La Mesa Junior High School placed first and third in the Stock Market Game for the September through December 2011-2012 period.  The first place team members were: Alejandro Hernandez, Ryan Valencia, Chris Rodriguez and Zulema Mejicano and made a profit of 6.1781 percent.  The third place team, which only had one member, Marisela Sanchez, made a profit of 3.7429 percent.
Each team was given $100,000 in a brokerage account and invested these “funds” in various stocks and mutual funds.  Students tracked their investments using math, English, science and social studies skills.  Students created research portfolios using graphs, spreadsheets as well as doing research papers on their companies.  
Mr. Geoffrey Aronsky is the Business Education Teacher at La Mesa who has successfully run the Stockmarket game for the last nine years.  He has also been named California’s Business Educator of the Year in 08-09 by the California Business Education Association.
The Stockmarket Game was sponsored by SIFMA Foundation which is dedicated to fostering knowledge and understanding of the financial markets and real life situations.  
In August 2009, Learning Point Associates, a leading educational research firm, completed a two-year study funded by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) to test the efficacy of the SMG program.  The findings showed that SMG substantially improves student math scores on standardized tests and improves student investor knowledge.  The study also showed that teachers were more likely to engage in financial planning practices as a result of teaching SMG.
Additionally, the first Nation’s Report Card on Economics, released in 2007, found that students participating in a stock market game scored a statistically significant higher score on standardized tests than students who had not participated.  Lastly, in six consecutive reports over a 12 year period, the biannual survey by the Jump$tart Coalition for Financial Literacy also found that students that participated in a stock market game score higher on the Jump$tart financial literacy survey than students that did not participate.
These students were honored in May at a luncheon sponsored by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.