New Jersey 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 New Jersey mathematics standard.
• Science — almost nothing. There is no laboratory work, no investigation and no scientific modelling here. New Jersey adopted the NGSS verbatim (as NJSLS-Science, 2014), and we claim a single NGSS performance expectation, partially, explaining exactly why on the entry itself. It is not a science course and we will not sell it as one.
• The flagship's distinctive New Jersey structure has mostly no code to cite. New Jersey Civics teaches the deliberately strong Governor (who appoints the Attorney General, Secretary of State, and Treasurer rather than voters electing them), the Lieutenant Governor created only in 2010, the appointed judiciary that earns tenure to age 70, the 40-district Legislature on its 2-4-4 Senate cycle, the absence of any citizen initiative, and the 21 counties whose boards were renamed from “Chosen Freeholders” to “county commissioners” in 2020-2021. New Jersey's 2020 standards reach the New Jersey Constitution of 1776 and 1947 (6.1.12.CivicsPI.2.a, .13.a), which the flagship backs, but the strong-governor design, the appointed judiciary, the no-initiative rule, and the county renaming have no New Jersey-specific code. The gap is in the standards, not the course.
• The Opium Wars, the sugar-vs-other-commodities split, and the War on Drugs. The catalog teaches the Opium Wars and the War on Drugs in depth, and covers sugar thoroughly. New Jersey's world-history standard names sugar and cotton (6.2.12.EconGE.1.a), so we claim the sugar content there — but it does not name the Opium Wars, and New Jersey's Active Citizenship history standards reach contemporary drug policy only through the broad “current foreign policy issue” framing (6.3.12.HistoryCA.12), which the courses do not squarely meet. We leave those unclaimed rather than stretch.
• The Amistad and climate-change teaching mandates. New Jersey law requires the Amistad curriculum (the history of the African slave trade and of African Americans) and climate-change education across subjects. These are instructional mandates layered onto the standards, not separate coded standards, so there is no distinct code to cite; the catalog's slavery, abolition, and climate content is claimed through the coded 6.1/6.2 standards above.
• The wider catalog — health, PE, AI-literacy, and languages. New Jersey's relevant frameworks for these (Comprehensive Health and Physical Education; Computer Science and Design Thinking; World Languages) have not been fetched and verified yet. Our rule is fetch-or-don't-cite, so these courses carry no New Jersey claims this pass.