AP World History Electronic Discussion Group
DBQ Skills & Common Student Mistakes
June 14, 2006
Hello all,
I’m trying to reconstruct my notes from the
feedback that the Question Leaders (QLs) gave in
Lincoln. Here’s my very incomplete recollections
on the DBQ. Much of this will be better stated
when the Operational Rubrics are posted on AP
Central, but until then …
Most Frequent DBQ Mistakes:
1. Thesis: the question/prompt reads, “…analyze
the social and economic effects of the global flow
of silver from the mid-16th century to the early
18th century.”
Mistake: Students too often wrote about EITHER
the social OR the economic effects. Any thesis
that did not include BOTH social AND economic
effects earned no thesis points. Arrgh! How
frustrating to both students and readers. I saw
scores of excellent essays that simply didn’t
answer the entire question asked.
2. Meaning of the Documents: The Generic
Rubric says students must “Understand basic
meaning of documents. (May misinterpret one
document.)
Mistake: Perhaps the Generic Rubric should be
more explicit, but when it says, “Understand the
basic meaning of documents” that means ALL
documents! Yes, students can misinterpret one of
the documents, but they must at least address all
the documents. It was both time-consuming and
discouraging to DBQ readers to go through an
essay that correctly interpreted 7 of the 8
documents, but never mentioned the 8th doc, thus
failing to earn this point.
3. Evidence: The Generic Rubric says, “Supports
thesis with evidence from all or all but one of the
documents.” (This is where the “all but one”
verbage comes in, not in the ‘Meaning’ category
above.)
Mistake #1: Too many students never cited what
evidence from the doc they were focusing on.
They merely summarized the meaning of the doc,
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without demonstrating that they had truly “used”
any specific evidence.
Mistake #2: The hard part of this task (for readers)
was determining whether a students’ evidence was
being used to “support” that essay’s thesis.
Teachers: this is the root of Habit of Mind #1,
“Construct and evaluate arguments using evidence
to make plausible arguments.” This is an inductive
skill, and requires students to do their own
original thinking, which is perhaps why so few
like to do it. Teachers: we need to be modeling the
SKILL of interpreting historical evidence, and
discourage the “here are the historical facts that
you must memorize” kind of lesson. People on the
listserv have been discussing the lecture given by
Prof. Joseph Miller re: Slavery/Slaving. It was
crystal clear that Prof. Miller was publicly airing
his own career-long struggle with how to interpret
the evidence. Who out there has a lesson where
some historical evidence is presented, and then
multiple contradictory arguments are drawn from
that evidence? C’mon, crew. We can do better!
If/When students se e us struggling to interpret
(and then re-interpret) historical evidence, they’ll
feel safe to admit their own interpretation. I start
the year with a line from an NYPD Blue episode,
where one character says to another, “The future
keeps telling us what the past is about.” We’re
NEVER done interpreting the past. The CB’s
lesson titled “Who’s Driving?” modeled this very
skill on the very question of the global silver
trade.
4. POV: I think most readers would say that the
majority of essays didn’t even attempt POV, much
less successfully address it.
Mistake: We teachers need to teach the skill of
POV. I suspect this is an area where playing
devil’s advocate in the classroom might help get
the students to “raise the bar” of their own
analysis. Try having a whole class discussion on
some topic, then step in and say of some student’s
comments, “Well, that may be what you think, but
you’re not worth listening to.” When students ask
“why not?” respond by saying “Well, because
you’re just a sophomore (or some other
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DBQ Skills & Common Student Mistakes
demographic characteristic).” Too many students
attempt to address POV by merely quoting a
source’s title. That’s NOT sufficient. Look at the
Operational Rubric that was used by readers to
judge POV. The essay must explain WHY a [job
title] would influence a person to have the opinion
they have.
5. Grouping(s): I still dislike the term ‘Grouping’
as I think it misses the real skill of analysis. (The
Generic Rubric verbage is “analyzes documents
by grouping them …” The verb is ‘analyze.’
Grouping is merely the means of demonstrating
analysis, not the end in and of itself. Anyway …)
Mistake: Too many “Groups” that students used
were not explicit. Readers had to infer what
groups the student recognized from the paragraph
topic sentences. Some students grouped essays by
nationality of author (odd # doc’s = Chinese, even
# doc’s = European) While this might earn credit
for “grouping” at the reading it’s not great
analysis, as one can “group” the doc’s in this way
without even reading the doc’s!
