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

The students will:

• 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 U.S. Constitution a reality.
• Understand the significance of fundamental values and principles for the individual and society.
• Know some of the historical and contemporary efforts put forth to reduce discrepancies between ideals and the reality of American public life.
• Know how various individual, social, and political actions have helped to reduce discrepancies between reality and the ideals of the American constitutional democracy.
• 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 biases they express.
• 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 and evaluate the clarity and accuracy of information.
• Identify abstract relationships between seemingly unrelated items.
• Identify abstract patterns of similarities and differences between information on the same topic but from different sources.
• Identify the abstract relationships that form the bases for analogies.
• Understand how time and place influence the visual, spatial, or temporal characteristics that give meaning or function to a work of art.
• Understand what makes different art media, techniques, and processes effective (or ineffective) in communicating various ideas.
• Know how the qualities and characteristics of art media, techniques, and processes can enhance the ability to communicate experiences and ideas.
• Know 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.
• Understand the use of stereotypes and biases in visual media.