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Skills available for Massachusetts high school social studies standards

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USII.T1 The role of economics in modern United States history

  • Scarcity and Economic Reasoning

    • USII.T1.1 Describe how resources for the production of goods are limited, therefore people must make choices to gain some things and give up others.

    • USII.T1.2 Explain that the goals of economic policy may be to promote freedom, efficiency, equity, security, growth, price stability, and full employment and that different economic systems place greater emphasis on some goals over others.

  • Supply and Demand

    • USII.T1.3 Define supply and demand and explain the role that supply and demand, prices, and profits play in determining production and distribution in a market economy.

      • USII.T1.3.a the function of profit in a market economy as an incentive for entrepreneurs to accept the risks of business failure

      • USII.T1.3.b factors that cause changes in market supply and demand and how these changes influence the price and quantity of goods and services

      • USII.T1.3.c how financial markets, such as the stock market, channel funds from savers to investors and the function of investment in the economy

  • Financial Investing

    • USII.T1.4 Explain what a financial investment is (e.g., a bank deposit, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate); explain why the value of investments fluctuate, and track the gains or losses in value of a financial investment over time (e.g., stocks, bonds, or mutual funds).

    • USII.T1.5 Explain how buyers and sellers in financial markets determine the prices of financial assets and therefore influence the rate of return on those assets.

  • Money and the Role of Financial Institutions

    • USII.T1.6 Explain the role of banks and other financial institutions in the market economy of the United States, and analyze the reasons for banking crises.

    • USII.T1.7 Describe the organization and functions of the Federal Reserve System; explain the reason the government established it in 1913 and analyze how it uses monetary tools to promote price stability, full employment, and economic growth.

  • National Economic Performance

    • USII.T1.8 Explain how a country's overall level of income, employment, and prices are determined by the individual spending and production decisions of households and firms, and that government measures such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) describe these factors at the national level.

    • USII.T1.9 Analyze the impact of events such as wars and technological developments on business cycles. Examples:

  • The Role of Government

    • USII.T1.10 Explain and give examples of the roles that government may play in a market economy, including the provision of public goods and services, redistribution of income, protection of property rights, and resolution of market failures.

    • USII.T1.11 Analyze how the government uses taxing and spending decisions (fiscal policy) and monetary policy to promote price stability, full employment, and economic growth.

USII.T2 Modernity in the United States: ideologies and economies

  • USII.T2.1 Analyze primary sources (e.g., documents, audio or film recordings, works of art and artifacts), to develop an argument about how the conflict between traditionalism and modernity manifested itself in the major societal trends and events in first two decades of the 20th century. Trends and events students might research include:

    • USII.T2.1.a the arts, entrepreneurship and philanthropy of the Harlem Renaissance, including the work of individuals such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Josephine Baker, Eubie Blake

    • USII.T2.1.b exhibitions, such as the Armory Show in New York, of avant-garde modern art (e.g., cubism, futurism) from Europe

    • USII.T2.1.c women serving in the military as nurses and telephone operators

    • USII.T2.1.d the influx of World War I refugees leading to the Red Scare and the 1924 restrictions on immigration

    • USII.T2.1.e racial and ethnic tensions, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacy as a movement, and the first Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North

    • USII.T2.1.f the impact of the eugenics movement on segregation, immigration, and the legalization of involuntary sterilization in some states; and the Supreme Court case, Buck v. Bell (1927), in which the Court ruled that state statutes permitting involuntary sterilization did not violate the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment

    • USII.T2.1.g debates over the concept of evolution, such as the reporting of H. L. Mencken on the Scopes Trial (1925), which raised the debate over teaching evolution in public schools; Charles Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species (1859), and Christian fundamentalism

    • USII.T2.1.h Prohibition of the manufacture, transport, or sale of alcoholic beverages under the 18th Amendment (1920–1933) and "the Jazz Age"

    • USII.T2.1.i The growing prominence of same-sex relationships, especially in urban areas

    • USII.T2.1.j The Bread and Roses Strike in Lawrence (1912), the Boston police strike (1919), and the Massachusetts trials, appeals and execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1921)

  • USII.T2.2 Describe the multiple causes (e.g., fall in stock market and commodities prices, restrictive monetary and trade policies, post-war reparations and debt) and consequences of the global depression of the 1930s (e.g., widespread unemployment, decline of personal income, support for social and political reform, decline in trade, the rise of fascism), including consideration of competing economic theories that explain the crisis (e.g., insufficient demand for goods and services [Keynesianism] vs. insufficient supply of money [monetarism]).

  • USII.T2.3 Gather, evaluate, and analyze primary sources (e.g., economic data, articles, diaries, photographs, audio and video recordings, songs, movies, and literary works) to create an oral, media, or written report on how Americans responded to the Great Depression.