6. Additional Document: The Generic Rubric
says, “Identifies and explains the need for one
type of additional document or source.” Now, the
good news is that most students asked for an
additional document. The bad news is that too
many of their explanations for how that additional
doc would help answer the question was
something like, “because it would help answer the
question more fully.” Duh! Perhaps the generic
rubric should be amended to include the word
“HOW” into it’s definition, as in “How would it
help answer the question?” This Additional
Document point can be successfully earned in one
or two sentences. It’s not that hard.
Well, these are my recollections on the DBQ. I’ll
try to write down some thoughts on the COT and
C&C in the next few days.
Hope this helps,
Bill Strickland
East Grand Rapids HS
East Grand Rapids, MI
––––––––––––
June 15, 2006
Bill,
Having read the DBQ, I would concur on all of
the below and add a couple of samples that might
help illustrate the problem.
Thesis issues - example of one not earning a point.
“The global flow of silver had many social and
economic effects around the world.” (Doesn’t do
anything except basically restate the question.)
We were looking for students to say something
along the lines of “The global flow of silver had
many social and economic effects, such as
increasing class distinctions in China and Europe,
as well as hurting Spain’s economy.” This shows
more specifics than the first one. It isn’t that they
had to say exactly what I wrote, but that students
had to make some distinctions within the social
and economic effects.
Additional document: I agree with what you said.
We had a LOT of “I would like to see a document
from a Chinese peasant because it isn’t there.” or
Japanese peasant or American mine worker or...
whatever. The best additional document folks
actually named a type of document (journal from a
Chinese merchant who would explain the effect of
the silver trade on his social standing / chart
showing the effects of the silver trade on inflation
in various countries because.../ chart showing
which nations imported and exported the most
silver to better understand the possible
inflationary effects / --- etc.) rather than just
saying they wanted a missing perspective.
P.O.V. - we got a LOT of “document x must be
biased because it is from a Chinese / British /
Spanish writer.” Two examples of ones that
worked might have been something along the
lines of “The author of document seven might
have exaggerated the benefits of the silver trade to
help convince the emperor to change a policy
which would benefit his own district.” “French,
the author of document four, being a merchant,
might have had a better understanding of the
AP World History Electronic Discussion Group
DBQ Skills & Common Student Mistakes
intricacies of Portuguese / Japanese / Chinese
trade than some of the other authors, who were
scholars.” “D’Avignon, the author of document
eight, a likely member of the upper class, might
have wanted to not quit the trade because he liked
being able to import and have the goods he
described.”
I would agree with the others that where students
fell down often seemed like they really had not
been exposed to the approach / technique of the
DBQ. Certainly, there are plenty of students who
fell down even with a teacher who taught them
exactly what they needed to know. That said, I did
see many essays where students were really trying
to do what they thought was the right approach
(4-5 pages) and still earning low scores because
they a) spoke about only six documents b)
provided only one valid grouping c) provided 0-1
points of view, and d) only mentioned, but didn’t
explain the [need for an] additional document.
Hope this aids in higher performance next year.
For those of you who have not been to a reading,
it was the best professional development
experience I have ever had, bar none. Come join
us in Fort Collins. It is a great group who are
ready to share and support each other.
Ben Kahrl
Social Studies Dept. Chair
Dartmouth High School
Dartmouth MA
– – – – – – – – – – – -June 17, 2006
I’d like to contribute a bit of a reality check about
the AP exam, and the DBQ in particular. I think
it’s important to remember we’re not “teaching
the DBQ”; we’re supposed to be teaching skills of
historical analysis. The rubric on the AP test is a
set of lowest common denominators -- the
stinkiest possible way a kid could earn that point.
The rubrics are 7 skills that historians need.
Several are basic skills (use all the documents;
grouping); others are high-level analytical
thinking skills (POV, analysis, thesis). Not all our
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kids will be able to do this: not all our kids are
able to do college level work, which is what the
test represents. But we need use documents or
DBQs all year, not just in the review session in
late April.
In our own classrooms we need to insist the
students find the POV in ALL the documents.
