Iowa standards alignment

• SS.9-12.Gov.18

  Covered

  Identify the function, duties, and authority of the government of the state of Iowa.

  Covered by

  • Iowa Civics: How Your State Government Works

  • · Iowa Civics, Lesson 3 · The executive and the General Assembly
  • · Iowa Civics, Lesson 4 · How a bill becomes law, local government, and getting involved

  Note: The flagship's primary home: Iowa's own state government — the Constitution of 1857, the plural executive (Governor and Lieutenant Governor on a joint ticket, plus a separately elected Secretary of State, Attorney General, Treasurer, Auditor, and Secretary of Agriculture), the General Assembly (100-member House, 50-member Senate), and the merit-selection-plus-retention judiciary (the 7-justice Iowa Supreme Court) — is taught in depth.

• SS.9-12.Gov.20

  Covered

  Identify the functions and organizational structures of Iowa's local governments.

  Covered by

  • Iowa Civics: How Your State Government Works
  • US, State & Local Government: Who Does What

  • · Iowa Civics, Lesson 4 · How a bill becomes law, local government, and getting involved
  • · US, State & Local Government, Lesson 5 · What LOCAL government handles (and why it VARIES)
  • · US, State & Local Government, Lesson 7 · The governments you forget: special districts & boards

  Note: Near-1:1: Iowa's 99 counties (elected boards of supervisors and other county officials), cities under home rule, townships, special districts, and locally run school boards are each taught, along with how to take part at each level.

• SS.9-12.Gov.13

  Covered

  Analyze the electoral process and election systems in the United States, specifically Iowa election law including registration requirements, paper ballots, and absentee voting.

  Covered by

  • Iowa Civics: How Your State Government Works
  • Voting & Elections 101

  • · Iowa Civics, Lesson 1 · The Iowa caucuses: going first in presidential politics
  • · Iowa Civics, Lesson 2 · Iowa's nonpartisan redistricting: a national model
  • · Iowa Civics, Lesson 4 · How a bill becomes law, local government, and getting involved
  • · Voting & Elections 101, Lesson 4 · The Electoral College: how it works
  • · Voting & Elections 101, Lesson 5 · Why the Electoral College exists
  • · Voting & Elections 101, Lessons 1-3 · registration, primaries and caucuses, how you vote
  • · Voting & Elections 101, Lesson 7 · Counting, canvassing, and certifying the vote
  • · Voting & Elections 101, Lesson 8 · Verify your own registration and rules
  • · Voting & Elections 101, Lesson 1 · Registering to vote

  Note: The flagship's most distinctive material lands here: the Iowa Caucuses (named in the standard's clarification), Iowa's registration, absentee/early-voting, and county-auditor administration, and — under the standard's redistricting clarification — Iowa's nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency maps, a national anti-gerrymandering model. The Electoral College and the general registration/primary/count mechanics are taught in the general voting courses.

• SS.9-12.Gov.9

  Covered

  Assess how the United States federal system divides powers between national and state governments.

  Covered by

  • State vs Federal Power: How American Government Is Divided
  • Iowa Civics: How Your State Government Works

  • · State vs Federal Power, Lesson 1 · What is federalism, and why split power at all?
  • · State vs Federal Power, Lesson 2 · Three kinds of power: enumerated, implied, reserved
  • · State vs Federal Power, Lesson 3 · The enumerated powers: Article I, § 8 (the Necessary and Proper Clause)
  • · State vs Federal Power, Lesson 6 · Concurrent powers: what both levels share
  • · State vs Federal Power, Lesson 7 · McCulloch v. Maryland (1819): implied powers and supremacy
  • · Iowa Civics, Lesson 3 · The executive and the General Assembly
  • · Iowa Civics, Lesson 4 · How a bill becomes law, local government, and getting involved

  Note: Federalism and the enumerated/implied/reserved powers taxonomy are taught directly, and the standard's state-and-local functions are taught as Iowa's own (the state government and the 99-county/city/school-board layer).

• SS.9-12.Gov.17

  Partially covered

  Analyze the rights, liberties, duties, and responsibilities of citizens of the United States and the state of Iowa.

  Covered by

  • Citizenship & Naturalization Basics
  • Jury Duty & the Courts (the citizen's side)
  • Voting & Elections 101
  • The Bill of Rights: Know Your Rights
  • Iowa Civics: How Your State Government Works

  • · Citizenship & Naturalization Basics, Lesson 7 · Rights and responsibilities of citizenship
  • · Jury Duty & the Courts · the whole course (the citizen's side of the court system)
  • · Voting & Elections 101, Lesson 1 · Registering to vote
  • · Know Your Rights, Lessons 2-5 · speech, religion, press, assembly, including at school and online
  • · Know Your Rights, Lessons 6-8 · the 4th Amendment: searches, stops, and your digital life
  • · Iowa Civics, Lesson 4 · How a bill becomes law, local government, and getting involved

  What we do and don't cover: The rights and liberties in the Bill of Rights, the duty of jury service, the right to vote (including Iowa's own rules), and contacting a government official are each taught; the standard's Selective Service registration duty is not, so this is partial.

