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Better Vice Club

Arkansas standards alignment

Designed for high school. Below is every Arkansasstandard 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.

23
standards mapped
8
fully covered
15
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 Arkansas'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

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Arkansas · Social Studies

Civics — Arkansas Social Studies Academic Standards

Revised 2022 · Arkansas Department of Education, Division of Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE) · retrieved 2026-07-16

Arkansas's required half-credit Civics course (grades 9-12), from the December 2022 standards revision (full implementation 2024-25). Codes are Knowledge and Skill Performance Expectations (C.2.CIV.1 style).

Read the source document →

  • C.4.CIV.4

    Covered
    Identify intended and unintended consequences of public policies.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 4 · The Hidden Costs of Cheap Sugar
    • · Ep 8 · Prohibition, the Experiment That Failed
    • · Ep 8 · Selling Prohibition (the rhetoric that drove the movement)
    • · Ep 18 · Bolivia's Bet (Bolivia's legal coca model against U.S.-funded eradication)
    • · Ep 18 · The Balloon Effect
    • · Ep 17 · Where the Poppy Grows (Afghanistan and the Golden Crescent)
    • · Ep 16 · The Justice Gap

    Note: Three public policies worked at depth, each with both columns: the U.S. sugar program (intended: stable domestic prices; unintended: ~$3.5bn/yr consumer cost), Prohibition (its results against its rhetoric), and the War on Drugs (the balloon effect is an unintended-consequences lesson by name).

Arkansas · Social Studies

Economics with Personal Finance — Arkansas Social Studies Academic Standards

Revised 2022 · Arkansas Department of Education, Division of Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE) · retrieved 2026-07-16

Arkansas's high-school economics course, which bundles personal finance. We claim three economics standards and no personal-finance standard at all — the catalog does not teach personal finance.

Read the source document →

  • E.5.ECON.2

    Partially covered
    Explain ways in which current trends in globalization affect economic growth, labor markets, rights of individuals, the environment, technological advancement, and resource and income distribution in different nations.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 1 · Follow the Money: Bean to Cup
    • · Ep 2 · Who Gets Paid, Tea and Coffee Compared
    • · Ep 3 · The Commodity Trap
    • · Ep 12 · The Jimador's Share
    • · Ep 14 · Pattern 3: Labor Captures the Smallest Share (the smile curve)
    • · Ep 21 · The Smile Curve, Confirmed
    • · Ep 7 · Who Captures the Value
    • · Mexico, Lesson 7 · Mexico rewrites its labor law, and the 68-year gap that explains why
    • · Mexico, Lesson 10 · The Rapid Response Mechanism: an international labor rule with teeth
    • · Mexico, Lesson 12 · The limits, honestly: the cases the United States lost

    What we do and don't cover: Partial: four of the standard's six lenses are worked deeply — labor markets (what NAFTA→USMCA did to organizing on both sides of the border), rights of individuals (the Rapid Response Mechanism), and resource and income distribution (who is paid what along commodity chains, and why producers stay poor). Technological advancement is not taught, and the environment only through climate forecasts.

  • E.5.ECON.3

    Partially covered
    Research the impact of international and national economic and political policies on global trade using a variety of sources from multiple perspectives (e.g., trade policies, tariffs, quotas, immigration laws, fiscal policy, regulations).

    Covered by

    • · Ep 4 · The Hidden Costs of Cheap Sugar
    • · Mexico, Lesson 7 · Mexico rewrites its labor law, and the 68-year gap that explains why
    • · Mexico, Lesson 10 · The Rapid Response Mechanism: an international labor rule with teeth
    • · Mexico, Lesson 12 · The limits, honestly: the cases the United States lost

    What we do and don't cover: Partial, with the distinction stated: the CONTENT is taught in depth (the sugar program's tariffs and quotas; a trade agreement's labor rules, including the cases the United States lost). But the standard's verb is RESEARCH, and student-run research is currently required only in the Coffee episode's project.

  • E.3.ECON.5

    Partially covered
    Evaluate intended and unintended consequences of government policies created to improve market outcomes (e.g., regulatory, participatory, supervisory, price floor, price ceiling, minimum wage).

    Covered by

    • · Ep 4 · The Hidden Costs of Cheap Sugar

    What we do and don't cover: Partial: one policy family — the U.S. sugar program's price supports and import quotas — is evaluated properly, intended and unintended columns both. Price ceilings and the minimum wage, which the standard lists, are not taught.

