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Skills available for Massachusetts high school social studies standards

Standards are in black and IXL social studies skills are in dark green. Hold your mouse over the name of a skill to view a sample question. Click on the name of a skill to practice that skill.

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USI.T1 Origins of the Revolution and the Constitution

  • USI.T1.1 Analyze the economic, intellectual, and cultural forces that contributed to the American Revolution.

  • USI.T1.2 Explain the reasons for the French and Indian War (1754–1763), the North American component of the global Seven Years' War between Great Britain and France (1756–1763), and analyze how the war affected colonists and Native Peoples.

  • USI.T1.3 Explain Britain's policies in the North American colonies (e.g., the Proclamation of 1763, the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Townsend Duties, the Tea Act, and the Intolerable Acts) and compare the perspectives of the British Parliament, British colonists, and Native Peoples in North America on these policies.

  • USI.T1.4 Describe Patriots' responses to increased British taxation (e.g., the slogan, "no taxation without representation," the actions of the Stamp Act Congress, the Sons of Liberty, the Boston Tea Party, the Suffolk Resolves) and the role of Massachusetts people (e.g., Samuel Adams, Crispus Attucks, John Hancock, James Otis, Paul Revere, John and Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Judith Sargent Murray, Phillis Wheatley, Peter Salem, Prince Estabrook).

  • USI.T1.5 Explain the main argument of the Declaration of Independence, the rationale for seeking independence, and its key ideas on equality, liberty, natural rights, and the rule of law.

  • USI.T1.6 Describe the key battles of the Revolution (e.g., Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, Trenton, Saratoga, Yorktown); the winter encampment at Valley Forge; and key leaders and participants of the Continental Army.

  • USI.T1.7 Explain the reasons for the adoption of the Articles of Confederation in 1781 and evaluate the weaknesses of the Articles as a plan for government, the reasons for their failure and how events such as Shays' Rebellion of 1786–1787 led to the Constitutional Convention.

  • USI.T1.8 Describe the Constitutional Convention, the roles of specific individuals (e.g. Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, George Washington, Roger Sherman, Edmund Randolph), and the conflicts and compromises (e.g., compromises over representation, slavery, the executive branch, and ratification).

USI.T2 Democratization and expansion

  • USI.T2.1 Evaluate the major policies and political developments of the presidencies of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, and their implications for the expansion of Federal power and foreign policy (e.g., the origins of the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties in the conflicting ideas of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton on topics such as foreign policy, the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the National Bank; the establishment of the concept of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison).

  • USI.T2.2 Evaluate the presidency of Andrew Jackson, including the spoils system, the National Bank veto, and the policy of Indian removal, and the Nullification Crisis.

  • USI.T2.3 Analyze the causes and long- and short-term consequences of America's westward expansion from 1800 to 1854 (e.g., the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, growing diplomatic assertiveness after the Monroe Doctrine of 1823; the concept of Manifest Destiny and pan-Indian resistance, the establishment of slave states and free states in the West, the acquisition of Texas and the Southwestern territories as a consequence of the Mexican-American War in 1846–48, the California Gold Rush, and the rapid rise of Chinese immigration in California).

USI.T3 Economic growth in the North, South, and West

  • USI.T3.1 Explain the importance of the Transportation Revolution of the 19th century (e.g., the introduction of steamboats, canals, roads, bridges, turnpikes, and railroad networks; the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad and its stimulus to east/west trade, the growth of Midwestern towns and cities, and the strengthening of a market economy).

  • USI.T3.2 Analyze the effects of industrial growth throughout antebellum America, and in New England, the growth of the textile and machinery industries and maritime commerce.

    • USI.T3.2.a the technological improvements and inventions that contributed to industrial growth and maritime commerce

    • USI.T3.2.b the impact of the cotton gin on the economics of Southern agriculture and slavery and the connection between cotton production by slave labor in the South and the economic success of Northern textile industries

    • USI.T3.2.c the causes and impact of the wave of immigration from Northern Europe to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s (e.g., the impact of the English occupation of Ireland, the Irish famine, and industrial development in the U.S.)

