Kentucky 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.

• 6-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 Kentucky Academic Standards for Mathematics standard.
• English/Language Arts — Kentucky's OWN post-Common-Core standards: deferred. Kentucky replaced its earlier Common Core adoption with its own Kentucky Academic Standards for Reading and Writing (2019), a post-Common-Core revision under Kentucky's own organization. The shared Common Core ELA mapping this catalog uses in Common Core states does NOT apply in Kentucky. The catalog's ELA-literacy strengths — evaluating an author's point of view and evidence, analyzing rhetoric, and sustained research with citation — would map to Kentucky's own reading and writing standards, but transcribing and verifying those verbatim is deferred this pass (verbatim-or-nothing) and published here rather than claimed unverified.
• Science: partial claims, through the shared NGSS file. Kentucky was an NGSS lead state and adopted the NGSS verbatim as the Kentucky Academic Standards for Science, 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.
• Kentucky's own state structure is taught more fully than HS.C.KGO.1-3 capture. The Kentucky Government cluster (HS.C.KGO.1-3) is the flagship's home, but Kentucky's most distinctive facts — the odd-numbered-year statewide election cycle, the comparatively WEAK gubernatorial veto (a simple-majority override), the fully nonpartisan elected judiciary with 8-year Supreme Court terms, the 120 counties (third-most of any state) and Louisville Metro consolidation, and the ABSENCE of a citizen initiative (amendments proposed by a three-fifths General Assembly vote and ratified by voters) — are folded into those three indicators rather than each having a code of its own.
• The founding-philosophy and political-science Civics indicators we checked and rejected. HS.C.CP.3 (comparing forms of government and how each maintains order and interacts within the international community), HS.C.CV.1 (how classical republicanism, natural rights philosophy, and English common law influenced the Founders), HS.C.CV.2 (the abstract expansion of civic virtues, democratic principles, and human rights influencing individuals and groups), HS.C.PR.2 (the role of elections, bureaucracy, political parties, interest groups, and media in shaping public policy — our media literacy is consumer/source literacy, not political-media analysis), and HS.C.PR.4 (comparing the domestic and foreign policies of the United States and other countries) — the courses do not genuinely teach these, or teach them too thinly to claim, so we do not claim them.
• The civics inquiry PRACTICES we did not claim (only the 'Using Evidence' strand is claimed). The KAS civics standards weave the C3 inquiry practices through the discipline: HS.C.I.Q.1-2 (generating compelling and supporting questions) and HS.C.I.CC.1-3 (engaging in civil discussion and reaching consensus, constructing arguments and public communications, and proposing a solution or action plan). These are run as classroom inquiry the catalog does not deliver as graded work, so we do not claim them. The one inquiry strand where the catalog genuinely delivers — Using Evidence (HS.C.I.UE.1-3: evaluating source credibility, gathering evidence, and constructing and revising claims) — is claimed above.
• Kentucky's other Social Studies disciplines — Economics, Geography, and History — deferred. The KAS for Social Studies (2019) also carries high-school Economics, Geography, and U.S./World History disciplines. The catalog's commodity, colonial, labor, civil-rights, and Cold-War history and its commodity economics WOULD map to those strands, as they do in other states, but we mapped the High School Civics strand this pass and defer the rest rather than cite text we did not transcribe this pass (verbatim-or-nothing).