That’s what historians do: it’s the whole point of
what we do with documents. So I don’t tell my
kids they have to find POV in a couple of docs. I
insist they do POV for all the docs, and promise
them their odds are better of getting two or three
correct that way. (Maybe) I’ve found it’s really
easier to teach if I tell them that the whole point is
to learn the skill, not to respond to the lowest
common denominator/the rubric point.
As a final point, my kids fear the DBQ above all
things when they first see it, and I spend all year
telling them it’s the easiest question on the test
(all the info is there; it’s generally a random topic,
and may be very obscure; it’s the great equalizer,
etc.). By May, they almost always believe me
because they have some understanding of the
skills involved -- even if they can’t always rise to
the occasion!
Ane Lintvedt
History Department
McDonogh School
– – – – – – – – – – – -June 22, 2006
I’ve been thinking about the scoring of this year’s
DBQ for a couple weeks now and the conclusion
that I’ve come to is that one aspect of the scoring
was unfair. The part that I think was unfair was
the requirement that students needed to use ALL
the documents in order to get the point on the
scoring guide for understanding the documents.
Most of my students I am sure and I would guess
many, many other students never thought they
needed to use all the documents, but instead they
thought they could still get a perfect score if they
used seven of the eight documents. It is, of course,
less risky and better practice to use all of them,
but that is besides the point.
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AP World History Electronic Discussion Group
DBQ Skills & Common Student Mistakes
I base this conclusion upon the following: The
current scoring guide states: “Understands the
basic meaning of the documents. (May
misinterpret one document.)” Without any
additional information, I would interpret that
sentence to mean that, since you can misintirpret
one, if you understand seven of the eight
documents, then you get the point. Why would
there be any difference between using all eight
documents and misintirpretting one on the one
hand and using just seven documents but getting
them all right on the other hand? In both cases
seven were interpretted correctly.
But there is more. The very next item in the
scoring guide is the evidence item. It states:
“Supports thesis with appropriate evidence from
all or all but one document” for two points and
“all but two documents” for one point. So the very
next item in the scoring guide is letting the
students know that they do NOT have to use all
the documents to support their thesis and they still
get the full credit. If a student does not have to use
all the documents to support their thesis, then why
would it make sense that they would have use all
the documents just to show they understand them?
This item of the scoring guide is, in essence,
tricking students into thinking they can get by, and
still get full credit, if they omit a document. That
is not fair.
And there is more. In every year up to this year,
students did get the full credit for understanding
the documents even if they omitted a document
from their essay. So there is four years of
precedent for scoring one way and now, I would
argue, without warning, the essay is no longer
graded that way.
A counter argument may be that the scoring guide
is different this year and that what was allowed in
previous years should have no bearing on this
year’s scoring. Fine, but lets look at the
differences. The prior scoring guide stated:
“Understands the basic meaning of the documents
cited in the essay.” The words “cited in the essay”
were apparently deleted. Other than that, there is
no difference. Were the students, by the deletion
of those words alone, supposed to then understand
that the number of documents they had to use in
the essay changed? In my opinion, that change is,
at best, vague, ambiguous, and far from giving
such a warning. The new scoring guide, and
maybe commentary with it, could have made such
a change far more explicit than it did.
Another counter argument may be that the
directions given during the exam include the
following, listed as the second, of five, bullet
points: “Uses all the documents.” I do not believe
this is a valid point either. My students and many
others either do not read the directions or they just
gloss over them during the exam. Why should
they read them any closer? They have a very
limited time to take the test, they have already
written (hopefully) plenty of DBQ’s in class and
have, therefore, read the directions many times
before the test already, and the Acorn book had
already made explicit (I thought) what the
directions were for each essay. Why, after learning
all year how to write a particular essay, would a
student waste valuable time reading directions
they already have learned when they can be
concentrating on reading and trying to understand
the documents? And responding that the
directions can be different from all the advisory
and preparatory material may be valid, but, if so,
that would be quite unfair as well.
What burns me here is that if any of my students
screwed this up, and I am sure that plenty did, the
fault is not theirs, but mine. I am the one who had
access to the scoring guides; I am the one who
taught them how to write the essays; and I am the
one who got it wrong because I misinterpreted the
scoring guide. But, I don’t consider myself an
untrained slacker. I’ve been teaching this course
for five years now, I read the listserve and the prep
books, I’ve been trained, I talk with colleagues, I
was even at the reading this year. Yet, I got it
wrong and now my students will pay the price.
