Alaska standards alignment

• MS-LS2-3

  Partially covered

  Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem.

  Covered by

  • Manure and Compost

  • · 1 · What a loop is, and the two rules this course reads
  • · 9 · What composting is: carbon, nitrogen, water and air
  • · 22 · Build your own loop

  What we do and don't cover: Matter cycling among animals, microbes, soil and crops is taught directly, and the capstone (an instructor-graded assignment) has the learner build the model and define the boundary of their own system, as the clarification statement asks. PARTIAL because energy flow appears only as the heat a compost pile gives off; there is no treatment of energy moving through an ecosystem.

• HS-LS2-3

  Partially covered

  Construct and revise an explanation based on evidence for the cycling of matter and flow of energy in aerobic and anaerobic conditions.

  Covered by

  • Manure and Compost

  • · 9 · What composting is: carbon, nitrogen, water and air
  • · 10 · Heat, oxygen and time: the stages of a pile
  • · 12 · Turning, cold heaps, and worms

  What we do and don't cover: Composting is taught as aerobic decomposition, and the learner reads temperature evidence to tell a working aerobic pile from cold zones the NRCS composting chapter calls likely sites of anaerobic decomposition. PARTIAL because the course stops at that evidence: it does not teach aerobic or anaerobic respiration as processes (which the assessment boundary also excludes at the chemical level) and treats energy only as pile temperature.

What we don't claim

A standards page is only worth reading if the omissions are honest too. We looked at these and left them out:

• Mathematics — nothing. This catalog does no mathematics instruction, so it meets no Alaska (2012) mathematics standard.
• Science: partial claims, through the shared NGSS file. Alaska's 2019 K-12 Science Standards reproduce the NGSS HS-ESS3-1 performance expectation verbatim, so our science claims come through the shared NGSS mapping, each partial and with its limit stated on the entry; any NGSS code this state rewords or dropped is listed separately on this page. There is no laboratory work or investigation in this catalog, and we claim no more than the lessons teach.
• Alaska Native communities, ANCSA, and tribal governments (Government and Citizenship, Standard C). Alaska's Standard C requires students to understand the historical and current roles of Alaska Native communities, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and its impact on the state, and the roles of and relationships among the federal, tribal, and state governments (its items 4, 5, and 8). Alaska Civics teaches Alaska's state and local structure — boroughs, the Unorganized Borough, the strong governor, the Permanent Fund, the courts, and the election system — but does not teach Alaska Native governance or ANCSA, so Standard C is claimed as partial. The gap is in the course, not the standard.
• Alaska's own state structure is taught more fully than Standard C captures. Alaska Civics teaches the Constitution of 1959, boroughs instead of counties and the vast Unorganized Borough where the state provides county-type services, the strong governor with only two elected statewide officials, the 40/20 Legislature with no term limits, the line-item veto with a two-thirds/three-quarters override, the merit-selection judiciary, the citizen initiative/referendum/recall, the 2020 top-four/ranked-choice election system, and the Permanent Fund with no state income or sales tax — all from Alaska's own sources. Standard C hosts most of it, but this lettered content standard is a single broad statement, not an Alaska-government checklist, so the top-four/ranked-choice system, the Permanent Fund Dividend, and the boroughs have no code of their own.
• The international-affairs and economic-decision-making standards we checked and rejected. Government and Citizenship Standard D (the role of the United States in international affairs — foreign policy, U.S. influence on other nations, international organizations) and Standard G (the impact of economic choices and effective participation in local, state, national, and global economies — the economic-decision-making pedagogy of scarcity, costs and benefits, and informed choices) are not genuinely taught, so we do not claim them.
• The AI-literacy ladder, the language courses, and Learning How to Learn — deferred, not denied. Alaska's closest frameworks for these (its digital-literacy/technology and world-languages standards) have not been fetched and verified yet. Our rule is fetch-or-don't-cite, so these courses carry no Alaska claims this pass.
• Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS): 5-LS2-1 Alaska's 2019 standards reword 5-LS2-1 (“Develop and describe a model that describes the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment.”), so the NGSS wording shown for other states is not this state's. Compared 2026-10-06.
• Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS): HS-ESS1-1 Alaska's 2019 standards reword HS-ESS1-1 (“...illustrate that the life span of the Sun is a function of nuclear fusion in its core, and that stars, through nuclear fusion over their life cycle, produce elements and release energy...”), so the NGSS wording shown for other states is not this state's. Compared 2026-10-06.
• Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS): HS-ESS1-3 Alaska's 2019 standards have no separate HS-ESS1-3; its content is folded into Alaska's reworded HS-ESS1-1. Compared 2026-10-06.
• Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS): HS-ESS2-2 Alaska's 2019 standards reword HS-ESS2-2 (“Analyze geoscience data to evaluate claims that one change to Earth's surface creates feedbacks...”), so the NGSS wording shown for other states is not this state's. Compared 2026-10-06.