• Ap World History Dbq
• Us History Dbq Topics

Michael Pezone, a New York City high school social studies teacher and a cooperating teacher in the Hofstra University teacher education program, emailed me complaining about the design of the recent United States History and Government Regents Examination. Students generally take the test in 11th grade and passing the history “Regents” as well as four other state exams is required for high school graduation.

Pezone teaches in a where 85% of the students are Black or Latino, 75% receive free lunch, and one out of five is designated as special education. He believes the test was unfair to his students and students from similar backgrounds. I asked other social studies teachers in the New York metropolitan area involved in grading the test to respond to Michael Pezone.

Ap World History Dbq

The number of responses I received and the anger expressed in some of them show the level of upset teachers have with the state’s high-stakes testing regime. They do not agree with every point Dr. Pezone raised, but many found significant parts of the test unfair to students, especially academically challenged students, who need to pass the test to earn a high school diploma. I include their replies after Dr. Pezone’s original statement. I have been a high school social studies teacher in NYC for twenty-three years. A prime duty of mine is to prepare students for the U.S.

History and Government Regents examination, which they must pass in order to graduate. I am troubled that on two of the last three June United States History and Government exams, the Thematic Essay question inexplicably restricted students from writing about the Brown v.

Board of Education Supreme Court case and the Civil Rights Movement, both important and required elements of the U.S. History curriculum. On the, the Thematic Essay question required students to describe the historical circumstances surrounding two Supreme Court cases, explain the decisions in each case, and discuss the social impact of each decision. Surprisingly, the question included the following warning: “Do not use Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka as one of your Supreme Court decisions.” On the recent, June 2016 U.S. History and Government Regents examination (not yet uploaded on the state website), students were required to write about reform movements in United States history, but were restricted to writing about movements that occurred between 1820 and 1933.

This time frame prevented students from writing about the Civil Rights Movement, the New Deal era labor movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the modern feminist movement, the gay rights and immigrant rights movements, and environmental movement. I spoke to a number of colleagues about this issue, all of whom suggested that the questions were written this way because many students are familiar with the Brown case and Civil Rights Movement, and frequently choose to write about them when given the opportunity. The Board of Regents, evidently, wants students to demonstrate knowledge about other issues and events. This raises a number of questions:. Should students be restricted from writing about topics simply because the topics are well known and frequently studied? Aren't the topics well known precisely because they are extremely important and worthy to be explored in depth? Will other important topics that are familiar to students be excluded from future tests?

For example, will the Nazi Holocaust be excluded as a choice on future Global History Thematic essay questions?. Did the restrictions imposed in the June 2014 and 2016 Regents essay questions disadvantage African American students, who in general may learn about these and other culturally relevant topics in greater detail than other groups?. Will this apparent trend in essay question requirements serve as a signal to social studies teachers around the State that they should teach less about the Civil Rights Movement in particular or African American history in general?. Was writing about these movements barred because they are at the end of the curriculum, part of the eras most recently studied, and freshest in student minds?

Us History Dbq Topics

Was this test designed so they fail? It seems to me that if the New York Board of Regents is concerned that many students choose to write about important, familiar topics, the solution is not to ban the topics, but rather to craft better questions about those topics.

Bill wrote: The objective of state examinations is to assess what students have learned; at least that is what we are told. However, the prompt on the thematic essay on the 2016 U.S. History Regents seems more like a 'gotcha' moment for students. For no real apparent reason, the prompt focused on a narrow time frame then usual which purposely excluded many potential answers. Students are participating in a marathon of an exam: 50 multiple choice, 9 documents to examine with at least one (and sometimes two) questions attached, a DBQ Essay, and the thematic. “Mike” wrote: Over the past 5 years I have been teaching and preparing my students for the United States History and Government Regents. During this time I have solely taught students in lower-income communities. In my experience, these tests are biased against English language learners, especially students who enter the country after the 8th grade and are still expected to pass the exams. It is hard enough for my students to learn the content and skills they need to pass a history tests in a language they are still learning, but these students also lack the basic foundations of U.S.

History that even their peers who have been in New York schools from middle school would have. Over half of the multiple-choice “questions” on the June United States history Regents were not even questions. They are really sentence fragments that students need to complete by selecting one of the choices. English language learners find these “questions” especially daunting and frequently make the wrong choice even when they know the correct answer. I can’t believe this is the best way to measure student content knowledge. I do not have as much of an issue with the June 2014 thematic excluding the Brown case as Dr. Pezone does, because the Brown case was referenced in one of the documents in the DBQ section. My issue is that history did not occur in a 113-year vacuum.