And I don’t think my interpretation, my preparation, or anything else I did was so unreasonable.
But I still got it wrong. That is not fair.
What do you all think?
AP World History Electronic Discussion Group
DBQ Skills & Common Student Mistakes
Robert Nesselroth
South Plantation High School
Plantation, FL
– – – – – – – – – – – -June 23, 2006
Robert,
I know that teachers sometime teach to “drop” or
“throw away” a document. This comes from AP
Euro which has a dozen or more documents. I
always teach my students to try and use all
documents. Then if they make a mistake they still
have all but one.
The directions (second bullet point) is, “Uses all
the documents.” I can see how students who have
been coached otherwise might make the mistake;
but it is a mistake. As we continue to raise the bar
of achievement (it is like catching a moving train),
we need to teach our students there are no
shortcuts to excellence.
Barth Derryberry
Bartram Trail H. S.
Jacksonville, FL
––––––––––––
June 23, 2006
I suppose the adage better late than never applies
here. Given the discussion of the DBQ Scoring
Rubric at the Reading and the ongoing discussion
here on the LIST, I thought I might submit a
belated Farm Report entry regarding the DBQ and
touch on some of the major issues as I saw them
from the QL POV. This is a long post organized
according to the generis rubric.
1. Thesis statements have been improving and the
trend continued in the 2006 examination. Fewer
students are restating the question as a thesis
statement, and more students are attempting an
argument based on question and the documents.
The thesis should be clearly based in the
documents and not solely drawn from background
knowledge. Many thesis statements appeared over
two consecutive sentences, but the split thesis
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appears to have been snuffed out. Thesis statements continue to appear in the last paragraph
clearly reflective of testing conditions and the
first-draft quality of the essay.
2. This point represents a change in the rubric
from previous examinations with regard to
wording and requirements. Keep in mine that each
point of the rubric is testing a different skill.
Points 2 and 3 are not testing the same skill even
though many essays link both of these points.
Elimination of the words “cited in the essay” and
the change from “uses all or all but one of the
documents” to “uses all of the documents” made it
possible to require the use of all documents thus
eliminating the free pass to use only one less than
the total number of documents. There is a
difference between attempting use of the
document but misinterpreting the document and
failing to use the document in the first place. The
former is an attempt to draw meaning from the
document that fails while the latter ignores the
document as part of the evidence. Having said
that, the vast majority of students made use of all
of the documents in their essays. If this point was
not earned it was because the student
misunderstood the meaning of the document and
not because the students failed to address the
document in the essay, but even here only a few
students lost the point. The most commonly
misinterpreted document was Document #1. The
change from all but one to all of the documents
raised the bar by closing a loophole. Perhaps this
point demonstrated the importance of close
reading of the Acorn book for changes. Note the
changes on p. 35 and p. 36 of the current edition.
3. Understanding the meaning of the documents
and using the documents fro evidence are two
different skills, and it is possible to misunderstand
a document but still draw accurate information
from the document for evidence. Document 6
perhaps best illustrates this point as an essay may
misunderstand the social effects described in the
documents but still use evidence from the
documents to accurately support an argument
about economic effects. The generic rubric
changed here as well awarding two points for all
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AP World History Electronic Discussion Group
DBQ Skills & Common Student Mistakes
or all but one documents or one point for all but
two documents. This does not conflict with the
point because there are two different skills. Note
the evidence drawn from the documents had to
clearly support the thesis. Once again, student
who used the documents generally did well here.
The students who failed to earn the point were not
drawing evidence from six documents or were not
using evidence to support the thesis. It was
possible to earn this point by supporting a thesis
that did not earn the point above.
4. The POV of the eight documents practically
oozed from the page and included ample
opportunities for students to analyze frame of
reference, historical context, and tone. The
absence of POV is student essays for this
particular DBQ was disappointing because the
opportunities were so clear. On the other hand,
there were more students attempting POV than in
years passed. These students often failed to
analyze the POV opting for a simple statement.
For example, “Fitch does not like the Portuguese
advantage because he is British.” The sentence
speaks to frame of reference but does not analyze
the reason for Fitch’s view of the Portuguese.
