Iowa standards alignment

• SS.9-12.3

  Covered

  Gather relevant information from multiple sources representing a wide range of views while using the origin, authority, structure, context, and corroborative value of the sources to guide the selection.

  Covered by

  • BVC: Psychedelics — The Mushroom's Message
  • BVC: Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • BVC: Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • BVC: Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • BVC: Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom
  • BVC: Coca — White Lines

  • · Ep 19 · Peer Review Versus Press Release
  • · Every course's Sources bibliography, with per-claim verification
  • · Ep 4 · Whose Voice Tells the Story, Beckford (1790) against Equiano (1789) and Mary Prince (1831) on the same plantation world
  • · Ep 3 · Two Ways of Seeing a Bean
  • · Ep 5 · Two Ways of Knowing
  • · Ep 18 · Whose Voice
  • · 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

  Note: Gathering from multiple sources and weighing each by origin, authority, context, and corroboration — the standard's exact skill — is the source-evaluation method run across the catalog, with a checkable bibliography published each time.

• SS.9-12.4

  Covered

  Evaluate the purpose and credibility of sources by examining how experts view the source.

  Covered by

  • BVC: Psychedelics — The Mushroom's Message
  • BVC: Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • BVC: Tea — The Way of Tea
  • BVC: Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • BVC: Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • BVC: Rum — Sweet Poison
  • BVC: Tobacco — Sacred Smoke
  • BVC: Khat — The Afternoon Leaf

  • · 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 15 · Doubt Is Our Product
  • · Ep 20 · The Ban Against the Evidence (the UK banning khat against its own scientific advice)
  • · Spotting Misleading Marketing, Lesson 8 · Misleading statistics and charts
  • · Spotting Misleading Marketing, Lesson 4 · Fake urgency, fake scarcity, and fake discounts

  Note: Near-1:1 with the catalog's method: the standard's clarification (purpose taxonomy — inform/persuade/sell/propaganda — lateral reading, and filter bubbles) is the media-literacy skill run in every episode, reading each source and message for credibility, bias, and omission.

• SS.9-12.5

  Partially covered

  Refine claims and counterclaims that are supported with relevant, credible evidence gathered through research and investigation.

  Covered by

  • BVC: Tobacco — Sacred Smoke
  • BVC: Psychedelics — The Mushroom's Message
  • BVC: Khat — The Afternoon Leaf
  • BVC: Coffee — The Daily Global Connection

  • · 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, Option D, a 1,200-1,500 word research paper with a required counterargument section

  What we do and don't cover: Evaluating claims and their evidence is taught throughout; a refined claim-and-counterclaim product supported by researched evidence ships as a graded assignment only in the Coffee episode, so this is partial.

• SS.9-12.8

  Partially covered

  Apply a range of deliberative and democratic strategies and procedures to make decisions and engage in their classrooms, schools, and communities.

  Covered by

  • BVC: Tobacco — Sacred Smoke
  • BVC: Psychedelics — The Mushroom's Message
  • BVC: Khat — The Afternoon Leaf

  • · US, State & Local Government, Lesson 8 · Where to show up and be heard, at every level
  • · Iowa Civics, Lesson 4 · How a bill becomes law, local government, and getting involved
  • · 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)

  What we do and don't cover: The standard's civic-engagement clarification (a healthy news diet of multiple credible sources, the impact of misinformation, and showing up where issues are decided) is taught as practice — Iowa's own levers (caucus, county boards, contacting Des Moines legislators, running locally); the designed graded deliberation is prompted, not run as an assignment, so this is partial.

• RH.11-12.8

  Covered

  Evaluate an author's premises, claims, and evidence by corroborating or challenging them with other information.

  Covered by

  • BVC: Tobacco — Sacred Smoke
  • BVC: Psychedelics — The Mushroom's Message
  • BVC: Khat — The Afternoon Leaf

  • · 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)

  Note: Iowa's text is verbatim identical to the Common Core code.

• WHST.11-12.8

  Partially covered

  Gather relevant information from multiple credible primary and secondary 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, including recognition of bias; 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

  • BVC: Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • BVC: Psychedelics — The Mushroom's Message

  • · 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
  • · Ep 19 · Peer Review Versus Press Release
  • · Every course's Sources bibliography, with per-claim verification

  What we do and don't cover: IOWA-REVISED wording: Iowa says “multiple credible primary and secondary print and digital sources… including recognition of bias,” where the Common Core reads “multiple authoritative… sources” without the bias clause. The bias clause maps well to the catalog's source-evaluation method; the graded gathering-and-citing product ships only in the Coffee episode, so this is partial. This divergence is why the shared Common Core file is not aliased here.

