Every year, more than one million high school students, about half of all graduates, take an economics course - usually in their senior year. And, unfortunately, many of those students are learning from textbooks, classroom activities, and websites paid for by corporate donors whose ideological influence goes unrecognized.

Many people - even economists and high school teachers - don't know how decisions about economics courses are made. But corporate foundations, particularly those with an extreme conservative bent, have paid very close attention to high-school economics.

As a result, textbooks, classroom activities, websites, and new national standards depend increasingly on corporate donors whose ideological influence often goes unrecognized. With national economics testing due to begin in 2005, and corporate-driven course materials even more widely disseminated, economics courses are likely to swing even more toward a "free-market" ideology.

When high school economics courses were first introduced in many states during the 1970s and 1980s, publishers filled the textbook void. But teachers, many of whom had no formal economics background, needed lesson plans. Corporations and nonprofit organizations, often working together, stepped in with a wide range of supplementary readings, classroom activities and, in recent years, websites.

INFLUENTIAL ORGANIZATIONS

Junior Achievement, a privately funded nonprofit organization, claims to reach four million U.S. students every year with its "free enterprise message of hope and opportunity." Founded in 1919 as an after-school program in which students set up small businesses, Junior Achievement first entered the classroom in 1975. Since then, it has broadened its scope to include a kindergarten through 12th-grade economics curriculum with a high school economics course taught by business executives. UPS, ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, and New York Life Insurance are among the corporations that have provided large grants to Junior Achievement. Kraft Foods is the largest single provider of volunteer economics instructors for Junior Achievement, with more than 2,100 participating employees in 2001.