Note that the rubric requires analysis of POV “in
at least two documents,” and eliminates the word
bias from the rubric. Students did not get POV
points for sentences such as “Documents 1,3,5,
and 7 were Ming documents.” This is more
attribution or grouping than analysis of POV. The
elimination of “bias” did not affect student use of
the word: “Espinosa was bias because he is a
priest.” Once again, there is no analysis of the bias
or how it affected the document. A surprising
number of students analyzed POV in one
paragraph at the end of the essay. If this analysis
addressed POV in individual documents then it
earned the point but this is not generally a good
practice. I will be preparing a POV instructional
sheet for this DBQ. When it is complete, I will
make a post to the LIST and gladly email a copy.
5. The new rubric requires two or three groups. In
this question, many students used the
social/economic groups as part of the analysis
although there were many other groupings
possible and the better essays found those
groupings: point of origin, author background,
trade, competition, corruption, change-over-time,
to name a few. The use of groupings outside those
in the questions was characteristic of real analysis
and should be the basis for groupings in future.
For example, a fine essay discussed Chinese
economic policies and their social and economic
effects thus using the group (economic policies) to
get at the social economic effects. This is rather
the point of grouping as is using the group as part
of a general analysis of the documents.
6. Additional Documents are improving although
they remain appendages at the end of the essay
rather than part of the students analysis of the
documents in general. Some essays address the
additional document at the end of the first
paragraphs. The additional documents for this
DBQ were clear and possibilities included peasant
workers, a variety of Japanese sources, etc. The
most common request was for charts or graphs
that might place the whole of the silver trade in
perspective. Many essays failed to earn this point
because they lacked explanation for the additional
document request. “I would like to see a document
by a woman because a woman is missing,” does
not explain the importance of a document written
by a woman. The student needed to explain how
this particular document would fill a gap.
Requests for historical texts and textbooks were
not acceptable. The better essays identified type
and purpose: “The journals of Japanese court
official would provide information on the
Japanese view of the silver trade so that you could
compare the Japanese view with the Chinese view
of the silver trade and you could see if the effects
of silver mining in Japan were similar to those in
South America.
This was a well put together DBQ that allowed
students to illustrate the skills acquired during the
class. In general, students wrote more on this
DBQ than in the past but it was equally clear that
many students had not been taught some of the
skills. The necessity of instructor training was
clear in these essays especially where the student
has adeptly hit all of the points except POV thus
AP World History Electronic Discussion Group
DBQ Skills & Common Student Mistakes
holding a possible 9 to a 6 on the rubric. We have
made great progress in DBQ essays. The essays
are improving and the bar is rising. Very good
indeed.
Barden Keeler
Faculty Consultant AP World History/SS Vertical
Teams
Department Chair, History and Social Science
Palmetto Ridge High School
– – – – – – – – – – -June 23, 2006
[Robert,] I absolutely agree. My own kids were
trained to use all of the documents, but if one was
“uninterpretable” or couldn’t be worked in to the
essay, then chuck it, and the rest damn well better
be interpreted and used properly. That’s a basic
guideline for the 2006 AND 2007 AP World
exam - it’s in the Acorn book. I did give a test
development person an earful on this issue one
night at dinner in Lincoln, but was not satisfied at
all.
“They could read the directions” just doesn’t cut it
with me. My job, as “coach”, is to eliminate that
hassle and buy my kids some time. They’re
nervous. I’m sorry, but this is the FIRST AP exam
my 15/16-yr olds take. I’d like the test development members to think on their own AP examtaking experiences: who had time to read
directions? Who was that confident? We all took
the SATs and/or GREs: wasn’t it nice to automatically tackle and sail through the problems
before us? C’mon, did you actually READ the
directions to the analogies section?!! While most
of my kids actually used all the essays, one or two
of of my brightest, perfectionist-types did not.
Unfair? Ha! I think it’s downright MEAN to
change the rules of the game DURING the game!
My only consolation, as my table leader pointed
out, is that one essay is but 1/3rd of 1/2 of an
exam.
And there’s always next year. . .
