Washington, D.C. standards alignment

• HS-ESS1-3

  Covered

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

  Covered by

  • How We Know What's Out There

  • · 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

  • The River and the Watershed

  • · 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

  • The River and the Watershed

  • · 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

  • How We Know What's Out There

  • · 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

  • How We Know What's Out There

  • · 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

  • BVC: Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • BVC: Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • BVC: Kava — The Root of Peace

  • · 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.