What is changing this year for this test, because of the coronavirus pandemic . Guest there is quite a bit that is changing this year. Probably the biggest change is that it is a shorter test. This test will only be about 45minutes long. It is going to be an online test for students. In addition, it is just one documentbased essay question with five documents. And finally, it is an exam that take at home from their computers. So in this era of Distance Learning, colleges have modified the test while keeping the same skills students need to be successful. And finally, this test is an opennote test. The College Board is not going to try to prohibit students from using the notes, so students may refer to the notes as they take the exam. Guest and i think it is really exciting the changes they have made. They have kept the documentbased questions. The dbq in a lot of ways is the crown jewel of the test. It allows you to show off your writing skills, your ability to make arguments, to interpret documents and bring in all the good information you have learned this year. It is important also to remember that this year is a modified time period that will be covered, concentrating on period three, which starts in 17th 70 1754, and ending in period seven, which ends in 1945. Jesse we will open up our phone lines for Highschool Students only. We want High School Students students to call in with questions about u. S. History for our distinguished teachers. So if you have questions about the test, or if you want to attempt one of our practice questions on air this morning, we want to hear from you as well. So High School Students only. We are going to open up regional phone lines. That means if you are a highschool student in the eastern or central time zones, we want to hear from you at 2027488000. If you are a highschool student in the mountain and pacific time zones and you have a question about the test, about u. S. History, or a question about how you should answer this question, we want to hear from you at 2027488001. Once again, eastern and central time zone, 2027488000. Mountain and pacific time zones, 2027488001. Now, gentlemen, i was looking at some of the questions. And the first question that is,diately popped to mind since this is an essay test, how much are you expected to write . Guest that is a great question, jesse. The amount you are expected to write is enough to answer the question. There is no number of words required. You should expect to write an essay that is multiparagraph and has a clear argument and the argument is probably going to be proven through a number of paragraphs. You should plan on having an introduction, and if you have time for it, a conclusion. Guest thats right. All essays are graded on a rubric. So students need to make sure they are familiar with the that they are writing in a way that they can accomplish the various tasks and demonstrate that they have the skills being asked of them on the ap advance history exam. But nobody is counting words or pages, nobody is counting characters. Jesse you said this test will be taken by students at home. Tell me can you take this at any , time at home, or is there only at certain time periods let the test will be open to students at home . Will everyone be taking it at the same time or at different times . Guest goahead, matt. Guest this test will be taken by everyone across the world at the same exact time. It is going to be given on friday, may 15 at 2 00 p. M. Eastern, 11 00 a. M. Pacific time, and whatever local time people are. So for folks in the u. S. , it will not be bad. For folks overseas, they could be testing at odd hours. The College Board is doing this to ensure the test can be as secure as possible. Guest thats right. And as i understand it, there is a number of ways students can record their answer. They can write it in a word file or some sort of text file, and turn it in as a file that they upload. And take andwrite it picture of their responses and upload those with a phone, or they can even, i believe, right into a text box College Board will provide. They can type it right into a text box that College Board will provide. Jesse how long will students have to write this essay and get it submitted . Guest students will click on their exam ticket, it will open up their exam. The College Board strongly recommends students log in 30 minutes prior to the exam, because there will be some security screens and questions they have to verify their identity. When the exam begins, students will see the full question. So they will see the direction, they will see the five primary source documents that go with the question, and then there will also be the submission window that students can use to either cut and paste, as jason was mentioning, or they can attach their document to that. Jesse well, we have some students waiting on the line to talk to you gentlemen, or perhaps to ask some questions. We start with julia from new we start with julia, from montclair, new jersey. Good morning. Julia, are you there . We seem to have lost julia. Lets move to sarah calling from bay city, michigan. Good morning. Caller good morning. Guest hi, sarah. Caller hi. Jesse sarah, do you want to try one of our sample questions and see how you would write your essay . Caller i have a question. How long is the exam this year, and what is the format for it . Guest sarah, it is 45 minutes you will have to write. And it is just one dbq that you thatoing to answer, and dbq is going to have five documents. Guest thats right. So this exam is basically a shorter, more condensed version of the traditional ap exam. Its the same skills, its everything you would have learned in your class, but you are only going to have one dbq to show what you know on the exam. Jesse a question for both of you gentlemen. Are only High School Seniors taking the ap test this year, or can juniors take it as well . Who is taking the test . Guest actually. Guest goahead. [laughter] jesse lets start with you, jason. Tost teachers, we love talk. [laughter] anyone who has signed up for a test in high school. It is usually High School Seniors who take the test. But juniors can take it, and