Standards Sources & Attribution
Every education standard in Backward Builder comes from an official, verified source. We never generate, approximate, or hallucinate standard codes or descriptions.
Our Data Integrity Commitment
Standards determine what students are taught. There is no room for error. Backward Builder enforces a zero-hallucination policy for education standards:
- AI is never allowed to generate standard codes or descriptions. Claude selects from a pre-verified list — it cannot invent standards.
- Every standard code returned by AI is validated against our database before being saved. Unverified codes are silently dropped.
- If we don't have verified standards for a state or subject, we show no standards rather than risk showing incorrect ones.
- Standards URLs link to authoritative sources — official state education department pages, NGSS, or Common Core sites.
Common Standards Project
Primary standards source — all 50 states
Our primary standards database is powered by the Common Standards Project (CSP), an open-source database of academic standards from all 50 US states, the District of Columbia, and national organizations.
CSP aggregates standards directly from official state education department publications and provides them in a structured, machine-readable format.
License & Attribution
Standards data: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States (CC BY 3.0 US)
Rights holder: D2L Corporation
API source code: Apache License 2.0
Website: commonstandardsproject.com · Developer docs
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
Local fallback — middle school science
We maintain a local copy of all 52 middle school NGSS Performance Expectations, sourced directly from the official NGSS website. This serves as a fast fallback when the CSP API is unreachable.
Source
nextgenscience.org — DCI Arrangement pages for MS-PS1 through MS-ETS1
NGSS is a registered trademark of Achieve, Inc. Standards are © 2013 Achieve, Inc. Used for educational reference.
Adopted by 40+ states and the District of Columbia.
Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
Local fallback — ELA & Mathematics
We maintain local copies of Common Core standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics (grades 5–8), sourced from the official CCSS Initiative website and verified against state education department publications.
Sources
thecorestandards.org/ELA-Literacy — ELA standards (RL, RI, W, RH, RST strands)
thecorestandards.org/Math — Mathematics standards (all domains, grades 5–8)
Cross-referenced with: CCSSO Official Standards PDF
© 2010 National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. Used for educational reference.
Adopted by 41 states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity.
AI-Powered Unit Planning
How Claude AI uses standards data
Backward Builder uses Claude by Anthropic to generate unit plans, performance tasks, essential questions, and learning activities. However, Claude does not generate standards — it only selects from our pre-verified database.
The AI pipeline works as follows:
- We fetch verified standards for the teacher's state, subject, and grade
- The full list of verified standards is included in Claude's prompt
- Claude selects 2–4 standards that best align with the enduring understanding
- Every code Claude returns is validated against our database before saving
- Any unrecognized code is silently dropped
Unit content (titles, essential questions, performance tasks, rubrics, learning activities) is AI-generated and should be reviewed by the teacher before use in the classroom.
Questions about our standards data? Contact us