• SS.9-12.8

  Partially covered

  Apply a range of deliberative and democratic strategies and procedures to make decisions and engage in their classrooms, schools, and communities.

  Covered by

  • US, State & Local Government: Who Does What
  • Iowa Civics: How Your State Government Works

  • · US, State & Local Government, Lesson 8 · Where to show up and be heard, at every level
  • · Iowa Civics, Lesson 4 · How a bill becomes law, local government, and getting involved
  • · Ep 15 · Doubt Is Our Product
  • · Ep 19 · Peer Review Versus Press Release
  • · Ep 20 · The Ban Against the Evidence (the UK banning khat against its own scientific advice)

  What we do and don't cover: The standard's civic-engagement clarification (a healthy news diet of multiple credible sources, the impact of misinformation, and showing up where issues are decided) is taught as practice — Iowa's own levers (caucus, county boards, contacting Des Moines legislators, running locally); the designed graded deliberation is prompted, not run as an assignment, so this is partial.

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 — Common Core adopted as the Iowa Core: nothing claimed. Iowa adopted the Common Core State Standards for mathematics as the Iowa Core, but this catalog does no mathematics instruction, so it meets no Iowa mathematics standard. One nuance: Iowa's own Civics/Government standard SS.9-12.Gov.13 cross-references two statistics codes — A1.S-ID.C.9 (“Distinguish between correlation and causation”) and ST.S-IC.B.6 (“Evaluate reports based on data”) — that lightly touch the catalog's misleading-statistics media literacy. But the catalog does no mathematics instruction and does not run the statistical analysis those codes require, so we do not claim them.
• Science — NGSS-BASED (Iowa was a 2015 Lead State) but with documented Iowa revisions: deferred. Iowa's State Board of Education adopted the Next Generation Science Standards in August 2015, having helped write them as a Lead State Partner. But Iowa's science standards have documented later revisions (notably to climate-related expectations), so — unlike Michigan, which adopted the NGSS verbatim and reuses the shared NGSS mapping — we could not confirm within this pass that Iowa's HS-ESS3-1 (the one climate/resource expectation this catalog could touch) is a byte-for-byte NGSS republication. Our rule is verbatim-or-nothing, so we do NOT alias the shared NGSS framework here and DEFER Iowa's science standards rather than cite text we have not cleanly verified. The catalog's climate/resource content (resources, hazards, and climate shaping human activity) would map to Iowa's Earth and Space Science standards; that is deferred, not denied.
• English/Language Arts — Common-Core-derived but Iowa revised, so NOT aliased. Iowa adopted the Common Core for ELA as the Iowa Core, but the current (2024) Iowa Academic Standards for English Language Arts revised some codes. Of the six literacy codes this catalog touches, RH.11-12.6/8/9 are verbatim identical to the shared Common Core file, but RI.11-12.6 (“…or artistry of the text” vs Common Core's “…or beauty of the text”) and WHST.11-12.8 (“multiple credible primary and secondary… including recognition of bias” vs Common Core's “multiple authoritative… sources”) are Iowa's own revised wording. Because two of the six diverge, we do not alias the shared Common Core ELA framework — that would misrepresent Iowa's revised codes as verbatim Common Core. We instead transcribe Iowa's own verbatim literacy standards in the ia-literacy framework above.
• Iowa's caucuses, nonpartisan redistricting, and Missouri-Plan judiciary have no discrete benchmark. The flagship teaches the Iowa Caucuses, Iowa's nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency redistricting, and its merit-selection-plus-retention judiciary as headline features. The Iowa Caucuses are named only in the clarification of SS.9-12.Gov.13, and redistricting/gerrymandering appear only in that standard's “May include” list; the Missouri-Plan judiciary sits inside SS.9-12.Gov.18 (the state government) rather than as a benchmark of its own. So they are claimed through Gov.13 and Gov.18 rather than as standards in their own right.
• The sovereign Meskwaki Nation tribal government (SS.9-12.Gov.19). Iowa's Civics/Government course carries a dedicated benchmark on the sovereign Meskwaki Nation's tribal government — the Meskwaki Tribal Constitution, Council, and Court, and the Settlement's status as privately purchased land rather than a federal reservation. Iowa Civics teaches Iowa's state and local structure but not tribal government, so SS.9-12.Gov.19 is not claimed. The gap is in the course, not the standards.
• The political-science and civic-virtue benchmarks we checked and rejected. SS.9-12.Gov.1 (origins of government and alternative systems, including crimes against humanity by communist regimes), SS.9-12.Gov.2 (Enlightenment philosophers and the Federalist/Anti-Federalist Papers as named content), SS.9-12.Gov.5 (government's role in maintaining order through safety/morality/health laws), SS.9-12.Gov.11 (patterns of political action and activism), SS.9-12.Gov.12 (intermediary institutions — interest groups, parties, media, campaigns, political socialization), SS.9-12.Gov.15 (biographies of exemplary Iowans and Americans who promoted civic virtue), SS.9-12.Gov.16 (civic virtue as a named concept), and the inquiry-mechanics anchors SS.9-12.1, SS.9-12.2, and SS.9-12.6 (developing compelling/supporting questions and constructing sequenced responses) — the courses do not genuinely teach these, or teach them too thinly to claim, so we do not claim them.