i assume this will can also have sophomores who have signed up. I dont believe there is a designated age as long as students are in high school. Usually, it is juniors who take this exam. Guest that is correct. My classes are all junior classes. Most high schools i know test juniors. Jesse now, here is a question for you. Are either one of you suggesting that any of your students wait until next year to take it, or are you saying, go ahead and do this . Lets start with you, matthew. Guest absolutely not. I dont recommend waiting, because there is a lot of content student need to remember and that is a long time to go, because of those students will not be enrolled in ap u. S. History next year, so i definitely recommend students take the exam this year. As i said, it is the same skills as on the regular exam, it is just shorter and in an online format. Guest thats right, matt. I agree. If youve prepared for it, if youve spent all this time in your classes, reading your textbooks, practicing your essays, learning the information over the course of the academic year, the real reward is to take the test. And the College Board made a choice in choosing the dbq as the feature they will keep in this unusual year, because it allows you to show off all the skills your knowledge, your , ability to make arguments, your ability to interpret documents. Going to allow you to show off all the work you have done. Host lets talk to another student, thelma, calling from cambridge, massachusetts. Guest good morning, thelma. Jesse thelma, are you there . Good morning. Caller good morning. My question is, what is meant by the revolution of reconstruction . And what are the points to get the extra complexity point on the essay, if we are asked about radical reconstruction or the revolution of reconstruction . Jesse lets start with jason. Guest i will start with the first part of the question and i will go to matt for the complexity point, because he has a lot of good stuff to say about it. The revolution of reconstruction is in reference primarily to the primarily to the amendments that come after the civil war, the 13th, 14th, and 15 amendments. The 13th amendment abolishing slavery in the United States. 14th amendment, establishing civil rights that will be protected by the federal government against state powers, specifically those in the former confederacy that are oppressing africanamerican populations in the south. And the 15th amendment that grants Voting Rights to africanamericans, ideally throughout the United States. However, it is important to keep in mind that there is a lot going on on the ground during reconstruction after the civil war, between 18651877. And a lot of what is going on on the ground especially in the , south during that period is running contrary to the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. So it is important to keep in mind that the socalled revolution of reconstruction has a very mixed legacy. By the end of that time frame, africanamericans, former slaves in the south, former enslaved africanamericans in the south are finding it very difficult to acquire their own land. Many of them are in sharecropping contracts that reduce them to a situation where they are permanently in debt to landholders many of whom are , former slaveholders themselves. And also, especially by the end of reconstruction and even into the 1880s, Voting Rights are being curtailed in the south for africanamericans through terrorism, organizations like the ku klux klan, and also through local legislation like grandfather clauses and literacy tests that prevent africanamericans from fulfilling those rights that they helped acquire in fighting the civil war on the side of the union, and that the Republican Congress sought to instill in place in the constitution in that 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment. Guest jason is right. If you remember even a fraction of what he just said, you are going to earn the complexity point. Complexity is College Boards attempt to award a more sophisticated essay. If you look at the rubric, the complexity point is given for qualifying or modifying an argument. Now, there are some tips we can give you to maximize your chances at earning the complexity point. In the textbook jason and i wrote called fabric of the nation, we outlined a threestep strategy called gem. Because you want to write a gem of an essay. The acronym stands for generate nuance. You want to use more sophisticated language like jason used in talking about not just the successes, but also talking about the limitations of reconstruction. How it applied differently to different groups, what did and did not work. The second part of the strategy is to explain both sides of the reasoning skill. College board frames their essay questions around one of three reasoning skills causation, comparison, or continuity and change over time. All three of those reasoning skills actually have two sides to them. Causation is cause and effect. Comparison is similarity and difference. Is continuity and change obviously, continuity and change. One of the tips on the complexity point is to make sure that if the prompt only calls for one side. For example, if it said, evaluate the extent of change in terms of reconstruction, you would also want to talk about some of the continuities. Some of the things that dont change. The third part of the strategy, the m, is to make connections across time. So for example you could connect , reconstruction and the unfulfilled legacy of the 15th amendment to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and your concluding paragraph is often times a great place to do that. Readers are looking for evidence that you have done this. So if you take a multipronged approach, where are where you are making several attempts to earn the complexity point, you will greatly increase your chance of getting that point on the rubric. Jesse what is the grading scale on this test . When you get your results, what can you tell from the score that is on the test . Guest ok. The grading scale is similar but a little bit different than it has been in years past. Traditionally, the rubric has been