Arkansas · Social Studies

World Geography — Arkansas Social Studies Academic Standards

Revised 2022 · Arkansas Department of Education, Division of Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE) · retrieved 2026-07-16

Arkansas's high-school geography course. This is the course the Commodity Map fits most completely in Arkansas.

Read the source document →

Arkansas · Social Studies

World History Since 1450 — Arkansas Social Studies Academic Standards

Revised 2022 · Arkansas Department of Education, Division of Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE) · retrieved 2026-07-16

Arkansas's high-school world history course, from the December 2022 revision.

Read the source document →

  • H.6.WH.13

    Covered
    Analyze causes and consequences of voluntary and forced mass migration, including the efforts to reform such practices. This may include cultural practices, resource availability, the plantation system, urbanization, industrialization, conflict migration, and transatlantic abolitionism.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 3 · Conquest and the Great Reversal
    • · Ep 4 · The Triangular Trade and the Middle Passage
    • · Ep 11 · The Triangular Trade
    • · Ep 12 · Burning the Books (the destruction of the Mesoamerican codices)
    • · Ep 15 · From Sacred to Commodity
    • · Ep 4 · Resistance and Revolution
    • · Ep 11 · The Maroons
    • · Ep 11 · The Haitian Revolution
    • · Ep 4 · Whose Voice Tells the Story (Equiano, 1789; Mary Prince, 1831)

    Note: The standard's core and three of its named threads, all taught: forced mass migration (the transatlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage), the plantation system, and the reform efforts — transatlantic abolitionism through the sugar boycott's own pamphlets.

  • H.6.WH.11

    Partially covered
    Analyze the social, economic, and political ideas, including self-determination, liberty, and human rights, that influenced the 18th and 19th-century revolutions. This may include: American Revolution, French Revolution, Haitian Revolution, Latin American Wars for Independence, Norwegian War for Independence, Scottish Rebellion, United Irish Rebellion.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 11 · The Haitian Revolution
    • · Ep 11 · The Debt of Freedom
    • · Ep 11 · The Black Jacobins (C.L.R. James)

    What we do and don't cover: Partial: ONE of the named revolutions — the Haitian Revolution — is taught in real depth, ideas included, through to the 1825 indemnity most curricula skip. The other named revolutions are not taught.

  • H.6.WH.14

    Partially covered
    Compare the social and economic impact of different labor systems in the Age of Revolutions.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 4 · The Triangular Trade and the Middle Passage
    • · Ep 4 · Resistance and Revolution
    • · Ep 11 · The Maroons
    • · Ep 11 · The Haitian Revolution
    • · Ep 4 · The Sugar Islands
    • · Ep 4 · From New Guinea to the New World
    • · Ep 11 · Waste-Product Economics

    What we do and don't cover: Partial: the plantation labor system and its social and economic impact are taught thoroughly for the era; the comparison against the era's other labor systems (free wage labor, serfdom) is not made systematically.

  • H.6.WH.15

    Partially covered
    Analyze the causes and effects of European imperialism and new patterns of colonization in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the 19th century, including the impact of advancements in medicine, weaponry, and technology.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 2 · Who Grows the Tea (colonial and plantation labour)
    • · Ep 5 · Whose Knowledge Is It
    • · Ep 6 · Kava Governs
    • · Ep 17 · The Opium Wars
    • · Ep 20 · The Ban Against the Evidence
    • · Ep 17 · Lin Zexu's Letter

    What we do and don't cover: Partial: causes and effects of 19th-century imperialism in Asia and Africa are taught in depth (the Opium Wars carry the Asia half), and Oceania beyond the standard's list. The medicine-weaponry-technology clause is not taught.

Arkansas · English/Language Arts

2023 Arkansas K-12 English Language Arts Standards

2023 · fully implemented 2023-24 · Arkansas Department of Education, Division of Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE) · retrieved 2026-07-16

Arkansas's own 2023 ELA standards, grade-specific (not grade-banded) — the codes below are Grade 9, 10, and 11 standards. Arkansas is not mapped through our shared Common Core file.

Read the source document →

  • 9.RC.13.RI

    Covered
    Describe how an author uses rhetoric to advance the purpose, point of view, or perspective of a text.

    Covered by

    • · 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)

  • 10.RC.15.RI

    Covered
    Evaluate the argument and supporting claims in a text, assessing the degree to which the reasoning is valid, the evidence is relevant and sufficient, and bias and fallacies are present.

