Oklahoma Social Studies USH.C.4.3.B
The Standard
- USH.C.4
- Analyze the cycles of economic boom and bust of the 1920s and 1930s on the transformation of the United States of America’s government and society.
- USH.C.4.3
- Analyze the impact of the New Deal in addressing the challenges of the Great Depression by transforming the federal government’s role in domestic economic policies.
Describe how national policies, based upon John Maynard Keynes’ theory of deficit spending, addressed the economic crisis, and evaluate the critiques of centralized economic planning and management.
Oklahoma Academic Standards for Social Studies (2026) · USH.C.4.3
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students explain how borrowing to pay for public works could create jobs during the Great Depression. They trace how workers’ wages could lead to more sales and hiring. They weigh objections to federal debt and officials in Washington choosing projects.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Given a WPA road project, a student can explain how spending more than the government collects in taxes could increase demand. They can name a specific criticism, such as federal officials overlooking local needs, and defend a judgment about the policy.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think a deficit means the government has no money, rather than that it spends more than it collects in taxes. They may assume every New Deal program followed Keynes’s ideas or that public spending ended the Depression on its own. Some mistake criticism of federal control for opposition to helping unemployed people.
How to Assess It
- The government borrows $1 billion to hire workers for road repairs during a recession. Explain how this could lead to more jobs and sales, then give one reason critics might oppose federal officials choosing the roads.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Hand groups a $12 tax budget and project cards: bridge $8, school $7, park $5; have them borrow to fund two.
Ask: Should Washington choose which towns get WPA projects, or should local officials decide? Write one benefit and one risk of each.
Run a budget card sort using taxes $10, spending $14 and taxes $14, spending $10; students label deficits and surpluses.
Use a nearby road repair as a case: ask whether the federal government should borrow to pay local crews during a recession.
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