A Health Care Challenge

All school year, I have been mulling over my challenge for my AP American Government and Politics students.  The materials from last year's challenge have essentially gone viral, going to iTunesU, appearing on an Apple Education webcast, used to seed a new CBL Community online web site, etc.  In other words, I've been feeling some pressure. It's not pressure to "top" last year's experience, exactly.  No, it's pressure to give this year's students a fighting chance to have a great learning experience.  Here's the challenge:

Devise a plan for reducing health care costs for a cohort in your personal network and share it with a panel of health care professionals.

The idea for health care as a "big idea" came to me through an email on which I was copied.  Several ADE's had been invited to submit a response to an issue regarding a new CBL Teacher's Guide.  In his submission, Marco Torres floated an essential question about  health care which I modified as a point of departure in my class. The idea for having the students present to a panel of experts came from my colleague, Cindy Richter. In a recent professional development group, she floated a scheme of having her econ students develop business plans and then pitch them to people in the community with the expertise to evaluate it.  I thought this was a fantastic concept and decided to bake it right into my students' challenge.

If you would like to see the entire challenge design, click the following:

AP Gov Health Care Challenge Project

I'll keep you posted on the students' progress!