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Better Vice Club

Illinois standards alignment

Designed for high school. Below is every Illinoisstandard 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.

14
standards mapped
5
fully covered
9
partially covered
6
frameworks

Read this before you rely on it

  • We mapped this ourselves. This alignment was done by Better Vice Club against the published standards. It has not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by Illinois'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.

Subject

Filtering by course: BVC: Coffee — The Daily Global Connection

Showing 14 standards covered by BVC: Coffee — The Daily Global Connection. Clear filters

Illinois · Social Studies

Illinois Learning Standards for Social Science — History, High School (SS.H)

Illinois Learning Standards for Social Science, Grades 9-12 (2017) · Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) · retrieved 2026-07-18

Illinois's History strand is stated as historical-thinking concepts (causation, sources, the struggle for justice) rather than an era survey, which is where the catalog's commodity, labor, civil-rights, and Cold-War history maps.

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Illinois · Social Studies

Illinois Learning Standards for Social Science — Economics and Financial Literacy, High School (SS.EC)

Illinois Learning Standards for Social Science, Grades 9-12 (2017) · Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) · retrieved 2026-07-18

The BVC series supplies the Economics strand through real commodity markets — scarcity and incentives, market regulation, trade, and globalization. Illinois's Financial Literacy sub-strand (SS.EC.FL) is not taught here; see notClaimed.

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Illinois · Social Studies

Illinois Learning Standards for Social Science — Geography, High School (SS.G)

Illinois Learning Standards for Social Science, Grades 9-12 (2017) · Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) · retrieved 2026-07-18

The BVC Commodity Map's climate-and-place, migration, and globalization work maps onto Illinois's human- and environmental-geography standards.

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Illinois · Social Studies

Illinois Learning Standards for Social Science — Inquiry Skills, High School (SS.IS)

Illinois Learning Standards for Social Science, Grades 9-12 (2017) · Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) · retrieved 2026-07-18

Illinois threads Inquiry Skills through every social-science discipline; the catalog's media-literacy method and the Coffee project's sourced research map onto the source-evaluation and evidence standards.

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  • SS.IS.4.9-12

    Covered
    Gather and evaluate information from multiple sources while considering the origin, credibility, point of view, authority, structure, context, and corroborative value of the sources.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 19 · Peer Review Versus Press Release
    • · Every course's Sources bibliography, with per-claim verification
    • · Ep 1 · Reading a Coffee Ad
    • · Ep 2 · Reading a Tea Ad
    • · Ep 3 · Reading a Chocolate Ad
    • · Ep 4 · Whose Voice Tells the Story (reading a text for what it leaves out)
    • · Ep 11 · Tiki and the Tropical Paradise
    • · Ep 15 · The Language of Doubt
    • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option B, 3+ peer-reviewed sources and an APA bibliography
    • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option C, interview ethics: informed consent, right to review
    • · Spotting Misleading Marketing, Lesson 3 · Weasel words and what the fine print takes back
    • · Spotting Misleading Marketing, Lesson 5 · Fake reviews, astroturfing, and undisclosed #ads

    Note: Source evaluation — origin, credibility, point of view, corroboration — is modelled in every media-literacy episode and required in the Coffee project's sourced, cited research.

  • SS.IS.5.9-12

    Partially covered
    Identify evidence that draws information from multiple sources to revise or strengthen claims.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 15 · Doubt Is Our Product
    • · Ep 19 · Peer Review Versus Press Release
    • · Ep 20 · The Ban Against the Evidence (the UK banning khat against its own scientific advice)
    • · Ep 1 · Assignment, all four options are 2-3 week research projects requiring synthesis across sources

    What we do and don't cover: Building and testing claims against multiple sources is taught through the fallacy-and-evidence lessons and the Coffee project's synthesis. Only the Coffee episode ships the graded version.

  • SS.IS.6.9-12

    Partially covered
    Construct and evaluate explanations and arguments using multiple sources and relevant, verified information.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option D, a 1,200-1,500 word research paper with a required counterargument section
    • · Ep 1 · Assignment, all four options are 2-3 week research projects requiring synthesis across sources
    • · Ep 4 · Blood-Sweetened Luxury (the abolitionist sugar boycott)
    • · Ep 8 · Selling Prohibition
    • · Ep 15 · Torches of Freedom
    • · Ep 17 · Lin Zexu's Letter (using Britain's own values against its opium policy)

    What we do and don't cover: The Coffee project's argument paper asks for exactly this — a thesis defended from verified, cited sources with a counterargument — but it is one optional project in one episode, not a programme.

