The following standards have been taken from the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McRel) standards.

Students will work in groups to:

• Understand the importance of equality of opportunity and equal protection of the law as a characteristic of American society.
• Understand the importance of education as a characteristic of American Society.
• Understands the Bill of Rights and various challenges to it.
• Understand the important factors that have helped shape American Society.
• Know ways in which Americans have attempted to make the values and principles of the constitution a reality.
• Understand the significance of fundamental values and principles for the individual and society.
• Know some of the efforts that have been put forth to reduce discrepancies between ideals and the reality of American public life.
• Know how various individual actions, social actions, and political actions and help to reduce discrepancies between reality and the ideals of American Constitutional democracy.
• Know historical and contemporary efforts to reduce discrepancies between ideals and reality in American public life.
• Understands the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution
• Understands how constitutions, in the past as well as in the present, have been disregarded or used to promote the interests of a particular group, class, faction, or a government
• Understand significant influences on the civil rights movement.
• Know different types of primary and secondary sources and the motives, interests, and bias expressed in them.
• Analyze the values held by specific people who influence history and the role their values played in influencing history.
• Evaluate the validity and credibility of different historical interpretations.
• Use a variety of resource materials to gather information for research topics.
• Use a variety of primary sources to gather information for research topics.
• Use a variety of criteria to evaluate the validity and reliability of primary and secondary source information.
• Synthesize information from the multiple research studies to draw conclusions that go beyond those found in any of the individual studies.
• Gathers data for research topics from interviews.
• Uses viewing skills and strategies to understand and interpret visual media.