AP Macroeconomics

Instructor: Dave Jessen ◊ e-mail -

Introduction and Expectations Spring, 2015

Dear Parents/Guardians:

It is with great pleasure that I welcome your child as a participant and you, as a fellow stakeholder to the AP Macroeconomics program at North Charleston High School. Your child was recommended for the coursesbyone or more members of the faculty, and pand thus, has attained enough academic success in other classes to be recognized as a student who maintain success in AP-level courses.

Students who have a significant measure of support at home tend to be considerably more successful academically than those without that support. As such, I ask that you make yourselffamiliar with the syllabus and expectations, encourage your child to meet all deadlines for work assigned, and provide academic support as able. I have attached course expectations, syllabus and projects for your perusal as a way to open and promote active communication among us as stakeholders in your child’s success.

As a CollegeBoard-certified AP teacher and sole designer of the AP Macroeconomics course, I assure you that passing the AP exam in May is no easy feat—it takes organization, effort and time. Further, because colleges grant college credit to students who score high enough on AP exams in the various subject areas, they demand college-appropriate standards and a rigorous syllabus to justify these credits.As such:

  1. Students are expected to be present in class every day and fully participate in all classroom activities.Please encourage consistent attendance in your child.
  2. Students are expected to turn in assignments on time. No late assignments will be accepted (except when absences are fully documented/ excused). Help your child organize their time efficiently.
  3. Students are expected to complete outside reading assignments on a timely basis.
  4. The provided texts, Principles of Economics by N. Gregory Mankiw (3rd ed.), and, Barron’s Test Preparation guide contain college-level concepts and language,
  5. Students are expected to read the newspaper on a regular basis, and not simply the obituaries, comics, horoscopes and sports. They are expected to become aware of the world around them. Certain topical articles will be assigned as they become relevant.
  1. Students are expected to complete formal and informal writing assignments in an appropriateacademic format (as directed), and per accepted academic standards regarding originality, organization and grammatical correctness.
  2. Students are expected to prepare for and take challenging tests and quizzes that are structured to resemble the AP exam. Additionally, students are required to take the AP Macroeconomics exam to gain course credit.Students who are not accustomed to studying will have to get over this malady.
  3. Students are expected to prioritize, and organize their various commitments in and out of school to maintain a high academic standard. There are no valid excuses for shoddy, incomplete or missing work. Please help them to make appropriate choices in their use of time.

I would like to close with the following: the benefits of taking AP-level courses far outweigh the challenges. Students who take AP courses have a higher acceptance rate to desirable colleges, potentially gain college credit for their work, and are far more prepared for college academia than those who never endeavor to challenge themselves. Additionally, they tend to be more cognizant of the higher demands placed on them by professors, write more coherently and developbetter study habits that are necessary to be successful in college. Please continue to encourage your child to rise to the challenge rather than succumb to it.

Thank you in advance for your support and efforts. I can most easily be contacted via email (). I look forward to hearing from you and seeing you.

Sincerely, Dave Jessen

AP MACROECONOMICS

Instructor: Dave Jessen ◊ e-mail -

Course Overview and Basic Syllabus

Welcome and Overview

Welcome to Advanced Placement Macroeconomics at North CharlestonHigh School. This course satisfies South Carolina Department of Education diploma requirements for one semester of Economics, but will be taken over a full year to better prepare students for the AP exam and college-appropriate work. The course is weighted using State Department of Education guidelines as an Advanced Placement course (further explained in the NCHS Course of Studies).I am a College Board-certified teacher/instructor, and the course has been certified by the College Board as well for the 2009-2010 school year.

The course is an extremely rigorous one, and not for the faint of heart. Colleges granting“Advanced Placement” credits expect challenging syllabi and high expectations. I would be remiss as a teacher if this course fell short of academic rigor, or full preparation for the Exam (each student has the opportunity to gain college credit via the Advanced Placement examination in Macroeconomics). You are enrolled within the course because you have been identified by the instructor (me), or other faculty members who believe that you are capableof maintaining a high level of effort, thinking critically and producing truly advanced academic work.

Description

AP Macroeconomics will cover economic decision-making from the standpoints of individuals, groups of individuals and national entities. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent economically and politically, it behooves educated persons to become better informed and to gain a greater understanding of how national and global economies interact.

As evidenced through recent events within the global economy. economics is not an exact science—economic postulations change everyday due to the kinetic state of economic connections. Economics seeks to understand the complexity of society as mirrored through its economic system. A student of economics is expected to question, dissect, generalize and theorize about the mechanism of economics. It is truly through doubt, discussion and humble skepticism that we may seek to understand economics (or anything else for that matter).

