Rhode Island standards alignment

• SSHS.CVC.4.1

  Covered

  Argue the ways the Enlightenment idea of checks and balances as a deterrent to tyranny influenced the Constitution of the United States

  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
  • · State vs Federal Power, Lesson 1 · What is federalism, and why split power at all?

  Note: Checks and balances as a deterrent to tyranny, both among the three branches and between the state and national governments (federalism), are taught directly in the Constitution and federalism courses.

• SSHS.CVC.4.2

  Covered

  Analyze the structure and role of the legislative branch of the national government

  Covered by

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

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

  Note: Article I's legislative branch, its powers, and how it makes law (including the checks it exercises on the other branches) are taught end to end.

• SSHS.CVC.4.3

  Covered

  Analyze the structure and role of the executive branch of the national government

  Covered by

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

  • · US Constitution 101, Lessons 3-6 · Articles I-III and checks & balances
  • · US Civics 101, Lesson 1 · Purpose of government and the three branches

  Note: Article II's executive branch, its powers, and its checks on the legislative and judicial branches are taught directly.

• SSHS.CVC.3.2

  Partially covered

  Argue the impacts of the compromises that went into the passage of the Constitution of the United States, including the addition of the Bill of Rights

  Covered by

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

  • · Rhode Island Civics, Lesson 1 · The smallest state, its founding, and its 2020 name change
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 8 · The Bill of Rights (Amendments I to X)
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 1 · Why a constitution? From the Articles of Confederation

  What we do and don't cover: The Rhode Island angle the standard names — the reasons for Rhode Island's reluctance to ratify — is taught directly: the flagship teaches that Rhode Island was the last of the 13 to ratify, holding out until a Bill of Rights was assured, and the Bill of Rights is taught as a document. Partial because the standard's broader compromise survey (the anti-federalists, the Great Compromise) is not the course's focus.

• SSHS.CVC.2.4

  Partially covered

  Argue the impacts of the challenges the founders faced to the creation of a new government under the Constitution of the United States

  Covered by

  • US Constitution 101: The Document That Builds the Government
  • State vs Federal Power: How American Government Is Divided
  • Rhode Island Civics: How Your State Government Works

  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 1 · Why a constitution? From the Articles of Confederation
  • · State vs Federal Power, Lesson 1 · What is federalism, and why split power at all?
  • · Rhode Island Civics, Lesson 1 · The smallest state, its founding, and its 2020 name change

  What we do and don't cover: The founding challenges the standard frames — the move from the Articles of Confederation to the 1787 Constitution and the federalism debate — are taught, and the flagship teaches Rhode Island's holdout on ratification. Partial because the standard's specific Rhode Island learning objective (why Rhode Island refused to send a delegate to the Constitutional Convention) and the Virginia/New Jersey-plan detail are set up rather than worked.

• SSHS.CVC.2.3

  Partially covered

  Argue the impacts of the issues and challenges to the Articles of Confederation

  Covered by

  • US Constitution 101: The Document That Builds the Government

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

  What we do and don't cover: Why the Articles of Confederation failed — and how that produced the 1787 Constitution — is taught directly. Partial because the standard's named example, Shays' Rebellion, is not separately worked.

• SSHS.CVC.3.1

  Partially covered

  Argue the impact of the structure of government and law established by the Constitution of the United States and Bill of Rights

  Covered by

  • US Constitution 101: The Document That Builds the Government

  • · US Constitution 101, Lessons 2-9 · the Constitution analyzed article by article
  • · US Constitution 101, Lessons 3-6 · Articles I-III and checks & balances
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 6 · Separation of powers and checks & balances
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 7 · Federalism: state and federal power

  What we do and don't cover: The structure of government the Constitution establishes is taught article by article, with the Bill of Rights. Partial because the standard's Haudenosaunee-Confederacy-influence guiding question is not worked.

• SSHS.CVC.1.2

  Partially covered

  Analyze the functions of government and ways that governments provide services and benefits to the population they serve

  Covered by

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

  • · US Civics 101, Lesson 1 · Purpose of government and the three branches
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 6 · Separation of powers and checks & balances
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 7 · Federalism: state and federal power
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 2 · The Preamble: who, and why

  What we do and don't cover: The legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government and the checks on each are taught in depth, and the Preamble is worked clause by clause as the purposes of government. Partial because the standard's “provide services and benefits to the population” (welfare-state) framing is not the course's 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 Rhode Island Common Core mathematics standard.
• Science — one partial claim, via the shared NGSS file. Rhode Island was the first state to adopt the NGSS (spring 2013) and reaffirmed it in 2024, 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.
• The Narragansett and other tribal governments (SSHS.CVC.4.5). Rhode Island's SSHS.CVC.4.5 names tribal governments and the Narragansett explicitly, and requires students to analyze the powers and structures of tribal governments and the relationships between the Narragansett and Rhode Island's state and local governments. Rhode Island Civics teaches Rhode Island's state and local structure in depth but does not teach the Narragansett Tribe's government, so SSHS.CVC.4.5 is claimed as partial. The gap is in the course, not the standard.
• Rhode Island's own state structure is taught more fully than SSHS.CVC.4.5 captures. Rhode Island Civics teaches the 1843 constitution and the 2020 removal of “and Providence Plantations,” the two-tier system with 5 counties but NO county governments and 39 all-purpose cities and towns, the long legislative-supremacy tradition and the 2004 separation-of-powers amendment that reined it in, the plural executive with a separately elected Lieutenant Governor, the 75-member House and 38-member Senate with a veto overridable by only three-fifths (and no line-item veto), and the only state Supreme Court whose justices serve for life — all from Rhode Island's own sources. SSHS.CVC.4.5 hosts most of it, but this bespoke 2023 civics frame is inquiry-and-argument based, not a Rhode-Island-government checklist, so the life-tenure court, the 2004 reform, and the 2020 name change have no code of their own.
• The comparative-government, political-science, and world-affairs standards we checked and rejected. The standards the courses do not genuinely teach are not claimed: SSHS.CVC.1.1 (the history and philosophy of different forms of government), SSHS.CVC.2.1 (18th-century philosophical ideas / the Enlightenment thinkers and the American Revolution), SSHS.CVC.2.2 (Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence), SSHS.CVC.3.3 (how the Constitution handled the system of slavery — the Three-Fifths and Fugitive Slave clauses), all of Inquiry Topic 5's party/interest-group standards except the participation standard (SSHS.CVC.5.1, 5.2, 5.3, and 5.5 — money, media, and polling in politics), SSHS.CVC.7.3 (contemporary policy debates such as mass incarceration, gun ownership, affordable housing, and immigration), and all of Inquiry Topic 8 (SSHS.CVC.8.1-8.3 — the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, U.S. human-rights interventions and genocides, and global citizenship). Rhode Island's own deep history in the North American slave trade would be a natural home for SSHS.CVC.3.3, but the course does not teach it, so we do not claim it.
• The AI-literacy ladder, the language courses, and Learning How to Learn — deferred, not denied. Rhode Island's closest frameworks for these (its digital-literacy/computer-science and world-languages standards) have not been fetched and verified yet. Our rule is fetch-or-don't-cite, so these courses carry no Rhode Island claims this pass.