Maryland 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 catalog does no mathematics instruction, so it meets no Maryland College and Career Ready Standards mathematics expectation.
• Science — one partial claim, via the shared NGSS file. Maryland was an NGSS lead state and adopted the NGSS verbatim (2013) as the Maryland College and Career-Ready Standards for Science, assessed by the MISA, 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.
• Maryland's nation-strongest executive budget power has no code of its own. The Maryland flagship's headline fact is that the Governor holds what many call the strongest executive budget authority in the nation (the General Assembly can generally only cut, not add). The American Government framework has no indicator naming this Maryland-specific feature; it is claimed here only through GOV.3.3.a (comparing local, state, and national executives), which it fits squarely, rather than as a standard of its own.
• Maryland's referendum-without-initiative has no discrete indicator. Maryland's distinctive citizen tool is a petition to referendum (a veto of a passed law) with NO citizen initiative. The framework names “referendum” only inside the broad citizen-tools objectives (GOV.2.2.c and GOV.6.1.b, whose text is identical), not as a discrete standard; we claim it through GOV.2.5.a (how laws are made) and GOV.6.1.b, and publish the gap here.
• Standard 6.0 (Skills and Processes / the Inquiry Arc) is not separately coded. The catalog's source-literacy method — evaluating a source's authority, origin, context, and corroborative value, and constructing evidence-based arguments — is exactly Maryland's Standard 6.0 inquiry skills, assessed by the Evidence Based Argument Set (EBAS). But the framework prints those as bulleted skills woven through every unit, NOT as GOV.<unit>.<indicator> codes, so there is no code to cite (fetch-a-code-or-don't-cite). The same method is claimed under Maryland's Common Core RH.11-12.6/8/9 (evaluating authors' points of view, premises, and evidence), which ARE coded.
• The Economic, Domestic, and Foreign Policy indicators we checked and rejected. GOV.1.1 (comparing types of government worldwide) and GOV.1.2.a-c/e (English common law to the Enlightenment to the Declaration as named content); GOV.2.2 and GOV.2.3 (parties/interest-groups/lobbyists/PACs, reapportionment/redistricting/gerrymandering); GOV.3.4/3.5 (executive orders and crisis power, and the EPA/FDA/FTC/FCC/FAA regulatory agencies); GOV.4.3 (14th-Amendment due-process incorporation as named doctrine); GOV.5.2-5.4 (GDP/CPI, the business cycle, and fiscal/monetary policy); and GOV.6.2-6.5 and all of GOV.7 (regional policy, entitlements/public-health/education/technology policy, land-use/environmental policy, equity/civil-rights policy, and U.S. foreign policy and international organizations) — the courses do not genuinely teach these, or teach them too thinly to claim, so we do not claim them.
• Maryland's American History, World History, and Geography courses — deferred. The American Government course is one of Maryland's high-school social studies courses. The catalog's commodity, colonial, labor, and civil-rights history and its commodity geography WOULD map to Maryland's High School United States History, World History, and Geography frameworks, as they do in other states, but we mapped the American Government framework this pass and defer the rest (verbatim-or-nothing) rather than cite text we have not transcribed and verified.