a sevenpoint rubric for the documentbased as a question. This year, because that is the only part of the exam, College Board has extended that to 10rubric points. All the skills and tasks, however, are still the same. College board will take your essay score and they will , translate that into an overall a peace corps. So what colleges will see will n essay score on a scale of one to five. Generally, colleges will accept a score of three and above. Strict, andore there are some that accept scores of two and above. Usually on an ap exam, a slim majority will earn a three and above in any given year to make them eligible for college credit. Jesse lets go back to another student who is waiting to calm in. Lets talk to miles calling from fayetteville, North Carolina. Good morning. Caller good morning. Guest good morning, miles. Jesse miles, do you have a question, or do you want to try one of the questions we have prepared here . Caller i have a question that is more about the testing. Jesse go ahead, then. Caller so i was just wondering, of all the people taking the test at the same time, there shouldnt be a chance that the server or website should go down, is there . Guest [laughter] boy, miles, i hope not. Guest there is no chance, miles. Caller ok. Guest but make sure if you have siblings or family members that are heavy streamers or gamers and your internet is a little , more limited, you will want to ask them to pause what they are doing, so that youve got the bandwidth to be able to upload when you are done writing your essay. Guest miles, are you still on the line . Jesse i think he has already dropped off. Now i want to look at one of the documents that may show up in some form, maybe not on this test, or maybe showed up before. Tell us what the student is supposed to do once they see this. So here is something a student could see, as an example for one of these tests. This is in North Carolina contract from 1882 that says, to everyone applying to rent land upon shares the following , conditions must be agreed to. Croppers part of the cotton, to be made by me when and where i choose to sell, and after deducting all that they owe me, and all the sums that i may be responsible for on their accounts, to pay them their half of the net proceeds. Now matthew, tell us what you should do after you read that document. Guest this is a great document, very much to the kind of document students may see on the ap u. S. History exam. So there are several tasks students should complete when they see a document like this. The first task is to ask themselves, what is this document about . Sometimes the title will tell you. In this case, it is a sharecroppers contract. So ask themselves, what do they remember about sharecropping, where does that fit in the historical timeline, and most importantly, how does it relate to the exam . There is one point on the rubric for using two of the five documents in a simple, descriptive manner, essentially being able to summarize that. So even if the student is somewhat limited, most students can read and summarize. That is the first task students want to do. But ideally, students want to connect that document to an argument. So depending on what the question is, students want to use the document to move their essay forward, to support whatever point or points they are making. And then finally, students also want to complete the task of sourcing. There are up to two points possible on the ap exam for the dbq for sourcing a document. Sourcing is College Boards way of asking students to think like an apprentice historian. Can they examine and analyze the document in one of four ways, by looking at and discussing the documents historical situation . In other words, the context around the document, by identifying the intended audience. What was the document for . And how does it help us understand the document, by looking at the authors purpose . What is the goal . What is the author trying to accomplish in this document . Or, by looking at the point of view being expressed in the document. Guest thats right. There are a few strategies to approaching these documents, that i think are important. I imagine you have talked about this in class with your teacher. But jesse, one more time, could you read the first line after the word source in the document . Host after the word source . Guest it should say source, or what is the title of it they put there . Jesse North Carolina contract, 1882. Guest sometimes when we have a document in front of us, and it is written in the language that is over 100 years old and we start reading it, it gets very intimidating. The language it is written is not the way we normally speak today. It is talking about something that happened a long time ago. So it is often important not to go looking for the answers in the document at first. It is often important to look at the source line that jesse just read. Notice here, you have got the word contract, and you have the date 1882. This provides you some clues as to what the document is likely going to be about. So you probably remember a few key dates from the class. You dont remember all of the this you have heard entitled there, and that is ok. But some of the key dates, for example, the years of the civil war. The question about the revolution of the reconstruction 18651877. Mind, you have 1865 in you know this is a postcivil war document. And with that in mind, you can begin to recall some of the important pieces of information and the broad context of the time period in the generation after the civil war. And if you look at the word contract, it may trigger in your mind the sharecropping contracts that you recall from class and that i talked about briefly at the beginning of today, where former enslaved africanamericans who were newly freed found it very difficult to acquire land, primarily because, except for a very short period after the civil war, many of the governments in the former confederacy are controlled by those who want to prevent formerly enslaved africanamericans from acquiring property and civil rights. And many former africanamerican slaves found themselves in these sharecropping contracts, where