Suzanne Litrel
7
Bay Shore HS, NY
– – – – – – – – – – -June 23, 2006
Thank you, Robert. This point bothered me a great
deal as well, but I have not had (taken) the time to
formulate my response. You have done a
wonderful job for me. I hope that my students
used all of the documents, as we practiced, but I
also had pangs of conscience knowing that some
may have lost this point and hence lowered their
grade on the exam, because I did not instruct them
correctly. I actually feel that it is the scoring that is
at fault, but that doesn’t make me feel better. I
have been to two week-long summer workshops,
led by consummate professionals, and I did not
pick up on this. I do not believe that the change
received the attention it deserved given the
potential impact on grades. A 6 instead of a 9 is a
heavy price to pay for something that actually has
little if anything to do with student knowledge,
ability, or skills. I will have a good idea of what
happened if some scores disappoint me. I will also
feel that I let those students down.
Tony Gallaher
University Liggett School
Grosse Pointe, Mi
– – – – – – – – – – -June 24, 2006
I think a valuable lesson to learn here is that, when
preparing students for success on the DBQ (or any
other essay rubric), one should always teach the
SPIRIT of the rubric more than the LETTER.
For example, when I first started teaching AP
Euro 6 years ago, teachers were still learning the
newfangled core-scoring rubric for the DBQ,
which had been instituted just a few years earlier.
One of the items on the rubric that was causing
the most fits was POV.
Apparently, students had done poorly on POV the
first couple of years with the new rubric, perhaps a
majority not doing POV at all. And so the rubric
was written to allow students to get the POV point
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AP World History Electronic Discussion Group
DBQ Skills & Common Student Mistakes
even if they did NO POV analysis as we currently
interpret it, but merely managed to cite each
document by name (i.e. writing “according to the
English writer John Taylor,” rather than simply
“according to document 5"). Merely showing a
recognition that the documents were written by
people rather than being simple lists of facts was
enough to get POV credit.
Next year I am not going to show my students the
generic scoring guide but, instead, tell them they
need to use all the documents to get credit and
analyze POV on all the documents. Your advice is
clearly good advice. My complaint rests not which
is better practice (and I did encourage my
students, unfortunately rather than require, them
to use them all,) but with misleading guidelines.
Now, obviously, the SPIRIT of the rubric was that
students would evaluate how people’s
backgrounds and purposes for producing the
documents affect the interpretation of those
documents. But as most students didn’t do this,
the only FAIR thing to do was to lower the
standard.
Regarding the directions on the test, I would
similarly have a big complaint there if the
directions and, as a consequence, the scoring,
differed significantly from the guidelines we as
teachers are given to train our students. If we are
given one set of guidelines and the directions
deviate from those guidelines, then what good are
guidelines in the first place? Would it be better to
teach students how to do something wrong or not
teach them at all? In the first instance the student
will definitely get it wrong; in the second they can
still read the directions and have a shot at getting
it right. Is this what we want to encourage?
Over the succeeding years, though, teachers did a
better job of teaching students to address POV,
and students’ essays began to reflect this. Finally,
about three years ago, ETS stopped awarding
credit for the mere mention of authors’
names—now students really had to do some kind
of basic POV analysis for at least two docs to get
the point. Some teachers screamed: “but the rubric
says they get points for mentioning the authors’
names!” But to no avail. The spirit of the rubric
had always been a higher standard, and now that a
majority of students were achieving that standard,
the bar was raised. Two years later, as students did
an even better job with POV, they had to analyze
POV for THREE documents to get the point.
Some teachers complained “but the rubric says
TWO or three!” To no avail.
The lesson? We should always look to the highest
standard represented in the spirit of the rubric, and
hold our students to that standard. This way, if the
bar is raised, our students will be ready. And if it
is not, our students will shine among the dross.
Charles Ryder
Social Studies Department Chair
The North Hills School
Irving, TX
– – – – – – – – – – – -June 24, 2006
Bob Nesselroth
– – – – – – – – – – – -June 24, 2006
I understand the frustration that some teachers
may have with the 2006 DBQ Rubric, but the
operational rubric reflects a change in the generic
rubric. Moreover it places the bar higher than the
bar has been because it closes a loophole and a
shortcut through the DBQ. Shortcuts are not
something we should be teaching students to do in
the first place. This is what will happen as the
rubrics changes and as students and teachers
become better trained and more experienced
respectively. This should not have been the
significant change that some are describing. It is
elevating the standard to the expectation.