    • USI.T3.2.d the rise of a business class of merchants and manufacturers

    • USI.T3.2.e the role of women as the primary workforce in New England textile factories and female workers' activism in advocating for reform of working conditions

  • USI.T3.3 Describe the role of slavery in the economies of the industrialized North and the agricultural South, explain reasons for the rapid growth of slavery in southern states, the Caribbean islands, and South America after 1800, and analyze how banks, insurance companies, and other institutions profited directly or indirectly from the slave trade and slave labor.

  • USI.T3.4 Research primary sources such as antebellum newspapers, slave narratives, accounts of slave auctions, and the Fugitive Slave Act, to analyze one of the following aspects of slave life and resistance (e.g., the Stono Rebellion of 1739, the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804, the rebellion of Denmark Vesey of 1822, the rebellion of Nat Turner in 1831; the role of the Underground Railroad; the development of ideas of racial superiority; the African American Colonization Society movement to deport and resettle freed African Americans in a colony in West Africa).

USI.T4 Social, political, and religious change

  • USI.T4.1 Describe important religious and social trends that shaped America in the 18th and 19th centuries (e.g., the First and Second Great Awakenings; the increase in the number of Protestant denominations; the concept of "Republican Motherhood;" hostility to Catholic immigration and the rise of the Native American Party, also known as the "Know-Nothing" Party)

  • USI.T4.2 Using primary sources, research the reform movements in the United States in the early to mid-19th century, concentrating on one of the following and considering its connections to other aspects of reform:

    • USI.T4.2.a the Abolitionist movement, the reasons individual men and women (e.g., Frederick Douglass, Abbey Kelley Foster, William Lloyd Garrison Angelina and Sarah Grimké, Charles Lennox Remond, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, David Walker, Theodore Weld) fought for their cause, and the responses of southern and northern white men and women to abolitionism.

    • USI.T4.2.b the women's rights and suffrage movements, their connections with abolitionism, and the expansion of women's educational opportunities (e.g., Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Fuller, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, Mary Lyon and the founding of Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary, later Mt. Holyoke College).

    • USI.T4.2.c Horace Mann's campaign for free compulsory public education, increased literacy rates, and the growth of newspaper and magazine publishing

    • USI.T4.2.d the movement to provide supports for people with disabilities, such as the founding of schools for students with cognitive, hearing, or vision disabilities; and the establishment of asylums for people with mental illness

    • USI.T4.2.e the Transcendentalist movement (e.g., the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, and the concepts of materialism, liberty, appreciation of the natural world, self-reliance, abolitionism, and civil disobedience).

USI.T5 The Civil War and Reconstruction: causes and consequences

  • USI.T5.1 Describe how the expansion of the United States to the Midwest contributed to the growing importance of sectional politics in the early 19th century and significantly influenced the balance of power in the federal government.

  • USI.T5.2 Analyze critical policies and events leading to the Civil War and connections among them (e.g., 1820: the Missouri Compromise; 1831–2: the South Carolina Nullification Crisis; 1840s: the Wilmot Proviso; the Mexican-American War; 1850s: the Compromise of 1850; the Kansas Nebraska Act; the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford; the Lincoln-Douglas debates; John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, the election of Abraham Lincoln).

  • USI.T5.3 Analyze Abraham Lincoln's presidency (e.g., the effects on the South of the Union's naval blockade of trade with other countries, the Emancipation Proclamation, his views on slavery and national unity, and the political obstacles he encountered).

  • USI.T5.4 Analyze the roles and policies of Civil War leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Ulysses S. Grant and evaluate the short- and long-term impact of important Civil War battles (e.g., the Massachusetts 54th Regiment at the Battle at Ft. Wagner, and the Battles of Bull Run, Shiloh, Fredericksburg, Antietam, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and Appomattox).

  • USI.T5.5 Using primary sources such as diaries, reports in newspapers and periodicals, photographs, and cartoons/illustrations, document the roles of men and women who fought or served troops in the Civil War.

  • USI.T5.6 Analyze the consequences of the Civil War and Reconstruction (e.g., the physical and economic destruction of the South and the loss of life of both Southern and Northern troops; the increased role of the federal government; the impeachment of President Johnson; the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments; the expansion of the industrial capacity of the Northern U.S.; the role of the Freedmen's Bureau and organizations such as the American League of Colored Laborers, the National Negro Labor Council, the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union; the accomplishments and failures of Radical Reconstruction; the presidential election of 1876; and the end of Reconstruction).

