The following standards have been taken from the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McRel) standards.

Students will understand:

• Social and economic characteristics of European colonization in the 17th and 18th centuries (e.g., changing immigration and settlement patterns of Puritans, Quakers, Germans, and Scots-Irish; the slave trade and chattel slavery in the Spanish, English, and French Caribbean, Louisiana, the Dutch West Indies, and Chesapeake).
• Elements of slavery in the colonies in the 17th century (e.g., the emergence of chattel slavery in Virginia and Maryland, why free labor and chattel slavery did not provide an alternative for labor in the Chesapeake colonies before 1675).