Subtest I: History and Social Science - World History, U.S. and California History, Geography, Civics, Economics
Subtest I History and Social Science blends world history, United States history, California history, physical and human geography, civics, and economics. Items test chronological reasoning, cause and effect, primary-source interpretation, and the content knowledge a multiple-subject teacher needs to teach the state's history-social science framework.
World history anchors
- Riverine civilizations (Mesopotamia, Nile, Indus, Yellow River); Greek and Roman contributions to law and citizenship; feudalism and manorialism; the Renaissance and Reformation; the Enlightenment; the Atlantic revolutions; industrialization; imperialism; the two world wars; decolonization and the Cold War.
U.S. history anchors
- Colonial economies, the Declaration (1776), the Articles vs. the Constitution (1787), the Bill of Rights (1791), federalism, checks and balances, the three branches.
- Marbury v. Madison (judicial review), westward expansion, the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863) versus the Thirteenth Amendment (1865), Reconstruction, the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the civil rights movement.
California specifics
Ohlone and other Indigenous peoples; the mission system begun under Junípero Serra in 1769; Mexican rancho period; Bear Flag Revolt (1846); gold discovered at Sutter's Mill in January 1848; statehood September 9, 1850; transcontinental railroad (1869); Chinese Exclusion Act (1882); Japanese American incarceration under Executive Order 9066; Dust Bowl migration (Steinbeck country); postwar growth and water projects.
Civics and economics
Federalism splits enumerated, reserved, and concurrent powers. California's Progressive-era 1911 reforms added the initiative (voters propose statutes), referendum (voters approve or reject a legislature's law), and recall (voters remove officials). Economics: scarcity, opportunity cost, supply and demand, incentives, trade-offs.
Worked example. A question describes Californians gathering signatures to place a statute on the ballot themselves. That is an initiative, not a referendum: the referendum reviews a law the legislature already passed, while the recall targets an officeholder. Locating the actor (voters) and the target (a proposed law) settles the classification.
Traps. Calling gold discovered in 1849 (that is the year the forty-niners arrived); treating the Emancipation Proclamation as ending slavery nationwide; assuming the original Constitution contained the Bill of Rights; confusing primary with secondary sources; reading a political cartoon without identifying its date and author's stance.