This page shows questions in the Standalone 6.0 Items public release module at MSDE. American Government
"Standalone 6.0 Items"

In the 1975 case Goss v. Lopez , the Supreme Court ruled that public school students facing suspension have a constitutional right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. This means students must be given oral or written notice of the charges against them and an opportunity to present their side of the story before being suspended for up to 10 days. The Court held that the right to a public education is a property interest that cannot be taken away without fundamentally fair procedures.

Harvard Law Today: What did the Constitution say about race when it was first adopted, and how has that conception changed over time?

Law Professor Alan Jenkins: Our original Constitution was both brilliant and highly flawed. It brilliantly articulated the idea of fundamental equality — human equality. It beautifully articulated the notion that government’s power flows from the people, and that government serves the people. But it was fundamentally flawed in preserving and propping up slavery, that ultimate form of inequality. And for excluding women, non-white people, indigenous people, non-property owners, from the definition of “the people.”

Harvard Law Today, 2021

At least a dozen federal agencies implementing more than 35 statutes make up the federal part of the food safety system. Twenty-eight House and Senate committees provide oversight of these statutes.

Four agencies play major roles in carrying out food safety regulatory activities: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS); the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA); the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) of the Department of Commerce. More than 50 interagency agreements have been developed to tie the activities of the various agencies together.

“Ensuring Safe Food,” National Library of Medicine

“Today’s report  . . .  shows the remarkable progress that American families have made as the recovery continues to strengthen. Real median household income¹ grew 5.2% from 2014 to 2015, the fastest annual growth on record. Income grew for households across the income distribution, with the fastest growth among lower- and middle-income households.”

President Barack Obama, 2016

Good evening to all of you  . . .  Tonight, I’d like to talk to you about issues. Issues which I think are involved or should be involved in this primary election season. I’m a candidate for the Republican nomination for president. But I hope that you who are Independents and Democrats will let me talk to you also tonight because the problems facing our country are problems that just don’t bear any party label.

Ronald Reagan, 1976

“First Amendment rights of students in the public schools are not automatically [the same as] the rights of adults in other settings, and must be applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment. A school need not tolerate student speech that is inconsistent with its basic educational mission, even though the government could not censor similar speech outside the school.”

Majority opinion in Hazelwood School District et al. v. Kuhlmeier et al. (1988)

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. Encompassing six states and the District of Columbia, and covering more than 64,000 square miles, it is one of the most productive estuaries in the world. Unfortunately, the Chesapeake Bay faces serious problems due to human activities, including polluted stormwater runoff, over-fertilization and pollution from animal wastes, deforestation, wetland destruction from agricultural, urban, and suburban development, and sea level rise caused by global climate change.

National Wildlife Foundation