeWine signed the bill into law.

Brad Smith, who teaches semester economics, worked alongside Martin in an effort to reform the bill.

“I lobbied the legislature to try to change [the bill],” Smith said. “I actually had an amendment in the bill, and then the chair pulled the amendment at the last minute.”

He disagreed with the clause that allows educators with social studies licenses to teach financial literacy classes but does not consider financial literacy as a social studies credit.

“I find fault with [the bill] because I think that in our school, it causes our students to have to go find another half credit of social studies somewhere else,” Smith said.

The new financial literacy standards are similar to what Smith currently teaches in his economics course.

“When I did my testimony in favor of trying to [push] that amendment to add social credit for the class, we sat down, and we actually mapped [the standards] out and gave this to the state legislature,” Smith said. “It’s almost exactly the same, and I even laid out in detail how I cover all the standards in the current economics class.”

Smith believes that the state of Ohio needs to more thoroughly examine how its decisions can impact schools before making them.

“It negatively impacts our students,” Smith said. “It’s frustrating, but this is not the first time that the Ohio legislature has passed what I consider to be an unfunded mandate, which is [them saying], ‘Hey, you got to do this, but we’re not going to give you any funding or any staffing or anything like that.’”

Smith admits he initially struggled with making his own financial decisions, and when he was a student teacher, he was only paid $9,000 a year.

“I know in my own personal life I lived off my credit card a little bit,” Smith said. “Not a great idea. I wound up paying more than if I had just done a better job budgeting or perhaps just picked up a couple extra shifts to help make ends meet.”

Because of this, he enjoys teaching students the necessary skills that will help them later in life.

“I think my favorite part of teaching is when you realize that you’ve made some sort of a lasting impact,” Smith said. “I always feel like if you’ve taken my class, if nothing else, you become a better decision-maker.”