Both this edition and the previous edition of the
Acorn book note that “There are no irrelevant or
deliberately misleading documents. Every
document is related to the question and should be
used by students in the preparation of their
responses.” It was never the intent of the TDC for
students to leave out one of the documents. It was
AP World History Electronic Discussion Group
DBQ Skills & Common Student Mistakes
interpreted that way and this rubric adjusts that
interpretation so students must now address all of
the documents. The Acorn books does not say that
students can chuck out a document. It says that
they may misinterpret one document. There is a
big difference between these two sentences. As
instructors, we knew that the students were getting
a lucky free pass here but we never should have
done anything but teach them to use all of the
documents nor should we have suggested that one
of the documents may be “uninterpretable”. This
is not mean and it not changing the rules in the
middle of the game. The rules were established
well in advance. In realty, five years ago in the
original Acorn book.
With regard to the test directions, I can understand
that a student might not read them closely but I
would also point out that the instructions on the
sample DBQ in the Acorn book reflect the change
to “uses all of the documents.” This is then part of
the preparation for students as they move through
the year.
The scoring guide reflects the intent of the
question. Again, I did not read an essay nor was
an essay brought to my attention that was scoring
as a 6 rather than a 9 because of the document
requirement. I am sure that there may have been a
few, but I spent a good deal of time looking for
one and testing the impact of this requirement on
the scores. I saw essays score a 6 rather than a 9
because of POV. I saw essays score a 6 rather than
a 9 because of additional documents but I did see
one score a 6 rather than 9 because it failed to use
all of the documents. It seems to me that the
broader issues of POV and additional documents
should be getting attention here because they
impacted far more essays than the requirement to
use all of the documents.
Barden Keeler
Faculty Consultant AP World History/SS Vertical
Teams
Department Chair, History and Social Science
Palmetto Ridge High School
– – – – – – – – – – – --
9
June 24, 2006
Barth,
Not to make a mountain out of a molehill, but the
2006-07 Acorn book DBQ Generic Rubric does
NOT say “use all the documents.” The verb “use”
is not in the current Acorn book (and the word
“all” is implied, but not explicit). This is the
source of the misunderstanding that is causing all
this confusion.
The 2004-05 Rubric said:
1. Has an acceptable thesis
2. Uses all, or all but one of the documents
3. Understands the basic meaning of doc’s cited in
the essay (may misinterpret one)
4. Supports thesis with appropriate evidence from
the documents.
5. Analyzes bias or point of view in at least two or
three doc’s
6. Analyzes doc’s by grouping them in 1, 2, or 3
ways depending on the DBQ question.
7. Identifies one type of appropriate additional
document.
The new 2006-07 Acorn Book says:
1. Has an acceptable thesis [unchanged]
2. Understands the basic meaning of doc’s (may
misinterpret one) [the old “uses all or all but
one doc” Category #2 DISAPPEARED! The
“cited in the essay” text also disappeared.
Perhaps this should be clarified in the next
Acorn book as “Understands the basic meaning
of ALL doc’s (may misinterpret one)”?]
3. Supports thesis with appropriate evidence from
the documents. [now a 2-point category, I
suspect because this is where students are
rewarded for good “use” OF EVIDENCE from
documents.]
4. Analyzes POV in at least 2 doc’s. [“bias” is no
longer mentioned for reasons discussed
elsewhere]
5. Analyzes doc’s by grouping them in 2 or 3
ways, depending on the question. [cannot
group only 1 way, anymore!]
10
AP World History Electronic Discussion Group
DBQ Skills & Common Student Mistakes
6. Identifies and explains the need for one type of
appropriate additional document or source.
[“explains the need for” is new]
Now, I hear the point that students don’t read ALL
the directions on their test when they sit for the
exam, (much like I don’t read the fine print legal
disclaimer on every document I sign!) but we as
teachers should have carefully noted the changes
between the OLD 2004-05 Generic Rubrics and
the new 2006-07. (!) Too many of us are still
using an obsolete Acorn book and DON’T
KNOW IT.
Anyway, my original point was that the verb “use”
is NOT in the Generic DBQ Rubric ANYWHERE! We should banish “use” from our
teaching vocabulary much as we’ve discouraged
“bias” when teaching POV. If anyone is
wondering why the “uses all the doc’s” was taken
out, try to “use a document” in any way that isn’t
synonymous with “understands basic meaning,”
“supports thesis with evidence,” POV, or
Grouping. What else can a student “use” a
document FOR? It was a redundant rubric
category. (No offense to previous TDCs!)
