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 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.
• Understand significant influences on the civil rights movement. (e.g., the social and constitutional issues involved in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954) court cases; the connection between legislative acts, Supreme Court decisions, and the civil rights movement; the role of women in the civil rights movement and in shaping the struggle for civil rights)
• Know different types of primary and secondary sources and the motives, interests, and bias expressed in them.
• Evaluate the validity and credibility of different historical interpretations.
• 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.
• Uses a variety of criteria to evaluate the clarity and accuracy of information.
• Identifies abstract relationships between seemingly unrelated items.
• Identifies abstract patterns of similarities and differences between information on the same topic but from different sources.
• Identifies the abstract relationships that form the basis for analogies.
• Understands how factors of time and place influence visual, spatial, or temporal characteristics that give meaning or function to a work of art.
• Understands what makes different art media, techniques, and processes effective (or ineffective) in communicating various ideas.
• Knows how the qualities and characteristics of art media, techniques, and processes can be used to enhance communication of experiences and ideas.
• Knows how characteristics of the arts vary within a particular historical period or style and how these characteristics relate to ideas, issues, or themes in other disciplines.
• Understands the use of stereotypes and biases in visual media.
• Reflects on what has been learned after reading and formulates ideas, opinions, and personal responses to texts.
• Uses reading skills and strategies to understand a variety of informational texts.
• Draws conclusions and makes inferences based on explicit and implicit information in texts.
• Uses discussions with peers as a way of understanding information.