  • USI.T5.7 Analyze the long-term consequences of one aspect of the Jim Crow era (1870s–1960s) that limited educational and economic opportunities for African Americans (e.g., segregated public schools, white supremacist beliefs, the threat of violence from extra-legal groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, and the Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka).

  • USI.T5.8 Evaluate the impact of educational and literary responses to emancipation and Reconstruction (e.g., founding of black colleges to educate teachers for African American schools, the U.S. publication of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Samuel Clemens in 1885, and the development of African American literature in the early 20th century).

USI.T6 Rebuilding the United States: industry and immigration

  • USI.T6.1 Explain the various causes of the Industrial Revolution (e.g., the economic impetus provided by the Civil War; important technological and scientific advances, such as the expansion of the railroad system; the role of business leaders, entrepreneurs, and inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt).

  • USI.T6.2 Make connections among the important consequences of the Industrial Revolution (e.g., economic growth and the rise of big business; environmental impact of industries; the expansion of cities; the emergence of labor unions such as the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor under Samuel Gompers; workers' distrust of monopolies; the rise of the Populist Party under the leadership of William Jennings Bryan or the rise of the Socialist Party under Eugene Debs).

  • USI.T6.3 Evaluate the effects of the entry of women into the workforce after the Civil War and analyze women's political organizations, researching one of the following topics: the opening of teaching and nursing professions to women; new employment opportunities in clothing manufacture as a result of the invention of the sewing machine; in office work as the result of the invention of the typewriter, and in retail sales as the result of the creation of department stores; the formation of the Women's Suffrage Association in 1869 and the Women's Christian Temperance Union in 1874.

  • USI.T6.4 Using primary source images, data, and documents, describe the causes of the immigration of Germans, the Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the major roles of these immigrants in industrialization and the building of railroads.

  • USI.T6.5 Analyze the consequences of the continuing westward expansion of the American people after the Civil War and evaluate the impact of the 14th Amendment on Native Peoples and Asian and European immigrant men and women.

USI.T7 Progressivism and World War I

  • USI.T7.1 Explain what Progressivism meant in the early 20th century and analyze a text or images by a Progressive leader (e.g., Jane Addams, William Jennings Bryan, John Dewey, Robert La Follette, Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, Upton Sinclair, Lewis Hine, William H. Taft, Ida Tarbell, Woodrow Wilson).

  • USI.T7.2 Research and analyze one of the following governmental policies of the Progressive Period, determine the problem it was designed to solve, and assess its long- and short-term effectiveness: bans against child labor, the development of Indian boarding schools, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890), the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), the Meat Packing Act (1906), the Federal Reserve Act (1913), the Clayton Anti-Trust Act (1914), the Indian Citizenship Act (1924).

  • USI.T7.3 Analyze the campaign for, and the opposition to, women's suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; describe the role of leaders and organizations in achieving the passage of the 19th Amendment (e.g., Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the National Woman Suffrage Association, National Women's Party, League of Women Voters).

  • USI.T7.4 Analyze the strategies of African Americans to achieve basic civil rights in the early 20th century, and determine the extent to which they met their goals by researching leaders and organizations (e.g., Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W. E. B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Booker T, Washington, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).

  • USI.T7.5 Analyze the causes and course of the growing role of the United States in world affairs from the Civil War to World War I, researching and reporting on one of the following ideas, policies, or events, and, where appropriate, including maps, timelines, and other visual resources to clarify connections among nations and events:

  • USI.T7.6 Explain the rationale and events leading to the entry of the U.S. into World War I (e.g., unrestricted submarine warfare, the sinking of the Lusitania, the Zimmerman telegram, the concept of "making the world safe for democracy."

  • USI.T7.7 Analyze the role played by the U.S. in support of the Allies and in the conduct of the war.

  • USI.T7.8 Explain the course and significance of Woodrow Wilson's wartime diplomacy, including his Fourteen Points, the League of Nations, and the failure of the Versailles Treaty.