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 — Common Core adopted as the Iowa Core: nothing claimed. Iowa adopted the Common Core State Standards for mathematics as the Iowa Core, but this catalog does no mathematics instruction, so it meets no Iowa mathematics standard. One nuance: Iowa's own Civics/Government standard SS.9-12.Gov.13 cross-references two statistics codes — A1.S-ID.C.9 (“Distinguish between correlation and causation”) and ST.S-IC.B.6 (“Evaluate reports based on data”) — that lightly touch the catalog's misleading-statistics media literacy. But the catalog does no mathematics instruction and does not run the statistical analysis those codes require, so we do not claim them.
• Science — NGSS-BASED (Iowa was a 2015 Lead State) but with documented Iowa revisions: deferred. Iowa's State Board of Education adopted the Next Generation Science Standards in August 2015, having helped write them as a Lead State Partner. But Iowa's science standards have documented later revisions (notably to climate-related expectations), so — unlike Michigan, which adopted the NGSS verbatim and reuses the shared NGSS mapping — we could not confirm within this pass that Iowa's HS-ESS3-1 (the one climate/resource expectation this catalog could touch) is a byte-for-byte NGSS republication. Our rule is verbatim-or-nothing, so we do NOT alias the shared NGSS framework here and DEFER Iowa's science standards rather than cite text we have not cleanly verified. The catalog's climate/resource content (resources, hazards, and climate shaping human activity) would map to Iowa's Earth and Space Science standards; that is deferred, not denied.
• English/Language Arts — Common-Core-derived but Iowa revised, so NOT aliased. Iowa adopted the Common Core for ELA as the Iowa Core, but the current (2024) Iowa Academic Standards for English Language Arts revised some codes. Of the six literacy codes this catalog touches, RH.11-12.6/8/9 are verbatim identical to the shared Common Core file, but RI.11-12.6 (“…or artistry of the text” vs Common Core's “…or beauty of the text”) and WHST.11-12.8 (“multiple credible primary and secondary… including recognition of bias” vs Common Core's “multiple authoritative… sources”) are Iowa's own revised wording. Because two of the six diverge, we do not alias the shared Common Core ELA framework — that would misrepresent Iowa's revised codes as verbatim Common Core. We instead transcribe Iowa's own verbatim literacy standards in the ia-literacy framework above.
• Iowa's caucuses, nonpartisan redistricting, and Missouri-Plan judiciary have no discrete benchmark. The flagship teaches the Iowa Caucuses, Iowa's nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency redistricting, and its merit-selection-plus-retention judiciary as headline features. The Iowa Caucuses are named only in the clarification of SS.9-12.Gov.13, and redistricting/gerrymandering appear only in that standard's “May include” list; the Missouri-Plan judiciary sits inside SS.9-12.Gov.18 (the state government) rather than as a benchmark of its own. So they are claimed through Gov.13 and Gov.18 rather than as standards in their own right.
• The sovereign Meskwaki Nation tribal government (SS.9-12.Gov.19). Iowa's Civics/Government course carries a dedicated benchmark on the sovereign Meskwaki Nation's tribal government — the Meskwaki Tribal Constitution, Council, and Court, and the Settlement's status as privately purchased land rather than a federal reservation. Iowa Civics teaches Iowa's state and local structure but not tribal government, so SS.9-12.Gov.19 is not claimed. The gap is in the course, not the standards.
• The political-science and civic-virtue benchmarks we checked and rejected. SS.9-12.Gov.1 (origins of government and alternative systems, including crimes against humanity by communist regimes), SS.9-12.Gov.2 (Enlightenment philosophers and the Federalist/Anti-Federalist Papers as named content), SS.9-12.Gov.5 (government's role in maintaining order through safety/morality/health laws), SS.9-12.Gov.11 (patterns of political action and activism), SS.9-12.Gov.12 (intermediary institutions — interest groups, parties, media, campaigns, political socialization), SS.9-12.Gov.15 (biographies of exemplary Iowans and Americans who promoted civic virtue), SS.9-12.Gov.16 (civic virtue as a named concept), and the inquiry-mechanics anchors SS.9-12.1, SS.9-12.2, and SS.9-12.6 (developing compelling/supporting questions and constructing sequenced responses) — the courses do not genuinely teach these, or teach them too thinly to claim, so we do not claim them.