Virginia standards alignment

• GOVT.3b

  Covered

  evaluating the purposes for government stated in the Preamble

  Covered by

  • US Constitution 101: The Document That Builds the Government

  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 2 · The Preamble: who, and why

  Note: The Preamble is worked clause by clause as the purposes of government — the whole of the standard.

• GOVT.3c

  Covered

  defining the structure and authority of the national government as outlined in Article I, Article II, and Article III

  Covered by

  • US Constitution 101: The Document That Builds the Government

  • · US Constitution 101, Lessons 3-6 · Articles I-III and checks & balances
  • · US Constitution 101, Lessons 2-9 · the Constitution analyzed article by article

  Note: Articles I-III and the branch relationships they create are taught directly.

• GOVT.3e

  Covered

  connecting the fundamental principles of checks and balances and separation of powers to the three branches of government

  Covered by

  • US Constitution 101: The Document That Builds the Government

  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 6 · Separation of powers and checks & balances
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 7 · Federalism: state and federal power

  Note: Separation of powers and checks and balances are taught head-on, tied to the three branches.

• GOVT.3f

  Covered

  describing how the Bill of Rights affirms natural rights as something that precedes politics

  Covered by

  • The Bill of Rights: Know Your Rights
  • US Constitution 101: The Document That Builds the Government

  • · The Bill of Rights: Know Your Rights, Lesson 1 · What is the Bill of Rights?
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 8 · The Bill of Rights (Amendments I to X)

  Note: The Bill of Rights as a document and what it protects — taught both in the general rights course and the constitution course.

• GOVT.4e

  Covered

  evaluating how the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights protect freedoms and limit government

  Covered by

  • US Constitution 101: The Document That Builds the Government
  • The Bill of Rights: Know Your Rights

  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 6 · Separation of powers and checks & balances
  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 7 · Federalism: state and federal power
  • · The Bill of Rights: Know Your Rights, Lesson 1 · What is the Bill of Rights?
  • · Know Your Rights, Lesson 2 · Freedom of speech: what's protected, and what isn't
  • · Know Your Rights, Lesson 5 · Speech and religion at school, and online
  • · Know Your Rights, Lesson 7 · Police stops, reasonable suspicion, and your privacy

  Note: Both halves: how the Constitution limits government (separation of powers, checks and balances) and how the Bill of Rights protects freedoms — including when government may and may not constitutionally limit a right.

• GOVT.1c

  Partially covered

  evaluating the foundational principles expressed in the Constitution of Virginia, the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of the United States

  Covered by

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

  • · 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
  • · Virginia Civics, Lesson 1 · Virginia's constitution and 'the Commonwealth'
  • · Virginia Civics, Lesson 5 · How a bill becomes a Virginia law (and why there's no citizen initiative)

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: why the Articles of Confederation failed and led to the 1787 Constitution, worked article by article, and Virginia's own Constitution of 1971 in the flagship; a document-by-document evaluation that also weighs the Declaration of Independence is not the frame.

• GOVT.2a

  Partially covered

  explaining the concepts of popular sovereignty, natural rights, the rule of law, self-government and “consent of the governed”

  Covered by

  • US Constitution 101: The Document That Builds the Government

  • · US Constitution 101, Lesson 2 · The Preamble: who, and why
  • · US Constitution 101, Lessons 2-9 · the Constitution analyzed article by article

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: 'we the people' and the consent of the governed are taught through the Preamble, and the rule of law through the Constitution worked article by article; a dedicated treatment of each named concept (popular sovereignty, natural rights, self-government) is not.

• GOVT.7

  Partially covered

  The student will apply history and social science skills to describe the scope and limits of the powers of the federal legislative branch of the U.S. government as delineated in Article I of the Constitution

  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

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: Article I's structure and the complete federal lawmaking process (committees through veto override) are taught; the 'scope and limits' of the enumerated legislative powers are not treated systematically.

• GOVT.8

  Partially covered

  The student will apply history and science skills to describe the powers of the executive branch of the U.S. government as delineated in Article II of the Constitution

  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, Lessons 3-6 · Articles I-III and checks & balances

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: the executive branch is taught as one of the three federal branches and through Article II; how executive power has changed over time (the 20th/22nd/25th Amendments the standard names) is not worked. (Transcribed as printed, including the document's 'history and science skills'.)

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 Virginia mathematics standard.
• Virginia's English and Science SOL — deferred, not denied. Virginia writes its own English SOL and its own Science SOL (Virginia is NOT an NGSS state). Our rule is fetch-or-don't-cite: the Virginia DOE's standards portal refused our tooling this pass, so these courses carry no Virginia claims yet. The BVC rhetoric, media-literacy, and research-project work that maps to them elsewhere is real; it is the Virginia text we have not yet retrieved from an acceptable source. (The GOVT Skills strand does give our source-evaluation and argument work a genuine home — Skills GOVT c and j above.)
• The civic-identity, comparative-systems, and money-in-politics objectives we do not teach. GOVT.2b-f and GOVT.4a-d (comparing forms of government; Tocqueville's five values; the mottos 'E Pluribus Unum' and 'In God We Trust'; the American Creed) ask for civic-identity content the catalog does not teach. GOVT.3a (The Federalist Papers #10 and #51), GOVT.1d (George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom, Madison's role in the Bill of Rights), GOVT.6a-b/6f (suffrage expansion, campaign finance, gerrymandering), GOVT.9d (originalism vs. judicial activism), GOVT.10e (partisan vs. nonpartisan offices), GOVT.13b/13d (Smith/Marx/Keynes/Hayek/Friedman/Sowell; the Bill of Rights vs. the Communist Manifesto), and GOVT.14b/14d-f (public goods, taxation, fiscal and monetary policy) are named but not genuinely taught, so we do not claim them.
• GOVT.3g (the amendment process) — a real match we cannot cite as printed. GOVT.3g, 'explaining the amendment process', is a genuine match — the catalog teaches both Article V and Virginia's two-sessions-plus-a-referendum path. But the printed clause is under the ~40-character floor the isolation suite enforces to reject paraphrases, and we will not pad it. Virginia's amendment path is instead cited where it has longer standard text to attach to (GOVT.10b, GOVT.1c). The gap is in the citeable grain, not the lesson.