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Learn.WitUS

Washington, D.C. standards alignment

Designed for high school. Below is every Washington, D.C.standard these courses cover: the exact code, the standard's own words, and the lesson that covers it. Where we only cover part of a standard, it says so, and says which part.

16
standards mapped
7
fully covered
9
partially covered
3
frameworks

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Read this before you rely on it

  • We mapped this ourselves. This alignment was done by Learn.WitUS against the published standards. It has not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by Washington, D.C.'s education authority or by anyone else.
  • Every code was fetched, then transcribed word for word. Each framework below shows the date its codes and text were retrieved from the publisher.
  • Standards get revised.A code can be renumbered or its wording changed without notice, and some states publish more than one live edition of the same document. Confirm anything you file against your own jurisdiction's current requirements, using the source links below.
  • We would rather claim less. Where the courses only partly cover a standard, this page says partially covered and explains the gap. Standards we considered and could not honestly claim are listed at the bottom, with the reasons.

Washington, D.C. · Social Studies

Washington, DC K-12 Social Studies Standards

June 2023 · Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) · retrieved 2026-07-13

Common Core never covered social studies, so DC wrote its own. These are the high-school course codes: WH1 (World History I), WH2 (World History II), US2 (US History II).

Read the source document →

  • WH2.15

    Covered
    Compare different forms of European colonization and enslavement, such as in plantation-based societies and economies across the Americas and the Caribbean, and resistance to such enslavement.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 4 · The Triangular Trade and the Middle Passage
    • · Ep 4 · Resistance and Revolution
    • · Ep 11 · The Maroons
    • · Ep 11 · The Haitian Revolution

    Note: Both halves of the standard are covered: the plantation economy itself, and resistance to it (Maroon communities, the Haitian Revolution, revolt and abolition).

  • WH2.37

    Partially covered
    Evaluate the impact of the silver trade, spice trade, cotton trade and sugar industry on different societies and individuals during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 4 · The Sugar Islands
    • · Ep 4 · From New Guinea to the New World
    • · Ep 11 · Waste-Product Economics

    What we do and don't cover: Partial: of the four trades the standard names, this curriculum covers the SUGAR INDUSTRY — thoroughly. It does not teach the silver, spice or cotton trades.

  • WH2.13

    Partially covered
    Analyze government structures, technological innovations and geographical features of empires and city states across the Americas to evaluate the drastic impact of European colonization on Indigenous societies, including the Aztec and Incan Empires.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 3 · Food of the Gods (cacao as Maya/Aztec currency and sacrament)
    • · Ep 3 · Conquest and the Great Reversal
    • · Ep 12 · The Sacred Plant (Aztec governance of pulque)
    • · Ep 12 · Burning the Books

    What we do and don't cover: Partial: Mesoamerica (Maya and Aztec) is covered in real depth, through the plants those societies governed. The Incan Empire is not covered, and the standard names it explicitly.

  • WH2.18

    Partially covered
    Evaluate primary source accounts of the Middle Passage to analyze the dehumanizing experience forced upon enslaved people and the ways in which individuals worked to maintain humanity and dignity in the face of mass atrocity.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 4 · The Triangular Trade and the Middle Passage
    • · Ep 4 · Whose Voice Tells the Story (Equiano, 1789; Mary Prince, 1831)

    What we do and don't cover: Partial, and the distinction is worth being exact about: the episode teaches the Middle Passage, and it does evaluate primary-source accounts by formerly enslaved writers (Equiano, Prince). But that primary-source work centres plantation labour rather than the crossing itself. The Middle Passage is taught from secondary sources.

Washington, D.C. · English/Language Arts

Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy

Grades 11-12 · Common Core State Standards Initiative · retrieved 2026-07-13

OSSE states that “In July 2010, the District of Columbia adopted the Common Core State Standards” for reading and mathematics. The literacy-in-history/social-studies (RH) and writing-in-history (WHST) strands are the ones this curriculum touches. We claim no mathematics standards.

