Milwaukee's Youth Enterprise Academy: An Eight-year Study of a Model Program for Urban Youth

This article describes the Youth Enterprise Academy (YEA), a program developed at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Economic Education through the partnership for a private foundation, the state government, a private not-for-profit organization, and the local public schools. The YEA is designed to improve the financial and economic understanding of urban youth. In this article, the authors evaluate the YEA over an eight-year period. A total of 198 ninth-and tenth-grade students participated in the YEA. An analysis of the pre-and posttest scores combined over a seven-year period reveals large and significant effect sizes in terms of student gains on tests of economic and financial knowledge. Based on the statistical analysis, the authors find that the curriculum used in Milwaukee's YEA is effective in influencing students' knowledge. (Contains 3 tables.)