Well, its that time of year across the country, High School Students are prepping for advanced placement exams. In various topics. And here on American History tv, were going to take a look at the 2023 advanced placement us history exam. Joining us jason stacy a history professor at Southern Illinois university in edwardsville and Matt Ellington, who teaches ap history at Iowa High School in chino hills, california. Mr. Ellington, if we could start with you. What exactly is the ap history exam . Well, good morning and thanks for having us on the ap us history exam is an end, of course exam. The test students knowledge and skills relating to u. S. To u. S. History is designed to be a test, and the course is designed as such to mimic a College Level course in terms of the content and the skills that students need to be able to succeed at a College Level. So its really a combination of a survey course that starts in 1491, which is the year before columbus comes all the way to the present, or at least until 911, and potentially farther. So it covers the equivalent of two semesters in college and students are tested in a variety of ways, including multiple choice, short answer, long essay and db. Q this years test will be on friday, may 5th, 2023. What is db q . Oh, thank you. Sorry for the jargon. So db q is a document based essay question. One of the things thats so critical in an ap us history course and in history courses in college in general is that students need to be able to move beyond simply reading textbooks and getting their information from a teacher or a lecture. Instead, students need to be able to work with primary sources. These are sources from the time period written by the people who were involved in the history of that era. And so the document based essay question is a vehicle that the College Board has created to test students, not just knowledge of the time period, but their ability to kind of think like a historian, their ability to analyze on the fly. Excerpts from various primary sources that they may not have ever seen before, and incorporate information from them into their essay response, as well as being able to demonstrate that they can kind of think and reason about those sources. Historically. And well look at some of those primary sources in a minute. But how many kids take this test and whats the pass rate . A lot of kids take this test. Hundreds of thousands of kids take this test across the globe, primarily, of course, in the united states, since it is ap us history, the pass rate varies a little bit each year. The ap exam is scored on a scale of 1 to 5, and so colleges have some discretion about what they consider a pass passing score. Most colleges and universities will grant a passing score at a scale of three, and generally speaking, us histories pass rate if you use three as passing, three or four or five is right around that 50 range. Usually in the low fifties. Occasionally it dips into the upper forties. That does make this course a little bit harder than the average course, and i suspect thats because, unlike, say, a calculus course or an advanced spanish course, there there arent really prerequisites to take apcs story. A lot of students will take this as their first course, which is great. Its a great way to introduce students to the rigors of college and even though the pass rate is a little bit lower, theres a lot of Good Research that shows that students who take on the challenge of ap and take the course and the exam, even if they fall short, have gained so much more in terms of their understanding of American History, their ability to think critically and historically, their ability to kind of persevere here and absorb large amounts of information that, statistically speaking, those students, even when you hold other factors such as race, ethnic, city, income, even when you consider those other factors, these students tend to perform better in college. Having taken an ap course, well, Matt Ellington and jason stacey are also coauthors and this is their book, fabric of a nation a brief history with skills and sources for the ap, professor stacey, what is the College Board and do you have involvement in the grading of these tests . The College Board is an organization that, among other things, oversees the creation of all of the ap tests. They work along with ets to create those tests, and they also generate the curricula that are evaluated on those tests. And and that curricula includes ap government, ap, us history, ap economics, the math. Maddocks and science. And so its a its a, its a large organization. Its critical to american schools, specifically through the ap program. And its been doing its work for a long time, at least since the 1950s, to my knowledge. And do you find the testing to be fair . In a sense, i guess theres a better word to describe it, but how would you describe the testing . I think its very fair and and this is based on long experience. Ive had scoring the exams. I was a reader for for the oppose history test for about 20 years. And its very much a process that involves teachers and College Professors who come together and help establish the standards by which the essays are evaluated are based on a sampling of students who take the test in a particular year and then they are scored by human beings who teach u. S. History. And of worked with students on all of this material and have a lot of experience evaluating their own students and are trained very carefully and precisely on the rubrics. So that all of the students get a fair evaluation. And of course, many of the essays that are scored are back read by a table leader to confirm that those scores are accurate. So its not just one person necessarily having a bad day and giving scores. Theres theres an attempt to have some Quality Control there. And the readers themselves that are scoring them, they are continually evaluated for their accuracy throughout the reading experi ence, which takes place over