Illinois · English/Language Arts

Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy

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

The Illinois State Board of Education adopted the Common Core State Standards for English language arts and mathematics on June 24, 2010, as the Illinois Learning Standards (the “New Illinois Learning Standards Incorporating the Common Core”), with full implementation in 2013-14. Illinois incorporated the CCSS text verbatim under the same code numbering, so the RH/RI/WHST literacy strands this catalog touches are Illinois's ELA standards. We claim no mathematics standards.

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  • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.11-12.7

    Covered
    Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 1 · Assignment, all four options are 2-3 week research projects requiring synthesis across sources
    • · 19 · Your assignment: find a listing, then find the address today
    • · 20 · Your assignment: write one block
    • · 21 · Your assignment: write one firm
    • · 21 · Your assignment: test one connection of your own
    • · 17 · Your assignment: one schoolhouse, and the budget line that raised it
    • · 20 · Your assignment: write one property

    Note: The Coffee episode ships a graded assignment; the route series and the positive-track courses each close with a research capstone (find a listing, write one firm, test one connection) in which the student runs a self-directed inquiry and synthesizes multiple sources.

  • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.11-12.8

    Covered
    Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced searches effectively; assess the strengths and limitations of each source in terms of the specific task, purpose, and audience; integrate information into the text selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding plagiarism and overreliance on any one source and following a standard format for citation.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option B, 3+ peer-reviewed sources and an APA bibliography
    • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option C, interview ethics: informed consent, right to review
    • · 19 · Your assignment: find a listing, then find the address today
    • · 20 · Your assignment: write one block
    • · 21 · Your assignment: write one firm
    • · 21 · Your assignment: test one connection of your own
    • · 17 · Your assignment: one schoolhouse, and the budget line that raised it
    • · 20 · Your assignment: write one property

    Note: The route and positive-track capstones require the student to locate a primary record, corroborate it across independent sources, weigh each source's limits, and write it up with citations: the whole of this standard.

Illinois · Science

Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

HS-ESS3 Earth and Human Activity · NGSS Lead States / nextgenscience.org · retrieved 2026-07-13

Illinois was an NGSS lead state. ISBE adopted the Next Generation Science Standards as the Illinois Learning Standards in science in January 2014 (effective February 27, 2014, full implementation 2016-17), using the NGSS performance-expectation codes verbatim. 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-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 catalog does no mathematics instruction, so it meets no Illinois Common Core (Illinois Learning Standards) mathematics standard.
  • Science — one partial claim, via the shared NGSS file. Illinois adopted the NGSS verbatim (January 2014) as its science standards, 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.
  • Financial Literacy (SS.EC.FL) — nothing. Illinois's Economics strand carries a six-standard Financial Literacy sub-strand (income strategies, budgeting, interest and inflation, credit, investing, insurance). This catalog teaches no personal finance, so it claims none of SS.EC.FL.1-6.
  • The Illinois Civics flagship's Illinois-specific structure has no Illinois code to cite. Illinois Civics teaches the 1970 Constitution, the plural executive (uniquely both a Comptroller and a Treasurer), the partisan-elected Supreme Court, the uniquely narrow Legislative-Article initiative and the 1980 Cutback Amendment, and one of the nation's strongest home-rule traditions — from Illinois's own official sources. But the 2017 Social Science Standards are DISCIPLINARY CONCEPTS: no standard names a state's structure, so these lessons map only onto the abstract institution and participation standards (SS.CV.1, SS.CV.2, SS.CV.3). The gap is in the standards, not the course.
  • Civics standards we checked and rejected. SS.CV.5 (civic dispositions and diverse perspectives as a named concept) and SS.CV.6 (political parties, the media, and public interest groups — our media literacy is consumer protection, not political-media analysis) are not genuinely taught, so we do not claim them.
  • The disciplinary standards we read and did not claim. Across History, Economics, and Geography we claim only the concept standards the catalog genuinely teaches. SS.H.2/4/5/6/11/12, SS.EC.2-4/6-8, and SS.G.1-5/7/9/10 were checked and not claimed — the change-and-continuity, market-mechanics, macroeconomic-indicator, mapping-tool, and culture standards are not this catalog's subject. The reject list is the evidence the map was not padded.

See it for yourself

Don't take the mapping on trust. Open the lesson and check it against the standard. Every course publishes its sources too.

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