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Descriptive Statements:
- Examine the settlement of the trans-Mississippi West, including the mining, ranching, and farming frontiers; the impact of technological developments (e.g., the telegraph, the railroad, barbed wire); and the effects of expanding settlement on Native American peoples.
- Analyze the growth of the industrial economy, including the rise and consolidation of industrial and financial empires, the results of technological and managerial innovations, and the conflict between industrial capitalism and organized labor.
- Examine changing patterns of immigration to the United States between 1880 and 1910, and the impact of immigration and urbanization on U.S. society.
- Analyze the rise of the New South; the disenfranchisement and segregation of, and violence against, African Americans; and the efforts of African Americans such as Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Ida B. Wells to overcome the social, economic, and political obstacles that confronted them.
- Examine the emergence of the United States as a world power, including the Spanish-American War, U.S. intervention in Asia and Latin America, and key issues in the debate over U.S. expansionism.
- Compare the origins, goals, strategies, and influence of the Populist and Progressive movements.
- Demonstrate knowledge of major political and social developments and influential figures of the period, including Tatanka Iyotake, Mark Twain, Grover Cleveland, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Madam C. J. Walker, Samuel Gompers, William Jennings Bryan, Jane Addams, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt.
- Demonstrate knowledge of major literary, artistic, intellectual, scientific, and technological developments in the United States between 1877 and 1914.
- Recognize chronological relationships between major events and developments in U.S. history during this period.
Sample Item:
Electric power most influenced developments in which of the following components of the U.S. economy during the late nineteenth century?
- the distribution of consumer goods
- agricultural production
- the consolidation of large industries
- long-distance communication
Correct Response and Explanation (Show Correct ResponseHide Correct Response)
D. This question requires the examinee to analyze the growth of the industrial economy in the United States. The electronic transmission of clear speech via telephones revolutionized communication in the United States by reducing the need for face-to-face conversations. At the same time, continuing improvements in telegraphic technology contributed to further advances in long-distance business communication.
Descriptive Statements:
- Analyze the causes and consequences of U.S. participation in World War I1, including reasons for U.S. entry into the conflict, the mobilization of public opinion, the impact of U.S. intervention on the war's outcome, and the effect of the war on U.S. society.
- Examine major events and developments of the 1920s, including the growth of a consumer economy, the Red Scare, prohibition, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, immigration restriction, passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, nonconformity and dissent, the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, and the presidential administrations of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover.
- Evaluate the causes of the Great Depression, the response of the Hoover administration and Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal to economic collapse and social dislocation, the ascendancy of the Democratic Party, critics of the New Deal, and the effects of the Depression on the American people.
- Analyze major issues and developments in U.S. foreign policy between 1914 and 1941, including Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, the fight over the League of Nations, relations with Latin America, isolationism and neutrality, and the events leading to World War II2.
- Examine major events and developments related to U.S. participation in World War II2, including war mobilization, the internment of Japanese Americans, U.S. military and diplomatic strategy, major battles involving U.S. forces, the impact of the war on the U.S. economy and society, and the decision to drop the atomic bomb.
- Demonstrate knowledge of major figures of the period, such as Charles Lindbergh, Marcus Garvey, Eleanor Roosevelt, Frances Perkins, Huey Long, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and George C. Marshall.
- Demonstrate knowledge of major literary, artistic, intellectual, scientific, and technological developments in the United States between 1914 and 1945.
- Recognize chronological relationships between major events and developments in U.S. history during this period.
Sample Item:
Examining which of the following features of the U.S. economy during the 1920s would be most helpful in analyzing the causes of the Great Depression?
- interest rates on business loans
- wages and purchasing power
- tariffs on manufactured goods
- government regulation and taxes
Correct Response and Explanation (Show Correct ResponseHide Correct Response)
B. This question requires the examinee to evaluate the causes of the Great Depression. One cause of the Great Depression was underconsumption. During the 1920s, as wage increases lagged behind advances in industrial productivity, consumers reached a point where they lacked the purchasing power to absorb the vast flow of goods pouring off the assembly lines of manufacturing firms. Without continuing consumer demand, inventories choked business growth and set in motion a chain of events that led to economic collapse.
Descriptive Statements:
- Analyze major events and developments of the Cold War, including the Marshall Plan; the Truman Doctrine; McCarthyism; containment policy and the domino theory; the formation of NATO; the Korean and Vietnam wars; U.S. intervention in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East; atomic diplomacy; the Cuban missile crisis; and the effect of the Cold War on the U.S. economy and society.
