Iowa standards alignment

• SS.9-12.Gov.4

  Covered

  Analyze the underlying principles established by the United States Constitution.

  Covered by

  • US Constitution 101: The Document That Builds the Government
  • State vs Federal Power: How American Government Is Divided

  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 6 · Separation of powers and checks & balances
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 7 · Federalism: state and federal power
  • · US Constitution 101, Lessons 2-9 · the Constitution analyzed article by article
  • · State vs Federal Power, Lesson 1 · What is federalism, and why split power at all?
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 2 · The Preamble: who, and why
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 9 · Changing the Constitution: Article V and key later amendments

  Note: The rule of law, checks and balances, federalism, limited government, popular sovereignty, republicanism, separation of powers, and the power to amend — the principles the standard lists — are taught directly through the Constitution course.

• SS.9-12.Gov.6

  Covered

  Analyze the function, duties, and authority of the legislative branch, including the process of lawmaking and the power of the purse.

  Covered by

  • US Constitution 101: The Document That Builds the Government
  • How a Bill Becomes Law (Federal): From Idea to Public Law
  • US Civics 101: How American Government Works

  • · US Constitution 101, Lessons 3-6 · Articles I-III and checks & balances
  • · How a Bill Becomes Law (Federal) · the whole course, introduction to public law
  • · US Civics 101, Lesson 3 · How a bill becomes a law
  • · US Civics 101, Lesson 1 · Purpose of government and the three branches

  Note: Article I's structure and how a bill becomes law — introduction, committee review, floor votes in both chambers, and presidential action — are taught end to end.

• SS.9-12.Gov.3

  Partially covered

  Analyze important founding and historical documents to the United States and the State of Iowa.

  Covered by

  • US Constitution 101: The Document That Builds the Government

  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 1 · Why a constitution? From the Articles of Confederation
  • · 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)

  What we do and don't cover: The Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are taught article by article, and the Iowa Constitution of 1857 is taught in the flagship; the standard's other named documents (Magna Carta, Mayflower Compact, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers) are not taught by name, so this is partial.

• SS.9-12.Gov.7

  Partially covered

  Analyze the function, duties, and authority of the executive branch, including the scope of presidential powers, executive orders, executive agreements, and the president's role in foreign and domestic policy.

  Covered by

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

  • · US Civics 101, Lesson 1 · Purpose of government and the three branches
  • · US Constitution 101, Lessons 3-6 · Articles I-III and checks & balances
  • · Voting & Elections 101, Lesson 4 · The Electoral College: how it works
  • · Voting & Elections 101, Lesson 5 · Why the Electoral College exists

  What we do and don't cover: Article II's executive role and the Electoral College are taught; the standard's executive orders, executive agreements, the federal bureaucracy's structure, and the president's foreign-policy role are not a dedicated unit, 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.