Some may argue that this changing of the Generic
Rubric should have been more clearly “highlighted” in the “Important Changes and Additions”
section (p. 3) of the current Acorn book. Rather
than “Clarification of the expectations, scoring,
and directions for the DBQ, pp. 33-36" it should
have said, “Changes in the expectations, scoring
…” but the Test Development Committee made a
solid, good-faith effort to direct teachers’ attention
to the new rubrics. I don’t feel I have any room to
complain.
Bottom Line Lesson: Make sure we are teaching
with the most current Acorn Book! Luckily, the
current one is good for another 12 months, but a
year from now we’ll need to have this
conversation again.
Hope this helps (and doesn’t offend),
Bill Strickland
East Grand Rapids HS
East Grand Rapids, MI
– – – – – – – – – – – -June 24, 2006
Tony, Robert,
I’ve posted another message today on this very
topic, but wanted to try to see if I could help
answer your very understandable and valid
question(s).
Robert, you stated that the Generic Rubric says
“‘Understands the basic meaning of the
documents. (May misinterpret one document.)’
Without any additional information, I would
interpret that sentence to mean that, since you can
misinterpret one, if you understand seven of the
eight documents, then you get the point. Why
would there be any difference between using all
eight documents and misinterpreting one on the
one hand and using just seven documents but
getting them all right on the other hand? In both
cases seven were interpreted correctly.”
Tony, you added “A 6 instead of a 9 is a heavy
price to pay for something that actually has little if
anything to do with student knowledge, ability, or
skills.”
The difference is not the difference between
correctly understanding the meaning of 7 versus 8
documents. The difference is that the student must
show that they understand there ARE 8 documents. (The historical skill here goes back to the
Habits of Mind.) If the student correctly understands 7 docs, but only acknowledges the EXISTENCE of 7 doc’s, then the skill of integrating/
recognizing information from all potential
evidence is NOT demonstrated. To use a baseball
analogy, students may FEEL better in that they
“hit the ball” on 7 documents, but they must at
least “take a swing” at ALL the documents. If they
let even one document slip past them without
even trying to deal with it, then they are NOT
doing the historian’s craft. (This is the flip side of
the “Additional Doc” category. Student must not
only recognize that we don’t have all the relevant
doc’s, but they must at least first confront all the
relevant doc’s that DO exist!)
AP World History Electronic Discussion Group
DBQ Skills & Common Student Mistakes
The interpretation of the rubric to mean that
“correct interpretation of all but one document” is
satisfactory is itself INACCURATE. See if this
helps. I think of the rubric text in this way. This is
“funny math” but hopefully this will help us
conceive of the problem we’re confronting.
Rubric Category #2 (Meaning) is divided into a
numerator (# of doc’s CORRECTLY interpreted)
and a denominator (TOTAL # of doc’s included in
the question). In the case of the 2006 DBQ this
“fraction” would be 7/8.
The numerator can be 1 less than the denominator
(because we don’t demand absolute perfection),
but the denominator MUST be ALL the doc’s.
The reason why this might not be intuitively
obvious is that we’re concentrating on the
“correct” part of “understands the basic meaning”
part of the rubric without giving due emphasis to
the “of the documents” part of the rubric.
Thus 7/7 is LESS THAN 7/8 (Funny math!)
Correctly interpreting the meaning of 7 documents
out of 7 ATTEMPTS to interpret a doc’s meaning
11
is less than correctly interpreting the meaning of
7 documents out of 8 ATTEMPTS to interpret a
doc’s meaning. BOTH the “correct” and the
“attempt” skills are being measured here. The
rubric demands a “100% attempt factor” from
students. This is where my baseball analogy above
comes back in.
Now, as I stated in my other message today, I
suspect part of the reason we’re getting confused
by all this is that we’re (unintentionally and
unknowingly) still thinking in terms of the
Generic Rubric from the 2004-05 Acorn book,
which has the “use” verb for rubric category #2.
That verb “use” NO LONGER APPLIES TO
DBQ’s! The rubric is now much more specific
and demanding about HOW students “use” doc’s
by measuring 4 different, specific types of “usage”
(Meaning, Evidence, POV, & Grouping).
Hope this helps clarify, even if it doesn’t satisfy,
Bill Strickland
East Grand Rapids HS
East Grand Rapids, MI