Pennsylvania standards alignment

• 5.3.12.E

  Covered

  Evaluate the fairness and effectiveness of the United States electoral processes, including the electoral college.

  Covered by

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

  • · 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
  • · Pennsylvania Civics, Lesson 6 · Elections in Pennsylvania: Act 77 mail-in voting, closed primaries, voter ID

  Note: The Electoral College — which this standard names — is taught in depth (mechanics and original purpose), alongside how registration, primaries, and vote-counting work, and Pennsylvania's own electoral process (Act 77 mail voting, closed primaries) through the flagship.

• 5.1.12.D

  Covered

  Evaluate state and federal powers based on significant documents and other critical sources.

  Covered by

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

  • · 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
  • · State vs Federal Power, Lesson 1 · What is federalism, and why split power at all?
  • · Pennsylvania Civics, Lesson 1 · Pennsylvania's constitution: the 1968 rulebook and a two-session amendment path (Article XI; the Declaration of Rights)

  Note: State and federal powers are taught by name (enumerated/delegated, implied, reserved, concurrent) through McCulloch and the founding documents. The standard's document list names the Pennsylvania Constitution, which the flagship teaches directly.

• 5.1.12.E

  Covered

  Analyze and assess the rights of people as written in the PA Constitution and the US Constitution.

  Covered by

  • The Bill of Rights: Know Your Rights
  • Pennsylvania Civics: How Your State Government Works

  • · The Bill of Rights: Know Your Rights, Lesson 1 · What is the Bill of Rights?
  • · 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
  • · Pennsylvania Civics, Lesson 1 · Pennsylvania's constitution: the 1968 rulebook and a two-session amendment path (Article XI; the Declaration of Rights)

  Note: The federal Bill of Rights is taught as applicable rules with its landmark cases, and the flagship teaches Pennsylvania's own Article I Declaration of Rights — which in places protects more than the federal document (the Environmental Rights Amendment) — exactly the PA-and-US comparison the standard asks for.

• 5.2.12.D

  Covered

  Evaluate and demonstrate what makes competent and responsible citizens.

  Covered by

  • Citizenship & Naturalization Basics
  • How to Help a Campaign: A Practical, Non-Partisan Guide
  • US, State & Local Government: Who Does What
  • Pennsylvania Civics: How Your State Government Works

  • · Citizenship & Naturalization Basics, Lesson 7 · Rights and responsibilities of citizenship
  • · How to Help a Campaign · the whole course (volunteering, donating, canvassing, with the legal guardrails)
  • · US, State & Local Government, Lesson 8 · Where to show up and be heard, at every level
  • · Pennsylvania Civics, Lesson 7 · Get involved where you live in Pennsylvania

  Note: Responsible citizenship is taught as practice — the responsibilities lesson, helping a campaign lawfully, showing up at every level of government, and Pennsylvania's own get-involved lesson (townships and boroughs, because there is no citizen initiative).

• 5.3.12.A

  Partially covered

  Analyze the changes in power and authority among the three branches of government over time.

  Covered by

  • US Constitution 101: The Document That Builds the Government
  • US Civics 101: How American Government Works
  • Pennsylvania Civics: How Your State Government Works

  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 6 · Separation of powers and checks & balances
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 7 · Federalism: state and federal power
  • · US Civics 101, Lesson 1 · Purpose of government and the three branches
  • · Pennsylvania Civics, Lesson 2 · The three branches: the joint-ticket Governor and the biggest legislature in the nation
  • · Pennsylvania Civics, Lesson 3 · Pennsylvania's courts: elected, then retained

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: the three branches and the checks and balances between them are taught directly, federally and (through the flagship) in Pennsylvania's own structure — the largest full-time legislature and its partly-plural executive. The standard's specific focus on how power has SHIFTED among the branches over time is not a course focus.

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 Pennsylvania Core mathematics standard.
• Science — nothing, and here is exactly why. Pennsylvania did NOT adopt the NGSS. Its standards in force are the STEELS standards (Science, Technology & Engineering, Environmental Literacy & Sustainability, effective July 2025), which are Pennsylvania's own — so, unlike California, New York, and D.C., there is no shared NGSS performance expectation to adopt here. This is also not a science course (no lab work, no investigation, no modelling). The catalog's resource-availability and climate-change content is claimed instead under Pennsylvania's Geography standard 7.4.12.A, where it honestly belongs.
• The Pennsylvania Civics flagship's distinctive structure has mostly no code to cite. Pennsylvania Civics: How Your State Government Works teaches the nation's largest full-time state legislature (a 203-member House and 50-member Senate), the elected-then-retained judiciary (partisan election to 10-year terms, then nonpartisan yes/no retention, with the Superior and Commonwealth intermediate courts), how a bill becomes a Pennsylvania law (the three-considerations rule, the two-thirds override, and the Governor's line-item veto on appropriations), and Pennsylvania's 67 counties with their ACTIVE township layer — Pennsylvania does NOT abolish townships — under home-rule and code municipalities. Pennsylvania's 2009 Civics standards reach the Commonwealth's own constitution and rights (5.1.12.D, 5.1.12.E) and general electoral processes (5.3.12.E), which the course backs, but the legislature's size, the elected judiciary, the state lawmaking process, and the township layer have no Pennsylvania-specific code. The gap is in the standards, not the course.
• Act 77 mail-in voting and Pennsylvania's other election specifics. The flagship teaches Act 77 no-excuse mail-in voting (struck down then upheld in McLinko v. Department of State, 2022), closed primaries, first-time-voter ID, and the 15-day registration deadline with no same-day registration. Pennsylvania's Civics standards name only “United States electoral processes” (5.3.12.E), with no Pennsylvania-specific election standard, so we claim Pennsylvania's own rules only through that general standard and the flagship. The specifics have no code.
• The Opium Wars and the Haitian Revolution — Pennsylvania's history standards are too abstract to name them. The catalog teaches both in depth. Pennsylvania's 2009 History standards are analytical standards organized by broad categories (“conflict and cooperation,” “continuity and change”) rather than by specific events, so — unlike Washington, D.C., whose standards name them explicitly — there is no Pennsylvania standard that names the Opium Wars or the Haitian Revolution to cite. We claim the world-history content only through the broad 8.4 categories, and mark those partial.
• Personal finance and most of the Economics framework. Scarcity and opportunity cost as named concepts (6.1), market competition and economic indicators (6.2.A-C, E, F), public goods and taxation policy (6.3.A, C), and the multinational-corporation and technology standards (6.4.C, D) were checked against the Grade 12 Economics framework and are not genuinely taught by these courses. We claim only the economic-systems, government-in-trade, labor-regulation, comparative-advantage, and supply-and-demand standards the catalog actually reaches.
• The general-ELA rhetoric standard, and the science/technical literacy strand. Pennsylvania revised Common Core's RI.11-12.6 (rhetoric) in its general Core ELA (CC.1.2.11-12.D reads differently), so we do not claim it — the catalog's honest, verbatim literacy home is the History/Social-Studies strand (8.5/8.6) mapped above. Pennsylvania's Reading and Writing in Science and Technical Subjects (3.5/3.6) strand is likewise not claimed by this history-and-economics catalog.
• The AI-literacy ladder, the language courses, and Learning How to Learn — deferred, not denied. Pennsylvania's relevant frameworks for these (Business, Computer and Information Technology; World Languages) have not been fetched and verified yet. Our rule is fetch-or-don't-cite, so these courses carry no Pennsylvania claims this pass.