  • USII.T2.4 Using primary sources such as campaign literature, news articles/analyses, editorials, and radio/newsreel coverage, analyze the important policies, institutions, trends, and personalities of the Depression era (e.g., Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Frances Perkins, Huey Long, Charles Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh). Students may research and complete a case study on any one of the following policies, institutions, or trends:

    • USII.T2.4.a the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

    • USII.T2.4.b the Securities and Exchange Commission

    • USII.T2.4.c the Tennessee Valley Authority

    • USII.T2.4.d the Social Security Act

    • USII.T2.4.e the National Labor Relations Act

    • USII.T2.4.f the Works Progress Administration

    • USII.T2.4.g the Fair Labor Standards Act

    • USII.T2.4.h the American Federation of Labor

    • USII.T2.4.i the Congress of Industrial Organizations

    • USII.T2.4.j the American Communist Party

    • USII.T2.4.k the America First movement and anti-Semitism in the United States

  • USII.T2.5 Evaluate the effectiveness of the New Deal programs enacted during the 1930s and the societal responses to those programs.

USII.T3 Defending democracy: responses to fascism and communism

  • USII.T3.1 Develop an argument which analyzes the effectiveness of American isolationism and analyzes the impact of isolationism on U.S. foreign policy.

  • USII.T3.2 Explain the rise of fascism and the forms it took in Germany and Italy, including ideas and policies that led to the Holocaust.

  • USII.T3.3 Explain the reasons for American involvement in World War II and the key actions and events leading up to declarations of war against Japan and Germany.

  • USII.T3.4 On a map of the world, locate the Allied powers at the time of World War II (Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States) and Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan).

  • USII.T3.5 Using primary sources such as news articles/analyses, editorials, and radio/newsreel coverage, analyze one of the events that led to World War II, one of the major battles of the war and its consequences, or one of the conferences of Allied leaders following the war:

    • USII.T3.5.a German rearmament and militarization of the Rhineland

    • USII.T3.5.b The Munich Conference and Germany's seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia

    • USII.T3.5.c the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 and the invasion of Poland

    • USII.T3.5.d Japan's invasion of China and the Nanjing Massacre

    • USII.T3.5.e Pearl Harbor, Midway, D-Day, Okinawa, the Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima

    • USII.T3.5.f the Yalta and Potsdam conferences

  • USII.T3.6 Describe the Allied response to the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis before, during, and after the war.

  • USII.T3.7 Explain the reasons the United States gave for the use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan; and use primary and secondary sources to analyze how arguments for and against the use of nuclear weapons developed from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.

  • USII.T3.8 Explain the long-term consequences of important domestic events during the war.

    • USII.T3.8.a the War's stimulus to economic growth

    • USII.T3.8.b the beginning of the second Great Migration of African Americans from the South to industrial cities of the North and to California

    • USII.T3.8.c A. Philip Randolph and the efforts to eliminate employment discrimination on the basis of race

    • USII.T3.8.d large numbers of women in the workforce of munitions industries and serving in non-combat jobs in the military, including as pilots, clerks, computer scientists, and nurses

    • USII.T3.8.e the internment of West Coast Japanese Americans in the U.S. and Canada

    • USII.T3.8.f how the two world wars led to greater demands for civil rights for women and African Americans

  • USII.T3.9 Analyze the factors that contributed to the Cold War and describe the policy of containment as a response by the United States to Soviet expansionist policies, using evidence from primary sources to explain the differences between the Soviet and American political and economic systems; Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe; the Korean War, United States support of anti-communist regimes in Latin America and Southeast Asia; the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the Warsaw Pact).

  • USII.T3.10 Explain what communism is as an economic system and analyze the sources of Cold War conflict; on a political map of the world, locate the areas of Cold War conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1950s to the 1980s.

  • USII.T3.11 Analyze Dwight D. Eisenhower's response to the Soviet Union's launching of Sputnik (1957) and the nation's increased commitment to space exploration and education in science.

  • USII.T3.12 Summarize the diplomatic and military policies on the War in Vietnam of Presidents Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon and explain the intended and unintended consequences of the Vietnam War the Vietnamese and Americans.

USII.T4 Defending democracy: the Cold War and civil rights at home

  • USII.T4.1 Research and analyze one the domestic policies of Presidents Truman and Eisenhower (e.g., Truman's Fair Deal, the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 or the Social Security Disability Insurance Act of 1956).

  • USII.T4.2 Analyze the roots of domestic communism and anti-communism in the 1950s, the origins and consequences of, and the resistance to McCarthyism, researching and reporting on people and institutions such as Whittaker Chambers, Alger Hiss, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Senators Joseph McCarthy and Margaret Chase Smith, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the American Communist Party, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and congressional investigations into the Lavender Scare).

  • USII.T4.3 Analyze the causes and consequences of important domestic Cold War trends in the United States (e.g., economic growth and declining poverty, the G. I. Education bill, the decline in women's employment, climb in the birthrate, the growth of suburbs and home ownership, the increase in education levels, the impact of television and increased consumerism).

  • USII.T4.4 Analyze the origins, evolution, and goals of the African American Civil Rights Movement, researching the work of people such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, John Lewis, Bayard Rustin, Robert F. Kennedy, and institutions such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Congress of Racial Equality.