“If a man begins with certainties, he will end in doubts; if a man begins with doubts, he shall end in certainties”
– Francis Bacon

Course Requirements

1. Students are expected to bring all materials listed below to each class meeting.

a. Mankiw, N. Gregory. Principles of Macroeconomics, third editionThomson/South-Western Publishing, 2003

b. A pen, a calculator, highlighter, and a one inch, three-ring binder for notes/handouts with an abundance of paper. Please do not share my notebook with other classes. You may wish to develop a strong organization system this year.

2. Regular attendance. Because AP Macroeconomics is a full-year course, students are expected to attend at least 85 of the 90ishscheduled days. Students who miss class frequently will be unsuccessful. Students are expected to be on-time to every class. Documentation for absences must be provided in order to make up missed work.

3. Students are expected to participate fully by immersing themselves in class activitiesand discussions (as directed by the instructor), taking the copious notes received,and completing all class assignments.Never throw out any handout. Share notes with fellow students to be sure you all have gotten everything.

4. Students are to take the Advanced Placement Exam in Macroeconomics in May. Failure to do so will result in course failure. It is a course requirement, and not opened to negotiation.

5. Students are to respect the opinions of fellow persons within the classroom, and maintain an open mind toward all perspectives and positions.

6. Students are expected to write competently and with much critical thought in an accepted academic format (MLA for formal assignments, high order sentences and paragraphs for informal assessments).

7. Students are expected to complete all assignments and assigned readings on a timely basis. This includes all assignments big and small (including the studying of notes). No late work will be accepted.

“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” – Will Durant

Grades and Assessments

1. Your grade for the course will be derived using a point system. Each assessment will be assigned a specific point value. The aggregate number of points earned divided by the number possible will determine your course grade. The grade will be adjusted neither upward nor downward. Approximate point values are:

a. Quizzes – 50 pointsc. Jessenomics Analyses– 100 points each

b. Unit Tests – 200 pointsd. Major projects – Mid-term and Final Exam

According to South Carolina Department of Education, grading parameters are as follows:

A – 93-100B – 85-92C – 77-84D – 70-76F – 69 and below

2. Quizzes will be designed like the AP exam in order to help students to become acclimated to the format. They may contain multiple choice questions, single essay or analysis questions or a combination. They may be timed or un-timed, announced or un-announced.

3. Tests will be longer versions of the above. These are, again, designed around the format of the AP exam which includes: multiple choice questions, essay, graph construction/interpretation or other short answer. Timed tests will become increasingly important as we get closer to the tests to help students practice thinking within constraints of time.

4. Jessenomics Analyses and Projectshave been described in great depth elsewhere. Students are expected to complete all assignments in a timely manner.

5. Late assignment policy: No late assignments will be accepted. What may seem an unreasonable and unsympathetic policy is truly the basis of an important life lesson.

6. Work missed due to an undocumented absence will receive a zero. Work missed due to a documented and excused absence is expected upon return. Tests must be made within three school calendar days. Students are expected to obtain missed notes and information via a student “Contact Tree”

7. Students are expected to maintain a strict academic honor code. Any work plagiarized (defined below) receives a zero. The story ends there—neither requests for re-completion nor appeals will be considered.

Academic Honor Code

1. Students are expected to submit their own original work as denoted by their name. Any person’s ideas, work or intellectual propertyused in your work must be properly credit (cited) according to MLA guidelines.

2. Students are expected to carefully follow written and oral instructions on tests, quizzes and other class activities. Make no assumptions that the guidelines of one assessment carry over to the next. There may be quizzes to be completed in specified groups, but not all will be completed in that manner. Students who “cheat” will receive a zero for that assignment, and their parent contacted.

3. Students who witness academic dishonesty by one of their classmates are expected to turn in (confidentially) that student. It is the same policy utilized at all universities and colleges. Students who conceal academic fraud have themselves, acted dishonorably.

“A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.” - Edgar J. Mohn

The Student Contact Tree

Students are expected to furnish contact information to,at least, one other member of the class. This information is to be used for assignment and information retrieval only. Students are expected to contact other members of the class to obtain missed notes and information.

Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable. ~Kenyan Proverb

Withdrawal from the course

Students who wish to withdraw from the course for any reason must do so either at the end of the first nine weeks, or first semester. No withdrawals (except as directed by the Principal) will be allowed after that point. No mid-grading period defections will be allowed.A withdrawal must be requested by a parent in writing, along with the reason, and submitted to the appropriate guidance counselor.