- Analyze major social and economic developments of the period, including postwar reconversion, the postwar economic boom, suburbanization, the baby boom, the expansion of higher education, the construction of the Interstate Highway System, the rise of the Sunbelt, the impact of television, and the emergence of a youth culture.
- Examine major political events and developments in the United States between 1945 and 1970, including Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal, Dwight D. Eisenhower's Modern Republicanism, John F. Kennedy's New Frontier, Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren, and important electoral contests and legislative initiatives of the period.
- Examine the aims, activities, strategies, and achievements of the struggle for African American civil rights, including Brown v. Board of Education, the Montgomery bus boycott, civil disobedience, the sit-in movement, the Birmingham and Selma campaigns, the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Black Power movement.
- Demonstrate knowledge of social and political activism during the period, including the feminist movement, the American Indian Movement, the Hispanic rights movement, the Asian American movement, the New Left, the counterculture, the gay liberation movement, and the environmental movement.
- Demonstrate knowledge of major figures of the period, such as Douglas MacArthur, George F. Kennan, Thurgood Marshall, Rachel Carson, Robert Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Betty Friedan, and César Chavez.
- Examine major developments in literature, the arts, popular culture, science, and technology in the United States between 1945 and 1970.
- Recognize chronological relationships between major events and developments in U.S. history during this period.
Sample Item:
Which of the following statements best describes the significance of the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education?
- It overturned the doctrine of "states' rights" that had sanctioned discriminatory voting qualifications.
- It outlawed the use of racial quotas in employment.
- It overturned the doctrine of "separate but equal" that had sanctioned segregation in public education.
- It outlawed the use of race as a qualification for public office.
Correct Response and Explanation (Show Correct ResponseHide Correct Response)
C. This question requires the examinee to examine the aims, activities, strategies, and achievements of the struggle for African American civil rights. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court declared that "[s]eparate educational facilities are inherently unequal," thereby overturning the legal basis for racial segregation established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
Descriptive Statements:
- Examine major political events and developments in the United States since 1970, including Richard Nixon and the Republican ascendancy in the South, Watergate, the decline of liberalism and rise of the conservative movement, the Iran-Contra scandal, the impeachment of Bill Clinton, significant Supreme Court decisions, and important electoral contests and legislative initiatives of the period.
- Analyze major issues and developments in U.S. foreign policy since 1970, including détente with China; the end of the Cold War; the Camp David Accords; the Iran hostage crisis; the Persian Gulf War; the events of September 11, 2001; and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
- Assess the impact of major economic developments of the period affecting the United States, including the oil embargoes of the 1970s, stagflation, deindustrialization and the shift toward a service economy, the decline of organized labor, Reaganomics, information technology and the computer revolution, the stock market boom of the 1990s, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and economic globalization.
- Evaluate major social developments of the period, including demographic change and population shifts, continuing struggles for equal rights, the growth of religious influence in politics, environmental and consumer advocacy, changing patterns of immigration, rising homelessness, and increased disparities in income and wealth.
- Demonstrate knowledge of major figures of the period, such as Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson, Ronald Reagan, Sandra Day O'Connor, Jerry Falwell, George H. W. Bush, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Alan Greenspan, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.
- Demonstrate knowledge of major literary, artistic, intellectual, scientific, and technological developments in the United States from 1970 to the present.
- Recognize chronological relationships between major events and developments in U.S. history during this period.
Sample Item:
Which of the following best describes a goal of U.S. foreign policy in both the Gulf War and the Iraq War?
- to install democratically elected governments in the Middle East
- to prevent the production and proliferation of biological and nuclear weapons in the region
- to expel Iraqi military forces from other Middle Eastern nations
- to stabilize the region and secure the continued flow of oil to the United States and Europe
Correct Response and Explanation (Show Correct ResponseHide Correct Response)
D. This question requires the examinee to analyze major issues and developments in U.S. foreign policy since 1970. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 directly threatened the uninterrupted flow of Middle East oil to the world's industrial nations. Twelve years later, disputes between the Iraqi government and the United Nations over international inspections for weapons of mass destruction led to Iraqi threats to cut off oil shipments to Europe and the United States, while the removal of Hussein from power offered the possibility of greater access for the United States to Iraq's vast oil reserves.
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