about a week, the summer after every exam each year. Well, well start with you, professor stacey, but this is a question for both of you. Whats your recommendation to students who are prepping for this test. Well, recommendation points for right now would be to begin the process, since were less than a month from the test to begin the process of going back through some of that early material that they studied way back there in august and september, theyve got notes from their teachers. Theyve also got their textbook. And, you know, one of the benefits of a textbook is that most of your ap us history textbooks have key terms that are bolded and defined in each chapter and a way to form a kind of handy study guide is to review those key terms because they will trigger your memory about much of the material that youve talked about. And also, you know, raise some questions and say, i dont remember this particular or term, maybe i recognize it, but i dont remember the details of it. So im going to go deeper into that chapter and remind myself of that material. But its worthwhile at this point. A little less than a month out to go back to that early material and begin to study it forward, because, of course, history is dependent upon change over time and causation. And so you can look at what youve learned before as a narrative of cause and effect, and to think about some of those chains of causation that lead to the events that that shaped the whole narrative over the course of the year. Mr. Ellington yeah, i completely agree with all of that. Id like to add that i think its really important for students to diagnose kind of where they are by taking a practice test and looking at some of the sample or the released questions and looking at are there deficiencies in certain time periods where they dont recall . Maybe because it was a long time ago or just certain topics were more difficult for them to understand. And along with the content, theres also a set of skills and different types of question. And so students should take a full practice test, or at least parts of practice tests, and they can get those from the College Boards website, from a review book perhaps, or teacher sharing those with them in class or on the College Boards website, too, to see kind of where they are as a baseline. Because once they establish that baseline, then the next step, of course, is to make a plan to to look at how many days are remaining, what skills and what content areas students need to really shore up. And then also look at the kinds of resources that they have that are available. Jason mentioned the textbook for example, and oftentimes students will have lecture notes and theyll have handouts. They may purchase a review book and there are online video sources and practice questions and matter of fact, its really easy for students to get overwhelmed with just too much. You know, content. And so thats why its important once theyve kind of diagnosed their strengths and weaknesses, once theyve kind of surveyed the content to think about themselves, what resonates for them, what what kind of materials are they most drawn to . And then with that, in mind, looking at the calendar, looking at how the test is weighted and formatted to create a realistic, honest, detailed plan and to get them from where they are today. J to where they need to be the morning of may 5th. And then the last thing i would encourage is for students to stick with the plan. Its great to make a plan, but you actually have to follow through and put in the time and the energy of studying and reviewing and self quizzing. And sometimes what happens is students make an ambitious plan and then they fall behind and so my advice to students in that scenario is, if that happens to you, be honest, is there time to try to recover and make this work, or do you need to modify the plan . Were you too ambitious right. Thats okay. Itd be better to modify the plan to make sure that you make it all the way through. Then to have the syllabus out plan and you only make it maybe a third of the way through. And so there are still a lot of real holes left. And the last thing i would say, which kind of piggybacks on the previous question about about the reading and how these exams are scored, is its important for students to keep in mind, particularly when it comes to the written portion of the test, which is 60 of the tests, the essays, and the short answer in that College Board is never grading these things for what they dont include the grading them for what they do include so students as long as they know the basic key concepts, they can feel comfortable with that. As long as they they have a decent body of knowledge, its okay if they dont remember a specific fact, a specific law, specific court case necessarily, because we wont penalize them for what theyre not including an essay. Were simply looking to reward them for what they do, including what they do, demonstrate and as jason said, these essays are graded by history teachers and College Professors. Were on their side. Were actively looking for ways that we can give them a higher score when we grade these. Now, youve both mentioned time periods and we want to show how the time periods are divided. In the ap history exam and it begins in 1491. It goes through 1980 to the to the present what you said, basically 911. But there are some over laps in here, such as 1800 to 1848. But then the next time period is 1844 to 1877. And then we have 1865 to 1898, etc. , etc. Whats how did you come up with these divisions in time . Well, i didnt come up with any of the json. These time periods were established by the College Board. When they redesign in the course several years ago and theyre really in response to teachers and students asking for a little bit more clarity back in the day, because i like jason, ive taught this course for many years now. They gave us very little information. And so we were constantly wondering, well, whats more important . Whats less important . And so in response to that College Board organized the course around nine time periods. Now not all textbooks are aligned to those hours is, but some arent. And not all teachers teach to those. And thats okay because histories, history and students arent expected to memorize those, though they do represent turning points and any time you take a you take a piece of history and you put a start and an end, what youre doing essentially is youre creating a narrative. So you mentioned the overlap periods, for example, period four, which is commonly referred to as the antebellum era, the decades before the civil war is 1800. Jeffersons election to 1848. Thats a specific date. And so it would be good for students to know. Not critical, but good for them to know that thats the date of the seneca falls declaration of rights and sentiment says, you know what kind of an early kickoff to the womens Rights Movement and the the movement to grant them suffrage. Now, the next time period is period five and that overlap was 1844 to 1877. And the reason for that overlap is to include the election of 1844, which elected james kapok to the presidency on a very expansionist platform that he did indeed follow through with in gaining california through the Mexican American war, the oregon territory, through a negotiation with spain as well, and annexing texas, which technically happened right before he was elected or took office. And so what College Board is done by that overlap is, say, we want a period of time. Thats the antebellum era that includes jefferson and jacks sin and industrialization and and these Reform Movements. But we dont want to include the mexicanamerican war because that fits better with the story of the civil war and the divisions of the 1850s. So what we see there with unit five is, is a unit that that overlaps to get polk and the mexicanamerican war and that goes all the way through the divisions of the fifties, the civil war. In the first half of the 1860s, then reconstruction in. And then again we see that same overlay between unit five and unit six. Unit six is the gilded age, 1865 to 1898. But again, its its overlapping because College Board is saying that the story of ricans direction of putting our country back together really belongs with the story of the civil war. And then the other elements that are happening during the gilded age. This second wave of industrialization and urbanization and immigration, Mass Immigration from from europe and whatnot, that thats thats a separate story. So those over laps really represent attempts to shape a narrative, to tell a story, and to identify some key turning points. And so students should definitely be familiar with that, not to mention the time periods. Also, give us one other for a couple other pieces that are really helpful for students. One of those is that each of the time periods is weighted. So by giving us time periods and then weighting the time periods, College Board has helped teachers and students focus on whats more or less important in terms of the exam. So for example, the first and last time here, the first time period, 1491, the year before columbus sails across the atlantic ocean. So looking at the kind of state of north america on the eve of permanent european contact to 1607, the founding of jamestown, the First Permanent british colony in north america, thats 5 , 4 to 6 of the ap exam. Likewise, the last time period in 1980, Ronald Reagans election to the present, or at least till about 911, thats also 5 of the exam. So they cant be skipped, but theyre not core parts of the course and the test unit to which is the colonial era. 16 seven jamestown to 1754, the beginning of the french indian war. Thats about 6 to 8 . So more, but not as much as the remaining time periods, periods, three through eight are really the heart of the course, 80 to 85 of the test covers those time periods. And so the periods give us not just an idea of how the story can be told, but also help students in deciding how to kind of structure their study and their review for the course. Jason stacy as old as the country is, i think theres been a complaint about history as a memorization of dates and how history is more fluid than that. What is the importance of dates . Its a great question. You know, dates are a tool and what they do is they help us navigate time. And thats how students should think about dates. So that, as matt said, when we look at a period for versus period five and we think of the significance of 1848 being seneca falls, Seneca Falls Convention really represents the Reform Movements of the previous generation that come at the end of period four and really shaped that time period. And so while students dont necessarily only have to remember that seneca falls happened in 1848, if theyre aware that seneca falls happens, that convention for womens rights and the womens rights to vote women the right to vote takes place between 1818 48. They can conceive of this period as really a kind of the begin ing of the nations attempt to reform itself, understand itself, expand and contend with some of the issues that will continue to translate throughout the rest of u. S. History. And so, too, to look at that time period and understand that 1848 represents really kind of the end of a chapter, right . That period for and helps us understand how that whole chapter is defined. So likewise with period five, starting in 1844, with the election of polk, so polks election is not significant because it happened in 1844, it is signified again because it begins expansion as policies through the mexicanamerican war, especially that ultimately are going to lead to the civil war. And so that date is significant because it frames an entire time period thats going to culminate in the civil war and reconstruct soon thereafter, ending in 1877. And then, of course, 1877 is significant as well because in the overall narrative of the ap us history class, it represents another t