Kansas standards alignment

• 5-LS2-1

  Partially covered

  Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment.

  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: The capstone (lesson 22, an assignment the learner submits and an instructor grades) has the learner develop exactly this model for their own ground: boxes for plants, animals, decomposers and soil, arrows labelled with the matter each carries, and the leaks out of the system. PARTIAL because the clarification statement's emphasis, that plants change matter that is not food (air, water) into food, is not taught: the course follows decomposed material back into soil and crops, not photosynthesis.

• 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:

• Kansas assesses SKILLS, not content — so Kansas's own structure has no code of its own. Kansas's standards are the five thematic Standards and their benchmarks, and KSDE states outright that assessments focus on the Standards and Benchmarks, not specific content, and that the government course's content outline is not a list of required items. So Kansas — unlike Oklahoma or Utah — publishes NO standard that names its plural executive, its 125-member House and 40-member Senate, its merit-selection Supreme Court, its absence of a citizen initiative, its strong home rule, or its 105 counties. The Kansas Civics flagship teaches all of these in depth, but as the CONTENT through which the benchmark skills are exercised; we map them onto the benchmarks (above) rather than inventing content codes Kansas does not publish.
• Standard 3 (beliefs, ideas, and diversity) — not claimed. Standard 3 and its benchmarks (3.1-3.4) ask students to recognize, analyze, investigate, and apply the significant beliefs, contributions, and ideas of diverse peoples and groups. The Kansas Civics flagship and the general civics ladder teach government structure and civic practice, not a survey of diverse beliefs and contributions, so we do not claim Standard 3. (The catalog's history courses touch this content in other states' content-bearing frameworks, but Kansas's skills framework is the wrong home for it here.)
• The other benchmarks under Standards 1, 2, 4, and 5 — not claimed. Within the standards we do touch, we claim only the benchmarks whose skill the flagship genuinely exercises. The analyze/draw-conclusions and use/apply benchmarks we did not map (1.2, 1.3, 2.2, 4.3, 4.4, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4) call for sustained, graded analysis or the construction of a personal/community/state narrative that this catalog prompts but does not deliver as assessed work. We leave them unclaimed rather than round a prompt up to a performance.
• The federal-heavy and policy units of Kansas's US Government course. Kansas's HS United States Government course suggests units on Principles and Foundations of the U.S. Constitution, the Structure and Function of the Federal Government, Human and Civil Rights, Domestic and Foreign Policy, and Politics/Interest Groups/Media. The general civics ladder (US Civics 101, US Constitution 101, the three-branches courses, Know Your Rights) covers much of the first three, but Domestic and Foreign Policy (fiscal policy, GDP, treaties, NATO/UN, the Monroe Doctrine) is economics/international-relations content this catalog does not teach, so we do not claim those units.
• Mathematics — nothing. This catalog does no mathematics instruction, so it meets no Kansas College and Career Ready (KCCRS / Common Core) mathematics standard.
• Science: partial claims, through the shared NGSS file. Kansas adopted the NGSS verbatim as the Kansas College and Career Ready Standards for Science (June 11, 2013), 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.
• A 2020 revision exists — confirm current codes. Kansas published a 2020 revision of the History, Government, and Social Studies Standards with the same five-standard design (five standards and four associated benchmarks, measured by a Classroom-Based Assessment). We cite the 2013 edition here; a teacher should confirm the current benchmark wording against KSDE's present document before filing.