The test limits students to reform movements from 1820-1933, but one question many of my students had and struggled with was “What if the causes or effects of a movement happens prior to 1820 or after 1933?” All of the movements suggested by the state in the instructions for the essay had roots that preceded 1820, and all of the movements had effects that went beyond 1933. Didn’t anyone on the test writing committee see the Broadway play Hamilton. If a student wanted to argue that the Women's Suffrage movement lead to the Women's Right's movement, they could lose credit because they referred to a post-1933 movement, especially if they have difficulty expressing their ideas in written English. But my biggest issue with this test is the term “analysis.” Over the past few days I have been part of day and evening sessions grading both the U.S. And global history exams for the NYC DOE. According to the grading rubric, students are graded on their “analysis” of key information. This sounds completely reasonable except so far no one has been able to offer me a clear explanation of what “analysis” means in this context.

In the instructions, students were charged with the task of describing and discussing, not analyzing, but they are being graded on their ability to analyze. Regina Folio wrote: I disagree somewhat with Mike. This year the essay seemed to be testing periodization and sequencing of events. They did offer many options for students to use the movements Mike listed to discuss long-term effects. This is especially true for the abolition movement, labor at the turn of the century, and women's suffrage. When grading the essays, we accepted this information as long as it was appropriately referenced and added.

Some of the sample essays provided by New York State also referenced the movements of the 1960-1970s, so we found it acceptable information to be included. With regard to the June 2014 thematic essay, I think the issue was because of the DBQ.

The first section of the DBQ was Martin Luther King, Jr.' S Letter from a Birmingham Jail. The information in the documents provided information regarding the civil rights movement and implied the background and effects of the Brown case. The general rule of thumb is that topics used or even referenced in the DBQ are off limits in the thematic. Granted this was a bit of a stretch on the state’s part for the June 2014 exam, the information in the documents still would have bolstered students replies by providing them information to use freely, information that most students would have been unlikely to come up with on their own. I say that with more clarity now, but I do remember being quite upset about it then.

Typically the state does a good job of scouring the multiple-choice questions for anything tangibly related to essay topics. In the end I do believe it is all about not providing students with extra information regarding the essays. If we discuss topics omitted or limited in the multiple-choice questions that yields a different conversation. This happened with the newly designed AP U.S. History exam and I am sure it will be an issue with the upcoming changes to the N.Y.S. These newly designed exams, with their use of grouped questions, allow fewer topics to be explored and tested. Placing (45-55) multiple-choice questions within groups of 4-5 questions leaves only 9 or 10 topics to be tested.

On the first administration of the new AP test revolution, industrial revolution, workers, wars, women and people of color were absent. Although the second administration this year included most of these topics, it was at the expense of other essential content. It is not likely that New York State can include everything - or everyone - within the future “stimulus” related groupings and with fewer multiple choice questions. Every exam is flawed depending on what you see as important information necessary to be taught and tested.

Adding more open-ended questions, even bringing back a choice of essays, would allow students to demonstrate the breadth and depth of their knowledge more fairly. Having said that, most students do not write analytically or with any depth, so I am mindful of what I wish for. I had a great problem with the U.S. History and Government Regents Exam thematic this year also.

It was unforgivable for NYSED to assign a thematic essay on 'reform movements' and then restrict choices to before 1933. This restriction seemed to trick students who, in haste, neglect to focus on the time period given, and may very well write about the civil rights movement, women's rights movement, environmental movement and consumer protection movement of the 1960's and 1970's. While a dedicated history student could make much of the examples provided, due to their broad nature, most students would be challenged to remember details of the anti-slavery movement and temperance movement, covered less in-depth and earlier in the school year. Undoubtedly, NYSED will claim this 'twist' represents rising standards, when all it really represents is NYSED's disassociation with the purpose of the social studies curriculum.

I also had quite a problem with NYSED testing about topics not scheduled to be focused on in the curriculum until the new was phased in during the 2018-2019 school year. One multiple-choice question asked students to interpret a cartoon about the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and the DBQ question included a document on the Persian Gulf War (1991). When did NYSED decide that testing students on topics earlier than scheduled was fair game? From July 8-10, educators, parents, and activists will rally in Washington, DC for three days of action in defense of public education. Featured speakers include author Jonathan Kozol, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, and Diane Ravitch. On July 8 there will be a. Save Our Schools is organizing a for July 9 to be followed by a July 10 and organizing session. The program for the rally and meetings includes full, equitable funding for all public schools; safe, racially just schools and communities; community leadership in public school policies; professional, diverse educators for all students; child-centered, culturally appropriate curriculum for all, and no high-stakes standardized testing.