I reserve the right to be an impediment to you giving up.

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today”. – Abraham Lincoln

The Exam

The AP Macroeconomics exam is designed to assess whether students thoroughly understand economic principles and applications in the Macro-economy. It stresses the study of national income and price determination, economic performance measures, economic growth, government fiscal and monetary policies and international economics. It is administered the first week of May.

The exam is approximately two hours long and is divided into two distinct parts; a 70-minute multiple choice section (comprising 2/3 of the test grade) and a 50-minute free-response section (comprising 1/3 of the test grade), as described below.

  1. The 70-minute multiple choice section contains 60 questions, each with 5 choices. There is no penalty for guessing, so no blanks should be left. This section is 66.7% of the total exam score.
  2. The 50-minute free-response section contains 3 essay/graph analysis (one long, two shorter) questions completed on lined paper. Students are given a 10-minute period for outlining their answers/graphing. This section is worth 33.3% of the grade.

All students who take this course in Macroeconomics are expected to take the exam, regardless of their personal opinions on their potential performance. Students who refuse to take the exam do not gain credit for the course. All students who take the exam receive a 100 as a unit test grade. It is expected that all students do their very best on the exam.

“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

Plagiarism

“Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear, but forgetting where you heard it”. - Laurence J. Peter

Research-based academic (or corporate) writing is filled with snaresand pitfalls into which writers, especially novices, can fall. Often times, the writer is unaware that they have stolen someone’s ideas, but, nonetheless, whether inadvertent or conscious, plagiarism carries significant penalties in the academic and business world. Many writing rules focus on research and proper citation, while others emphasize being aware of other writers. Gaining a familiarity of these rules, however, is critically important, as even un-intentional mistakes can lead to accusations of plagiarism.Many an academic or professional career has been cut short by plagiarism or improper writing (Philip Glass).

Plagiarism, generally, is the un-credited use (both intentional and unintentional) of somebody else's words, style or ideas. Providing a practical definition of plagiarism in the information age presents a complex problem, especially in an age where “burning” CDsand “sampling” have become staples within various media, and the Internet has made information retrieval effortless. While the rules of original thought differ from culture to culture, the American system favors the original thinker.The bottom line is that teachers want students to submit completely original work or give credit for anything borrowed.

The causes of plagiarism fall into two categories dependent on whether the act was purposeful or unintended. Students who purposely plagiarize do so because of poor time management skills, fear of failure, and a lack of a coherent school-wide policy containing severe consequences for plagiarism. Students who inadvertently plagiarize do so because of sloppy citation methods, a lack of understanding of the principles and rules of writing, the repeated acceptance of paraphrased material, and generic assignments given by teachers. The Jessen course policy on plagiarism is very clear. Plagiarized work, whether unintended or intended will receive in a grade of zero.

Although there are many types of plagiarism (some more subtle than others), the following list should make the parameters relatively clear. Other types may exist, and are notexcused in any way.

  1. Turning in all or part of someone else’s paper as an original work with or without that person’s knowledge. Conversely, allowing someone to turn in some or all of your work, but allowing that person to submit the work as original (Test answers, homework assignments, papers, etc…). This is deliberate deception and the worst form of plagiarism. This type of plagiarism results in a zero for work submitted.
  2. Turning in work purchased or copied from the Internet/another person. Worse action; same consequences
  3. Creating a montage of sources and passing it off as a paper. It is also known as “cut and paste” writing, or “paraphrase collecting” It is tempting, and very easy to do. Unfortunately for you, it is difficult to do well and exceedingly easy to detect. Original work means that the author has gathered information from research, not words, and that all writing is from scratch, so to speak. Although not as bad as the above types, this form is still unacceptable and may result in a zero or failing grade depending on the extent of the infraction.
  4. Simply summarizing source material (except when required) or “putting it into your own words” is not original writing. It is certainly not academic. All work should contain unique thoughts that utilize source material. This type of plagiarism usually receives failing grades, though not usually zeros.
  5. Although turning in improperly cited work is usually largely un-intentional, it is academically sloppy, and must be penalized consistently and significantly. Students should cite any information, data, words, ideas, theories or quotes taken from another author. Each instance carries a significant penalty and can result in a poor grade.

Bottom line: ethical academicians make every effort to submit original work, or fully and properly credit the language, ideas and work of others. You are expected to be honorable and ethical.