Colorado standards alignment

• SS.HS.4.2.b

  Covered

  Identify the structure, function, and roles of current members of American government and their relationship to democratic values.

  Covered by

  • Colorado Civics: How Your State Government Works
  • US Civics 101: How American Government Works

  • · Colorado Civics, Lesson 2 · The three branches of Colorado government
  • · Colorado Civics, Lesson 5 · How a bill becomes a Colorado law
  • · US Civics 101, Lesson 1 · Purpose of government and the three branches

  Note: Colorado's own three branches (the 35/65 General Assembly under GAVEL and term limits, the plural executive) are taught beside the three federal branches — the structure, function, and roles of the members of government.

• SS.HS.4.2.d

  Covered

  Analyze the role of the founding documents of the United States and the evolution of their interpretation through governmental action and court cases. For example: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and the Bill of Rights.

  Covered by

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

  • · US Constitution 101, Lessons 2-9 · the Constitution analyzed article by article
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 8 · The Bill of Rights (Amendments I to X)
  • · US Civics 101, Lesson 4 · The courts and judicial review (Marbury v. Madison)

  Note: The Constitution and the Bill of Rights as documents, and the evolution of their interpretation through court cases (judicial review via Marbury v. Madison), are taught by name; the Federalist Papers are an illustrative example the outcome lists, not a required single text.

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 Colorado Academic Standards mathematics expectation.
• Science — Colorado's OWN standards (NGSS-influenced, not adopted verbatim): deferred, not denied. Colorado's 2020 science standards are Colorado's own — influenced by the NGSS framework but written under Colorado's own codes, NOT the NGSS performance expectations adopted verbatim — so the shared NGSS mapping this catalog uses in true NGSS-adopting states (Maryland, Michigan) does NOT apply in Colorado, and we do not blind-alias to it. The catalog's one honest science touch (resource availability and climate shaping human activity) would find an analog in Colorado's Earth-systems evidence outcomes, but this pass mapped only the High School Civics standard; Colorado's science standards are deferred (verbatim-or-nothing), not claimed unverified.
• English/Language Arts — Colorado's OWN Reading, Writing, and Communicating standards: deferred. Colorado writes its own Reading, Writing, and Communicating (RWC) standards under Colorado-specific codes, NOT the Common Core (contrast Maryland, which adopted the CC as the MCCRS). The catalog's ELA-literacy strengths — evaluating an author's point of view and evidence, analyzing rhetoric, and sustained research with citation, which we map VERBATIM to the Common Core RH/RI/WHST strands in states that adopted them — would map to Colorado's own high-school RWC reading and writing expectations, but transcribing and verifying those verbatim is deferred this pass and published here rather than claimed unverified.
• Colorado's signature feature, TABOR, has no code of its own. The Colorado flagship's headline fact is the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR): voters must approve any tax increase, and revenue above a cap is refunded. Colorado's concept-based civics standard names no TABOR-specific outcome; it is claimed here only through SS.HS.4.1.b (individuals and groups using the structure of government to shape policy), which it fits squarely as Colorado's most consequential use of direct democracy, rather than as a standard of its own.
• The concept-based civics outcomes we checked and rejected. SS.HS.4.1.a (engage in civil discourse as a named skill), SS.HS.4.2.c (the inherent competition among democratic values), SS.HS.4.2.f (how current global issues impact American foreign policy), SS.HS.4.2.g (compare other systems of government — authoritarian/parliamentary), SS.HS.4.3.b (parties, interest groups, suffrage, and social movements), SS.HS.4.3.c (PACs, campaign finance, and the Federal Election Commission), and SS.HS.4.3.e (participation in other systems of government) — the courses do not genuinely teach these, or teach them too thinly to claim, so we do not claim them.
• Colorado's History, Geography, and Economics standards — deferred. Colorado's High School Social Studies has four standards; we mapped Standard 4 (Civics) this pass. The catalog's commodity, colonial, labor, and civil-rights history, its commodity geography, and its commodity economics WOULD map to Colorado's High School Standard 1 (History), Standard 2 (Geography), and Standard 3 (Economics) evidence outcomes, as they do in other states, but we defer those (verbatim-or-nothing) rather than cite text we have not transcribed and verified this pass.