Exploring Economics (Notgrass)

Exploring Economics is a one-semester, half-credit high-school economics course from Notgrass Company, the Tennessee family publisher best known for its complete US history sequence. The course covers micro and macro principles, personal finance, and economic history through a two-volume hardcover text, a student review pack, and a primary-source anthology titled We the People. It is widely paired with Notgrass's Exploring Government to produce a full-year senior government-and-economics credit.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Traditional / literature-based / narrative textbook with primary sources
Worldview	Christian-evangelical; free-market economic framing
Grades	9-12 (most commonly used in grade 11 or 12)
Formats	Print hardcover text (two volumes), student review pack, anthology
Cost tier	Standard
Parent intensity	3 (student-driven with parent discussion; essay grading required)
ESA-common	Yes, widely on marketplaces that permit religious curriculum
Accredited	No (curriculum publisher; accredited schools use Notgrass separately)
Established	Exploring Economics first published 2009; Notgrass Company founded 1994
Website	notgrass.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	3	Covers essential economics concepts at a high-school survey level; not AP-equivalent
Ease of teaching	4	Narrative textbook is student-readable; parent grades assignments
Content quality	4	Clear prose, genuinely informative on history of economic thought
Flexibility	4	Half-credit stands alone or pairs with Exploring Government; course easily paced
Value for money	4	Complete half-credit with anthology for approximately $100-$140
Worldview scope	2	Christian-evangelical framing throughout; free-market orientation explicit
Visual/design	3	Hardcover with period photographs; clean, classic textbook aesthetic
Support resources	3	Teacher guide, answer keys, sample lessons, email support

Who the publisher is

Notgrass Company was founded in 1994 by Ray Notgrass in Gainesboro, Tennessee, and remains family-owned and family-operated. Ray Notgrass authors or co-authors the history texts; his wife Charlene and daughter Bethany contribute editorially. The company is unusual in the homeschool publishing landscape for being both genuinely small-scale (a small staff working from a central Tennessee office) and widely adopted. Notgrass titles are standard recommendations on HSLDA's high-school curriculum lists and on classical-homeschool forums.

The Notgrass catalog is built around narrative-style textbooks that function as literature-based survey courses: Exploring America, Exploring World History, Exploring Government, Exploring Economics, and Exploring World Geography. Each integrates textbook narrative, primary-source readings, assigned literature, Bible integration, and writing assignments, with most titles able to earn multiple credits when the full student workload is completed.

The company is explicitly Christian and conservative in editorial orientation, Notgrass materials include Bible passages as primary readings, quote Scripture in historical framing, and take what the company's own About page describes as "God's providential hand in human history" as a throughline. On economics specifically, the Notgrass framing favors free-market economic principles, private property, and a limited federal-government economic role; this is stated plainly in the text rather than implied.

The core pedagogy

Exploring Economics is a single-semester, half-credit course structured across thirty lessons, typically one lesson per school day across a fifteen-week semester, or two lessons per day across roughly a half-semester if a family wants to compress. Each lesson pairs a reading from the two-volume hardcover text with a supplementary reading (from the We the People anthology or from Scripture), comprehension questions, and a periodic writing assignment.

Scope covers the usual high-school economics ground: supply and demand, market structures, money and banking, fiscal and monetary policy, international trade, and a meaningful block on personal finance (budgeting, credit, saving, investing). A distinguishing feature is the course's treatment of economic history, how markets and economic thought have developed from colonial mercantilism through industrial capitalism, New Deal federalism, the postwar consensus, and contemporary globalization. The historical framing runs parallel to the conceptual framing throughout, which distinguishes the course from most high-school economics texts that present economics as a timeless set of principles.

Signature mechanics: (1) Narrative textbook prose. Notgrass writes in connected essay style rather than in numbered-subpoint textbook style; a student reads Exploring Economics more like a book than a reference. (2) We the People primary-source integration. The anthology pulls from the Federalist Papers, Adam Smith, Frederic Bastiat, selected Supreme Court opinions, Scripture passages on stewardship, and contemporary economic writing; students read primary documents alongside the narrative. (3) Bible-as-primary-source layer. Scripture readings are assigned on economic themes (work, stewardship, justice, poverty) and woven into lesson flow. (4) Personal-finance applied work. A meaningful share of the course, perhaps a quarter of the lessons, addresses personal money management with applied exercises.

A day in the life

An eleventh-grader using Exploring Economics across a spring semester spends approximately forty-five to sixty minutes per day on the course. She reads the day's lesson from Volume 1 (roughly eight to twelve pages), works through the comprehension questions in the student review pack (fifteen minutes), and reads the assigned We the People selection (ten to fifteen minutes, depending on length, some days a short op-ed, some days a dense excerpt from Adam Smith). Once a week she writes a short essay or personal-finance exercise prompted by the lesson. Her parent reviews her answers at the end of the day or the end of the week, grades the essay against a rubric provided in the teacher guide, and discusses the lesson's framing briefly, particularly when the lesson treats economic history the student has not previously encountered.

At the end of the semester, a student who has completed all thirty lessons, the review-pack work, and the assigned writing earns a half-credit in economics on the transcript. If paired with Exploring Government in the fall semester, the combined year produces a full-credit senior government-and-economics sequence parallel to the structure many public high schools use.

