Antebellum Reform DBQ on the AP U.S. History Examination

Uma Venkateswaran, Diane Vecchio, Raymond Hyser

A recent issue of the American Historical Association’s Perspectives highlighted the following historical thinking skills as essential in the teaching of history:

• analysis of primary and secondary sources
• an understanding of debate and controversy
• an understanding of how historians use evidence
• an understanding of historical shifts

In this article, we illustrate how these skills are assessed on the AP U.S. History examination, which measures historical skills acquired in a college level introductory survey course. More specifically, we present some examples of student performances on a recent document based question to provide a sense of the historical literacy of our AP candidate population. The AP U.S. History exam was administered to 250,000 high school students nationwide the spring of 2004. It is a three-hour exam and has two parts, a multiple-choice section and a free response section. The multiple-choice section is designed to cover a broad range of chronological and topical aspects of U.S. history. The free response, or essay, section has two parts: a mandatory document based question (DBQ) that is answered by all students and the standard essay section in which students answer two out of four questions.

In the document based questions, fondly known as the DBQ, the student is presented with a series of written and visual documents and then asked a question that requires both the use of documents and outside knowledge to be answered properly. The student is placed in a position similar to that of a historian who is required to analyze his or her sources with outside information and to argue for a particular interpretation. The documents are chosen to provide students with some basic knowledge as well as to elicit relevant historical information about the topic and time period. For example, one questions asks “Reform movements in the U.S. sought to expand democratic ideals.” Assess the validity of this statement with specific reference to the years 1825-1850. Use the following documents and your knowledge of the period 1825-1850 in constructing your response.

The question essentially has two parts. Students have to first identify and discuss the various reform movements of the period. Secondly, they have to evaluate whether these reform movements sought to expand “democratic ideals”. Overall, the question invites students to construct a thesis and take a position either in support of or against the statement. We found that students did a better job identifying the reform movements rather than discussing those movements as represented by the documents. Generally speaking, they did not attempt a definition of the term “democratic ideals”, nor did most of them qualify the degree to which individual reform movements expanded such ideals.

The documents are listed chronologically in the question and arranged here in three general groups. The first group provides basic information about the various reform efforts including excerpts from an Annual Report of Society for Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, the McGuffey Reader, the Brook farm, a cartoon entitled “ Drunkard’s Progress” and the Seneca Falls Declaration. The excerpt from the Annual report of Society for Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, 1829 spelled out the rationale for establishing the House of Refuge. We expected students to use this document to discuss crime prevention among youth and most essays did do this successfully. The more sophisticated essays alluded to the differentiation between punishment and prevention and the overtones of moral and religious objectives in the document.

The next document, is an excerpt from the McGuffey Reader, 1836. Our expectation was that this document would prompt a discussion of the emphasis on hard work and the prescribed virtues of children. Most essays dealt with this document in a straightforward simplistic manner, discussing the importance of discipline and responsibility and the role schools (especially public education reform) played in inculcating these virtues. The next document, an excerpt from an essay on Brook Farm, 1841 discusses the purpose of utopian societies. Students used this document very well to discuss the utopian reform efforts of the period. The better essays argued that the emphasis on mutual support, cooperation and spiritual progress was a reaction against economic changes.

Students did well on another document in this cluster, a cartoon titled “Drunkard’s Progress” which depicts the impact of alcoholism on individuals and family. This was was widely used and used fairly well. Almost all essays noted that this cartoon depicts the economic and social costs of drinking and that it is an example of temperance literature. Finally in this group of documents we have an excerpt from the Seneca Falls Declaration. This document was also used by a large number of students and was used quite well. It was correctly identified as a woman’s suffrage document and most in fact also made the inference that this declaration was modeled on the Declaration of Independence. A large number of essays referred to Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s role in this movement.

A second cluster of documents deals with the philosophical underpinnings of the reform effort and include excerpts from Charles Finney and Samuel Morse. We expected to see discussions of the philosophical motivations for reform and of the role of the second Great Awakening, but only saw this rarely. Students often failed to understand the underlying tones of anti-Catholicism and the fear expressed in the documents.

The last group of documents offers commentary from contemporaries about the reform efforts and is intended to provide different perspectives on the reform efforts. These include an excerpt from Orestes Brownson and an engraving by Patrick Reasoning. We hoped that students would use this document in conjunction with the Brook Farm document, as it is a criticism of utopian ventures. A few essays did attempt do this, but most students misinterpreted the document.

The next document is an Engraving by Patrick Reasoning (“Am I not a Woman and a Sister?”):

Students used this document correctly to argue that the abolition of slavery was part of the reform efforts. We had hoped to see a discussion of the ties between women’s rights and the issue of slavery or a discussion of family ties&emdash;but rarely saw that.

Thus, students by and large were facile in their use of the documents that were directly related to the reform movements. The better essays not only identified and discussed the goals of each of these reform movements, but also discussed whether they were democratic. Students consistently misinterpreted the documents that were intended to provide a perspective about the reform efforts.

The essays are graded on a nine point scale and our scoring rubrics generally divide the essays into three categories, the top, middle and bottom. The top range of essays have a score of eight to nine, the middle essays score between five to seven and the lower essays have a score of below four. The essays are graded based on the following four criteria:

1. thesis development or strength of argument; this ties in nicely with the historical skill of understanding debate and controversy
2. analysis of documents which is essentially an analysis of primary sources
3. conceptualizing of documents with use of relevant outside information; this is testing students understanding of how historians use evidence
4. appropriate use of documents.

As the essays are scored holistically, it is critical that an essay perform well in a number of criteria for a good score within any category. The top essays generally have a strong thesis, a sophisticated analysis of documents and are rich with good contextual facts. The middling essays may have a solid thesis but lack depth of analysis or may not have sufficient outside information. Essays in the bottom category generally have a limited thesis and consist of vague generalizations and may often paraphrase or quote the documents extensively.

This DBQ performed very well statistically in that students who did well on the exam also succeeded at this question. The mean score on this question was a 3.6 on a scale of 9. Only 2 percent of the students scored in the top range, which is an 8 or 9 on this question. Approximately 55 percent of the students scored in the mid range, which is between 4 and 7 score points and 43 percent of the students scored in the lower range, which is below 4.

The document-based question seems to be an effective tool in assessing historical thinking skills. As we have seen the analysis of primary source material is central to the DBQ. Students are given an opportunity to demonstrate essential skills such as understanding of debate and controversy, use of historical evidence and an awareness of change over time. Some of the better essays effectively used the documents to argue that the reforms were democratic. Some of the top ranging essays displayed an awareness of the vast social and economic changes that were occurring during this period and in fact argued that the reform was an effort to respond to these changes. To conclude, the document-based question is an effective tool in assessing some basic historical thinking skills in a standardized test.

Uma Vemkateswaran is an Assessment Specialist at Educational Testing Service and works on the AP, SAT II, and CLEP U.S. History examinations. She earned her Ph.D. in U.S. history from Case Western Reserve University. Diane Vecchio is an associate professor of history at Furman University and Chief Reader (Chief Faculty Consultant) of the AP U.S. History Exam. An immigration historian and treasurer of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, her book titled Merchants, Midwives and Laboring Women: Italian Migrants in Urban America is being published by the University of Illinois Press. Raymond Hyser is professor at James Madison University and is the Chief Reader Designate for AP U.S. History.