Read the source document →

Washington, D.C. · Science

Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

HS-ESS1 Earth's Place in the Universe; HS-ESS2 Earth's Systems; HS-ESS3 Earth and Human Activity · NGSS Lead States / nextgenscience.org · retrieved 2026-08-10

OSSE states that “In Dec. 2013, the Next Generation Science Standards were adopted by DC State Board of Education as the new K-12 Science Standards for the District of Columbia Schools.” This is not a science course, so we claim exactly one NGSS performance expectation, partially — see the note on it.

Read the source document →

  • HS-ESS1-3

    Covered
    Communicate scientific ideas about the way stars, over their life cycle, produce elements.

    Covered by

    • · 7 · Reading a star: the HR diagram
    • · 13 · What stars make

    Note: Lesson 13 is this expectation. It gives the mechanism without equations (hydrogen to helium, heavier elements as the core contracts and heats, the stop at iron because fusion past it no longer releases net energy, and the extreme conditions of stellar death for what comes after), and then sets out the four independent lines of evidence that support it. Communicating the idea IS the lesson, which is why this one is full rather than partial.

  • 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

    • · 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

    • · 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.

  • HS-ESS1-2

    Partially covered
    Construct an explanation of the Big Bang theory based on astronomical evidence of light spectra, motion of distant galaxies, and composition of matter in the universe.

    Covered by

    • · 5 · Light itself
    • · 11 · Redshift and an expanding universe
    • · 12 · The Hubble tension
    • · 16 · Capstone: trace a number down the ladder

    What we do and don't cover: The strongest CONTENT match in this catalog: the performance expectation names light spectra, the motion of distant galaxies, and the composition of matter, and those are lessons 5, 11 and 13 of How We Know What's Out There. PARTIAL, and the missing piece is the practice rather than the content: the course supplies and examines the evidence, and the student is asked to construct an explanation only in the graded capstone, where they trace a published number down the chain of inference. If your science requirement is assessed on the three-dimensional NGSS performance, this contributes to it and does not discharge it.

  • HS-ESS1-1

    Partially covered
    Develop a model based on evidence to illustrate the life span of the sun and the role of nuclear fusion in the sun's core to release energy that eventually reaches Earth in the form of radiation.

    Covered by

    • · 7 · Reading a star: the HR diagram
    • · 13 · What stars make

    What we do and don't cover: PARTIAL, and the gap is the verb. Fusion as the sun's energy source and the arc of a star's life are taught (lessons 7 and 13, via the main sequence and stellar evolution), but the student never DEVELOPS A MODEL, which is the performance the expectation actually requires. Do not round this up.

  • HS-ESS3-1

    Partially covered
    Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the availability of natural resources, occurrence of natural hazards, and changes in climate have influenced human activity.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 1 · Climate Change Is Redrawing the Map
    • · Ep 3 · A Two-Degree Threat
    • · Ep 6 · Why Volcanic Soil Only
    • · Ep 10 · Karst Limestone and Bourbon
    • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option B, assess a producing country's climate viability and defend the assessment

    What we do and don't cover: Read this one carefully before you rely on it. This is NOT a science course, it has no laboratory work, no investigations and no scientific modelling. What it does have is precisely the content of HS-ESS3-1: resource availability and climate change shaping what humans do and where. The lessons supply the evidence; the STUDENT constructs the explanation only in the Coffee project (Option B). If your science requirement is assessed on the three-dimensional NGSS performance, this contributes to it, it does not discharge it.

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 curriculum does no mathematics instruction, so it meets no Common Core mathematics standard.
  • Science — almost nothing. There is no laboratory work, no investigation and no scientific modelling here. We claim a single NGSS performance expectation, partially, and we explain exactly why on the entry itself. It is not a science course and we will not sell it as one.
  • Prohibition and mass incarceration. The curriculum teaches both. D.C.'s 2023 social studies standards contain no standard on either (we searched the full document), so there is nothing for us to cite. The gap is in the standards, not the lessons.
  • D.C.'s economics and geography strands. In the 2023 document these are un-numbered “statements of practice”, not coded standards. There is no code to cite, so we cite none — even though the economics content lines up well.
  • The wider catalog — not yet mapped for D.C. The civics, U.S. history, health, and PE mapping done for Indiana has not been repeated against D.C.'s frameworks yet. D.C. currently carries the Commodity Map alignment only; the catalog-wide pass is queued.

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