Arkansas standards alignment

• 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

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • Tea — The Way of Tea
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • My Daily Altar — Season Synthesis

  • · 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.

• G.3.WG.7

  Covered

  Analyze changes in the environment and cultural characteristics of a place or region that influence spatial patterns of trade and land use over time.

  Covered by

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • Kava — The Root of Peace
  • Tea — The Way of Tea
  • Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom

  • · Ep 1 · Climate Change Is Redrawing the Map
  • · Ep 3 · A Two-Degree Threat
  • · Ep 6 · Islands Under Pressure
  • · Ep 8 · Beer Geography Is Shifting
  • · The Commodity Map itself, every episode pinned at its origin
  • · The Growing Belts map, production regions by latitude band and country
  • · Ep 1 · The Coffee Belt: Where Coffee Grows and Why
  • · Ep 3 · The Cacao Tree and the Narrowest Belt
  • · Ep 6 · Why Volcanic Soil Only

  Note: Climate change redrawing the growing belts — and with them, trade and land use — is analyzed with published forecasts, commodity by commodity.

• G.2.WG.1

  Partially covered

  Investigate political, cultural, and economic relationships between places and regions using geographic representations and geospatial technologies.

  Covered by

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • Tea — The Way of Tea
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom
  • Kava — The Root of Peace

  • · The Commodity Map itself, every episode pinned at its origin
  • · The Growing Belts map, production regions by latitude band and country
  • · Ep 1 · The Coffee Belt: Where Coffee Grows and Why
  • · Ep 3 · The Cacao Tree and the Narrowest Belt
  • · Ep 6 · Why Volcanic Soil Only
  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option A, map the supply chain of 3 items from your morning routine
  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option B, Coffee Belt climate report, with maps and data tables

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: the geographic representations are the curriculum's signature (the Commodity Map, the Growing Belts, student-prepared maps and data tables). Geospatial TECHNOLOGIES in the GIS sense are not used.

• G.3.WG.8

  Partially covered

  Evaluate the benefits of various locations in terms of natural, human, and capital resources.

  Covered by

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • Tea — The Way of Tea
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom
  • Kava — The Root of Peace

  • · The Commodity Map itself, every episode pinned at its origin
  • · The Growing Belts map, production regions by latitude band and country
  • · Ep 1 · The Coffee Belt: Where Coffee Grows and Why
  • · Ep 3 · The Cacao Tree and the Narrowest Belt
  • · Ep 6 · Why Volcanic Soil Only
  • · 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

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: natural-resource geography is deep (why volcanic soil only; why the cacao belt is the narrowest), and the human/capital halves surface through where value-adding steps locate along the chain — but not as a named location-analysis framework.

• G.3.WG.10

  Partially covered

  Examine the diffusion of a phenomenon and its impact on various regions of contact (e.g., spread of infectious disease, invasive plants, invasive animals).

  Covered by

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • Tea — The Way of Tea
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • Sugar — The Sweet Revolution

  • · Ep 1 · The Coffee Belt: Where Coffee Grows and Why
  • · Ep 2 · The Tea Plant and Its Climate Zones
  • · Ep 3 · The Big Producers and the Cacao Varieties
  • · Ep 4 · From New Guinea to the New World
  • · Ep 17 · The Scott County Lesson
  • · Ep 17 · Treatment Versus Punishment

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: two diffusions worked properly — crops moving among regions from their agricultural hearths, and one epidemic (the 2015 Scott County HIV outbreak) in real depth. Not a survey of diffusion types.

• 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

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection

  • · 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

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection

  • · 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

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection

  • · 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

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection

  • · 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.

• 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

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • Kava — The Root of Peace

  • · 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.