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 U.S. Constitution a reality.
• Understand the significance of fundamental values and principles for the individual and society.
• Know 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 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.
• 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, including various 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 multiple research studies to draw conclusions that go beyond those found in any of the individual studies.
• Make oral presentations to the class.
• Use criteria to evaluate own and others' effectiveness in group discussions and formal presentations and evaluate the clarity and accuracy of information.
• Adjust message wording and delivery to particular audiences and for particular purposes.
• Play a variety of roles in group discussions.
• Convey a clear main point when speaking to others and stays on the topic being discussed.
• Understand elements of persuasion and appeal in spoken texts.
• Understand how politics enables a group of people with varying opinions and/or interests to reach collective decisions, influence decisions, and accomplish goals that they could not reach as individuals.
• Understand how the purposes government serves affect relationships between the individual and government and between government and society as a whole.