    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 16 · Reefer Madness and the Language of Fear

    Note: 'Bias and fallacies are present' is taught by name: Doubt Is Our Product, Peer Review Versus Press Release, the UK's khat ban against its own scientific advice, and the fear-rhetoric of Reefer Madness.

  • 11.RC.14.RI

    Covered
    Evaluate how content, style, and/or use of rhetorical devices contribute to the purpose, point of view, perspective, and overall effectiveness of a text.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 4 · Blood-Sweetened Luxury
    • · Ep 15 · Torches of Freedom
    • · Ep 17 · Lin Zexu's Letter
    • · Ep 16 · Three Sentences, Three Policies

  • 11.RC.16.RI

    Covered
    Evaluate the premise, reasoning, and validity of an argument in texts, including works of public advocacy and U.S. seminal documents.

    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 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)

    Note: The primary texts worked are works of public advocacy by design: the abolitionist sugar-boycott pamphlets, Lin Zexu's letter, Torches of Freedom, Selling Prohibition.

  • 10.RC.14.RI

    Partially covered
    Compare accounts of a subject told in different mediums (e.g., a person's life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized and/or omitted in each account.

    Covered by

    • · 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 4 · Whose Voice Tells the Story
    • · Ep 10 · The Oral History That Survived (recovering Nathan “Nearest” Green's erased role)

    What we do and don't cover: Partial: 'emphasized and/or omitted' is exactly the Whose Voice method (a planter's account against Equiano and Prince; reading Austen for the sugar money she leaves out), and the Nathan Green lesson compares the written record against the oral one — genuinely different mediums. Multimedia accounts in the standard's modern sense are not analyzed.

  • 11.RC.15.RI

    Partially covered
    Evaluate information presented in a variety of formats and from multiple sources, identifying the information that best answers a question or solves a problem.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 19 · Peer Review Versus Press Release
    • · Every course's Sources bibliography, with per-claim verification
    • · Ep 1 · Assignment, all four options are 2-3 week research projects requiring synthesis across sources

    What we do and don't cover: Partial: multi-source evaluation is modelled constantly, with a checkable bibliography — but the student performs it only in the Coffee episode's project.

  • 11.W.1.S

    Partially covered
    Compose an argument about a complex topic: develop defensible and significant claims; distinguish alternate or opposing claims, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each in a manner that anticipates the audience's knowledge and values; maintain a cohesive argumentative structure throughout; provide relevant commentary to connect claims to the reasons and evidence.

    Covered by

    • · 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: Partial: the Coffee project's Option D asks for exactly this, opposing-claims section included. It is one optional project in one episode — not a writing programme, and we will not claim it is.

  • 11.W.13.R

    Partially covered
    Conduct short and sustained research, synthesizing information from multiple sources to answer a question or solve a problem, narrowing or broadening the inquiry when appropriate.

    Covered by

    • · Ep 1 · Assignment, all four options are 2-3 week research projects requiring synthesis across sources
    • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option B, climate-vulnerability report, 3+ peer-reviewed sources, APA bibliography
    • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option D, primary-source research paper with an APA bibliography

    What we do and don't cover: Partial, same reason: the graded 2-3 week research project exists only in the Coffee episode.

  • 11.W.14.R

    Partially covered
    Assess the credibility and accuracy of sources, using scholarly databases when appropriate.

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

    What we do and don't cover: Partial: the project requires 3+ peer-reviewed sources, and source evaluation is modelled throughout — but assessed student performance of it exists only in the Coffee project.

Arkansas · Science

Arkansas K-12 Science Standards — Earth Science

2016 · 2024 connection-boxes edition · Arkansas Department of Education, Division of Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE) · retrieved 2026-07-16

Arkansas's course-based science standards are built from the NRC Framework — NGSS-derived, but Arkansas's own: performance expectations carry course prefixes and Arkansas-specific clarification statements (this one suggests diamonds, novaculite, and bauxite as the resources). So we cite Arkansas's document, not our shared NGSS file. This is not a science course; we claim one standard, partially.