  • USII.T4.5 Using primary sources such as news articles/analyses, editorials, and radio/television coverage, research and analyze resistance to integration in some white communities, protests to end segregation, and Supreme Court decisions on civil rights.

    • USII.T4.5.a The 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education

    • USII.T4.5.b the 1955–1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1957–1958 Little Rock School Crisis and Eisenhower's civil rights record

    • USII.T4.5.c King's philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience, based on the ideas of Gandhi and the sit-ins and freedom rides of the early 1960s

    • USII.T4.5.d the 1963 civil rights protest in Birmingham and the March on Washington

    • USII.T4.5.e 1965 civil rights protest in Selma

    • USII.T4.5.f the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

  • USII.T4.6 Evaluate accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement (e.g., the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act) and how they served as a model for later feminist, disability, and gender rights movements of the 20th and 21st centuries; collect and analyze demographic data to investigate trends from the 1964 to 2010 in areas such as voter registration and participation, median family income, or educational attainment among African American, Hispanic American, Asian American and white populations.

  • USII.T4.7 Using primary sources such as news articles/analyses, editorials, and television coverage, research Massachusetts leaders for civil rights and the controversies over the racial desegregation of public schools in the 1960s and 1970s, including:

    • USII.T4.7.a the establishment of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) busing plan involving Boston, Springfield, and suburban school districts

    • USII.T4.7.b Court-ordered desegregation and mandated busing in the public schools of Boston and other Massachusetts cities

  • USII.T4.8 Using primary and secondary sources, analyze the causes and course of one of the following social and political movements, including consideration of the role of protest, advocacy organizations, and active citizen participation.

    • USII.T4.8.a Women's rights, including the writings on feminism by Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and others; the availability of the birth control pill; the activism of the National Organization for Women and opposition to the movement by conservative leaders such as Phyllis Schlafly; passage of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution (1972), and its failure to achieve sufficient ratification by states; Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, the appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor as the first woman Justice of the Supreme Court in 1981, and increasing numbers of women in elected offices in national and state government

    • USII.T4.8.b the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Civil Rights Movement, the impact of world wars on the demand for gay rights, the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969, the Gay Pride Movement, and activism and medical research to slow the spread of AIDS in the 1980s; the role of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (2004) and the role of other state courts in providing equal protection for same sex marriage in advance of the United States Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)

    • USII.T4.8.c the disability rights movement such as deinstitutionalization, independent living, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975), the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (1990)

    • USII.T4.8.d the environmental protection movement (e.g., the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring; the 1970 federal Clean Air Act; the 1972 Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act; the 1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Act and subsequent amendments)

    • USII.T4.8.e the movement to protect the health and rights of workers, and improve working conditions and wages (e.g., César Chávez and Dolores Huerta and the migrant farmworkers' movement, workplace protections against various forms of discrimination and sexual harassment)

    • USII.T4.8.f the movement to protect the rights, self-determination, and sovereignty of Native Peoples (e.g., the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968, the American Indian Movement, the Wounded Knee Incident at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1973, the Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, and the efforts of Native Peoples' groups to preserve Native cultures, gain federal or state recognition and raise awareness of Native American history

    • USII.T4.8.g Research and analyze issues related to race relations in the United States since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, including: the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and its impact on neighborhood integration; policies, court cases, and practices regarding affirmative action and their impact on diversity in the workforce and higher education; disparities and trends in educational achievement and attainment, health outcomes, wealth and income, and rates of incarceration; the election of the nation's first African American president, Barack Obama, in 2008 and 2012.

USII.T5 United States and globalization

  • USII.T5.1 Using primary sources such as campaign literature and debates, news articles/analyses, editorials, and television coverage, analyze the important policies and events that took place during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy (e.g., the confrontation with Cuba over missile bases, the space exploration program, Kennedy's assassination), Lyndon Johnson (the Great Society programs, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the Vietnam War and anti-war movements, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy), and Richard Nixon (the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, diplomacy with China, détente with the Soviet Union, the Watergate scandal, and Nixon's resignation).

  • USII.T5.2 Analyze and evaluate the impact of economic liberalism on mid-20th century society, including the legacy of the New Deal on post World War II America, the expansion of American manufacturing and unionism, social welfare programs, and the regulation of major industries such as transportation, energy, communications and finance.

  • USII.T5.3 Analyze the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) and the rise of the conservative movement in American politics, (e.g., policies such as tax rate cuts, anti-communist foreign and defense policies, replacement of striking air traffic controllers with non-union personnel.

  • USII.T5.4 Analyze how the failure of communist economic policies and U.S.-sponsored resistance to Soviet military and diplomatic initiatives contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the end of the Cold War.

  • USII.T5.5 Analyze some of the major technological and social trends and issues of the late 20th and early 21st centuries (e.g., the computer and technological revolution beginning in the 1980s, scientific and medical discoveries such as DNA research, major immigration and demographic changes such as the rise in Asian and Hispanic immigration).

  • USII.T5.6 Evaluate the effectiveness of the federal government's response to international terrorism in the 21st century, including the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., the Homeland Security Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.