Delaware standards alignment

• HS-ESS2-2

  Partially covered

  Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth's surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.

  Covered by

  • The River and the Watershed

  • · 2 · Where a river's water comes from
  • · 6 · Sediment, and what a dam does to it
  • · 9 · Why the oxygen runs out
  • · 10 · A thousand miles of nitrogen

  What we do and don't cover: The best NGSS fit in the catalog for a feedback argument. The River and the Watershed is built out of them: paving a watershed raises flood peaks AND lowers baseflow through one mechanism (lesson 2); a dam trapping sediment starves the channel below and stops resupplying the delta a thousand miles away (lesson 6); fertiliser on an Indiana field ends as an oxygen-depleted zone in the Gulf (lessons 9 and 10). PARTIAL because of the first verb: the learner ANALYZES geoscience data only in the capstone, where they read a USGS gauge record and an EPA impairment listing for their own watershed. The lessons supply the analysis; the student repeats it once.

• HS-ESS2-5

  Partially covered

  Plan and conduct an investigation of the properties of water and its effects on Earth materials and surface processes.

  Covered by

  • The River and the Watershed

  • · 5 · The river shapes the land
  • · 6 · Sediment, and what a dam does to it
  • · 9 · Why the oxygen runs out

  What we do and don't cover: PARTIAL, and the gap is the entire first half of the sentence. The CONTENT is taught directly and at length: water's properties drive erosion and deposition, meanders, cut banks and point bars (lesson 5), sediment transport and what a dam does to it (lesson 6), and density stratification, which is why the Gulf hypoxic zone persists through the summer (lesson 9). But the learner never PLANS AND CONDUCTS AN INVESTIGATION. There is no laboratory work in this catalog and no fieldwork is required to finish this course. If your science requirement is assessed on students conducting investigations, this contributes and does not discharge. Course 4 of this track teaches how to design one; running it is still the student's own project.

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 Delaware (Common Core) mathematics standard.
• Science — one partial claim, via the shared NGSS file. Delaware was an NGSS lead state and the 7th state to adopt the NGSS verbatim (unanimous State Board vote, September 19, 2013), so our one honest science claim — HS-ESS3-1, partial — comes through the shared NGSS mapping with the limit stated on the entry. There is no laboratory work, investigation, or modelling in this catalog, and we will not claim more.
• Two Civics 9-12 expectations we checked and rejected. Civics Standard Two 9-12 (“examine and analyze the extra-Constitutional role that political parties play in American politics”) is not taught: Delaware Civics teaches the CONSTITUTIONAL major-party balance rule on Delaware's courts, which is the opposite of an extra-Constitutional party analysis. Civics Standard Four 9-12 (“understand the process of working within a political party, a commission engaged in examining public policy, or a citizen's group”) is likewise not taught — the course teaches running for local office and attending public boards, not working inside a party, commission, or advocacy group. The courses do not genuinely teach these, so we do not claim them.
• Economics — Macroeconomics is not taught. Economics Standard Two 9-12 (how economies function as a whole — inflation, unemployment, business cycles, and monetary and fiscal policies) is not taught by this catalog. The BVC economics is microeconomic and trade-focused (commodity prices, value chains, trade barriers), so we claim the Microeconomics, Economic Systems, and International Trade expectations and reject Macroeconomics.
• Geography — Maps (excluded as unverifiable here) and Regions. The Commodity Map itself would map to Geography Standard One (Maps), but that strand's Grades 9-12 expectation is a bulleted, multi-part standard (mapped patterns analyzed through hierarchy, accessibility, diffusion, and complementarity, each with its own parenthetical definition) that we could not reproduce cleanly verbatim in a single entry — verbatim-or-nothing, so we exclude it rather than paraphrase, and note the gap here. Geography Standard Four (Regions) is not genuinely taught. The gap on Maps is in our transcription, not the lessons.
• History — the Content strand's Delaware connection. History Standard Four 9-12 asks for modern United States and world history “and its connections to Delaware history.” The catalog teaches world and U.S. history at real depth, but not Delaware's own history, which the benchmark centers — so we map the History strand's analytical expectations (Chronology, Analysis, Interpretation) and do not claim the Content strand.
• The AI-literacy ladder, the language courses, and Learning How to Learn — deferred, not denied. Delaware's closest frameworks (Computer Science, World Languages) have not been fetched and verified yet. Our rule is fetch-or-don't-cite, so these courses carry no Delaware claims this pass.