Read the source document →

  • ES-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 before relying on it: this is NOT a science course — no laboratory work, no investigations, no modelling. What it has is precisely this standard's content: resource availability and climate shaping what humans do and where, with published evidence. The lessons supply the evidence; the STUDENT constructs the explanation only in the Coffee project (Option B). It contributes to the performance expectation; 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 Arkansas mathematics standard.
  • The Arkansas Civics flagship's structure lessons have no Arkansas standard to cite. Arkansas Civics: How Your State Government Works teaches the 1874 constitution, the seven separately elected executives, the nonpartisan ELECTED Supreme Court (Amendment 80), and the quorum-court county system — from Arkansas's own official sources. But Arkansas's 2022 Civics and U.S. Government standards are overwhelmingly FEDERAL: we searched both documents and found no structure-of-Arkansas-government standard for those lessons to meet. The course backs the state halves of C.4.CIV.1 (lawmaking, initiatives) and C.3.CIV.13 (elections); the rest of its Arkansas content has no code to cite. The gap is in the standards, not the course.
  • Health — the 2019 standards print no citable codes, and the content does not match. Arkansas's 2019 Health & Safety standards are competency statements ('I can…') organized by domain and level, with no printed codes — and the Grades 9-12 objectives are content-domain statements (nutrition, alcohol/tobacco/drugs, disease prevention, mental health) that our health courses do not teach. Unlike Indiana and Arizona, whose health frameworks carry skill standards for evaluating health information and goal-setting, Arkansas gives our health claims no honest home. We cite none; the goal-setting and product-claims work maps through the PE course frameworks instead, where Arkansas DID write codes.
  • Personal finance — nothing. Arkansas bundles personal finance into its Economics course (Act 480/466 requirements). The catalog does not teach personal finance, so we claim no PF standard.
  • Arkansas Economics has no home for the reciprocity-economy content. The curriculum contrasts traditional (reciprocity) and market economies directly and at length, but E.3.ECON.1's allocation-method list (price, auction, lottery, first come, contest, fiat) has no gift/reciprocity entry, and no other 2022 Economics standard covers economic systems. That content maps in Arkansas through World Geography's G.3.WG.5 (attitudes toward resources) instead. E.3.ECON.6/7 (degrees of market competition) are rejected for the same reason as Indiana's market-structure standards: named in our lessons, never taught as a unit. E.5.ECON.1 (comparative advantage) is not taught by name.
  • Most of the Civics and U.S. Government standards we checked. C.2.CIV.1 and H.5.USH.1 (flag etiquette), C.2.CIV.3 (the seven-ideology comparison), C.2.CIV.4 (the Federalist Papers as rationale), C.3.CIV.2/3/5 (non-citizen roles, citizenship demographics, the Census), C.3.CIV.11 (Arkansas student-law topics), C.3.CIV.12/14/15/16 (parties, PACs, media influence, gerrymandering — our media-literacy course is consumer protection, not political media analysis), C.4.CIV.5/6 (intergovernmental policy conflict; criminal vs. civil law), C.3.USG.1-6 (Enlightenment thinkers and the Declaration as persuasive argument), C.2.USG.6/7/10/12/13 (the Cabinet, the bureaucracy, Full Faith and Credit, fiscal policy), and C.4.USG.3-6 (judicial philosophies and current-issues application) — the courses do not genuinely teach these, so we do not claim them.
  • U.S. History Since 1929 starts too late for half our labor history. The Gilded Age labor movement (the Knights, Haymarket, Homestead, Pullman), the Triangle fire, and the Great Migration's first decades all predate 1929, so Arkansas's U.S. History course cannot reach them — the window is the course's, not ours. Taft-Hartley (1947) and PATCO (1981) fall inside the window, but H.5.USH.20's policy list does not name labor policy and H.5.USH.22's Reagan-era list does not name PATCO, so we do not claim either. The Migration and Jim Crow map through African-American History, where Arkansas's standards name them.
  • World History standards we checked and rejected. H.6.WH.10 (industrialization's development and expansion), H.6.WH.21-24 (World War I and II, the Holocaust), H.6.WH.30-32 (Cold War interdependence, late-20th-century catastrophes and costs of war), and H.6.WH.34 (human-made and natural disasters) — case-study adjacency is not coverage, so we claim none of them.
  • PE performance and participation standards — all of them. Every PFL and RS standard that asks a student to DEMONSTRATE motor skill, participate, perform dance, or exhibit behavior during activity (all of Content Standard 1, the participation halves of Standard 3, Standards 4 and 5's in-activity conduct) is out of reach of an online course, however good its knowledge content. We claim knowledge- and planning-side standards only, and we say so on each entry.
  • The AI-literacy ladder, the language courses, and Learning How to Learn — deferred, not denied. Arkansas's closest frameworks (Computer Science, World Languages) have not been fetched and verified yet. Our rule is fetch-or-don't-cite, so these courses carry no Arkansas claims this pass.

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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