What they do exceptionally well

Narrative prose that students actually read. The single most valuable element of Notgrass's work across the catalog, and visible in Exploring Economics specifically, is that Ray Notgrass writes connected paragraphs rather than textbook boxes and bullets. A student in the eleventh grade genuinely reads this book; many homeschool and public-school economics texts are built to be scanned rather than read.

Integration of economic history. Most high-school economics courses treat economic principles as timeless abstractions. Exploring Economics situates supply and demand, monetary policy, and international trade in their historical development, how Adam Smith arose from a specific eighteenth-century debate, how the gold standard gave way to fiat money under specific pressures, how the New Deal reshaped federal-state economic relations. Students emerge with a sense that economics is an intellectual tradition rather than a fixed body of rules.

Practical personal-finance content. The personal-finance layer is substantive, budgeting, credit cards, student loans, investing basics, insurance, at a level a senior benefits from before leaving home. This is not a throwaway chapter but a meaningful fraction of the course.

What they do poorly

Free-market framing is integrated, not bracketed. The course presents free-market economic principles as correct and presents alternatives (Keynesian federal intervention, planned economies, significant regulatory redistribution) as positions to be understood and, in Notgrass's framing, found wanting. Students from families that want a more balanced treatment of competing economic schools. Keynesianism treated on its own terms, Marxian political economy presented as a serious intellectual tradition rather than a historical error, will find the course's framing consistent with the publisher's position. This is the Notgrass editorial stance, not a flaw; it is noted here for families weighing fit.

Not AP Economics equivalent. A student completing Exploring Economics should not expect to sit for the AP Microeconomics or Macroeconomics exam without substantial additional preparation. The course is a general high-school survey; it does not build to the depth, problem-set fluency, or graph-heavy analytical work that AP-level preparation requires.

Teacher-support layer is modest. The teacher guide provides answer keys, suggested schedules, and rubrics, but it does not provide the substantial teacher-training layer that a parent without an economics background might want when grading essays or leading discussion. Parents with little economic background may find themselves reading the lessons themselves to keep up.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Exploring Economics if: you are a Christian-evangelical or conservative family wanting a high-school economics half-credit aligned with free-market principles and biblical stewardship; you want narrative prose your student will actually read rather than a textbook to skim; you are pairing it with Exploring Government for a full senior government-and-economics year; you want meaningful personal-finance content embedded in the course; your student is a reader who benefits from literature-layered instruction over worksheet-driven.

• Skip Exploring Economics if: you want a balanced, multi-school treatment of economics (Keynesian, Austrian, monetarist, Marxian) presented on each tradition's own terms; you are targeting AP Economics preparation and need the analytical depth and problem-set volume that implies; you are a secular or theologically-broad family that does not want Bible integrated as primary source material; your student prefers video or multimedia instruction over dense prose; you want a college-dual-enrollment option rather than a homeschool-credit course.

Cost honest assessment

Per the Exploring Economics product page as of April 2026, the full course package, two hardcover volumes, student review pack, answer key, and We the People anthology, retails at approximately $100-$140. The package is non-consumable (the review pack is the only consumable component, and separate review packs are sold for additional students), making the program highly reusable across multiple siblings.

Compared to BJU Press Economics (roughly $90-$160 for the textbook and teacher materials, year-long), Abeka Economics (roughly $80-$120 for a one-semester package as part of the Abeka high-school sequence), or secular options like Thinkwell Economics (roughly $125-$250 for video-based online courses), Notgrass is priced competitively within its tier.

A realistic all-in family budget for Exploring Economics as a standalone half-credit is $100-$140 for one student, with additional review packs at approximately $15-$25 for each additional student using the same course.

ESA eligibility notes

Notgrass Company is widely approved across state ESA marketplaces where Christian curriculum is permitted. Notgrass is listed on Arizona's ClassWallet, Florida's Step Up For Students and MyScholarShop, West Virginia's Hope Scholarship, Iowa's Education Savings Account, and Utah Fits All. Notgrass's own website provides order workflows compatible with several ESA marketplaces. States that restrict religious materials will apply those restrictions to Exploring Economics's Scripture-integrated content; ESA-funded families should verify within their specific state marketplace before ordering.

Alternatives

• Ron Paul Curriculum. Economics, a family would choose Ron Paul's video-based economics course over Notgrass for a libertarian/Austrian-school economic framing, video instruction, and a free-market orientation with different philosophical grounding.
• Thinkwell Economics or Modern States AP Macroeconomics, a family would choose Thinkwell or Modern States over Notgrass for a secular, video-based course aimed at AP-level preparation without religious integration.
• Uncle Eric's Whatever Happened to Penny Candy (Bluestocking Press), a family would choose the Uncle Eric series over Notgrass for a shorter, more libertarian-flavored introductory economics sequence suitable for middle-grades or as a light high-school addition.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Exploring Economics product page, sample lessons, scope-and-sequence document, We the People anthology contents, and company About page at notgrass.com. We cross-referenced against Cathy Duffy Reviews' Notgrass Economics entry and the HSLDA high-school curriculum directory. Prices and program details verified April 2026.