FRANKLIN—A team of four economics students at Franklin High School has placed first in the Tidewater region, and will next week compete for the 2013 Governor’s Challenge in Economics and Personal Finance.

Coach Chelsie Brown, who teaches college prep math, algebra functions and economics and personal finance at FHS, explained the process.

“One day in class, I split the students up into teams with no more than four students to a team and got them to take the quiz,” said Brown.

The test was an online competition for the first round of the Governor’s Challenge. The team decided to take the 30-minute quiz for the David Ricardo Division in economics.

The scoring process included 10 points for each correct answer, minus five points for a wrong answer and zero points for no answer, then the top three scores were added together.

“It is pretty exciting,” said Brown, “especially considering the amount of students other schools have.”

The team consisting of Chad Benton, Michael Edwards, Quintin Lowe and Jacob Tatum will travel to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond on April 17 for the next phase of the challenge.

High school teams from across Virginia qualified to compete in the championship rounds through an online competition held in March, according to a press release. In all, 160 high school students will compete Wednesday in the Governor’s Challenge, including the four from Franklin.

At the ‘live’ Governor’s Challenge on Wednesday, students will go head-to-head in final ‘buzzer’ Quiz Bowl rounds and personal finance teams adjust their presentations according to unexpected “what if” scenarios and questions from a panel of expert judges.

Brown said, as she understands it, the first round will consist of each individual team member answering 30 micro/macro economics questions and the top three will determine the score. In other words, the lowest score will be dropped because some teams only have three members.

Round 2 will involve 15 international economics questions, and the students can confer as a team for the answer. The scoring system is the same as it was during the quiz process. Brown said the weighted scoring system is used to discourage guessing at the answer.

After scores are tallied, the top teams will compete for the championship round and the winners of that round can then go on to the national competition held in New York City.

The Virginia Council for Economic Education has more details about the competition. Visit their website at www.vcee.org.