ACTReading for leanning english

CONNECTING COLLEGE READINESS STANDARDS™ TO THE CLASSROOM For Language Arts Teachers/ Reading ACT endorses the Code of Fair Testing Practices in Education and the Code of Professional Responsibilities in Educational Measurement, guides to the conduct of those involved in educational testing ACT is committed to ensuring that each of its testing programs upholds the guidelines in each Code A copy of each Code may be obtained free of charge from ACT Customer Services (68), P.O Box 1008, Iowa City, IA 52243-1008, 319/337-1429 Visit ACT’s website at: www.act.org © 2008 by ACT, Inc All rights reserved 11792 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction The College Readiness Standards Report for ACT Reading Description of the College Readiness Standards Description of the ACT Reading Test 16 The Need for Thinking Skills 18 Thinking Your Way Through the ACT Test 25 The Assessment-Instruction Link 29 Using Assessment Information to Help Support Low-Scoring Students 31 Instructional Activities for ACT Reading 55 Putting the Pieces Together 66 Bibliography 67 Appendix: Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions 73 List of Tables The College Readiness Standards for the ACT Reading Test ACT Reading Test Content Areas 16 ACT Sample Test Questions by Score Range 19 College Readiness Benchmark Scores 30 The Link Between ACT Composite Scores and College Admission Policies 31 INTRODUCTION ACT has developed this guide to help classroom teachers, curriculum coordinators, and counselors interpret the College Readiness StandardsTM report for ACT Reading The guide includes: ■ A description of the College Readiness Standards for the ACT® ■ A description of the ACT Reading Test ■ A set of sample test questions ■ A description of the AssessmentInstruction Link ■ A set of classroom instructional activities The College Readiness Standards for the ACT are statements that describe what students who score in the six score ranges 13–15, 16–19, 20–23, 24–27, 28–32, and 33–36 on the multiple-choice tests and in the five score ranges 3–4, 5–6, 7–8, 9–10, and 11–12 on the Writing Test are likely to know and to be able to The statements are generalizations based on the performance of many students College Readiness Standards have not been developed for students whose scores fall in the 1–12 range for the multiplechoice tests and at score point for the Writing Test because these students, as a group, not demonstrate skills similar to each other consistently enough to permit useful generalizations English, Mathematics, Reading, Science, and Writing These five content-specific reports present the ACT results using ACT’s College Readiness Standards The sixth report, the Summary Profile, summarizes the scores, across all five content areas, of your most recent graduating class who tested as tenth, eleventh, or twelfth graders All six reports provide data that compare the performance of your school’s most recent graduating class with the performance of two norm groups: national and state The data in the reports reflect the characteristics of those students who either took the ACT on a national test date or as part of a state testing initiative and who reported that they plan to graduate from high school during the most recent academic year The ACT is a curriculum-based assessment program developed by ACT to help students prepare for the transition to postsecondary education while providing a measure of high school outcomes for college-bound students As part of ACT’s Educational Planning and Assessment System (EPASTM), the ACT is complemented by EXPLORE®, ACT’s eighth- and ninth-grade program, and by PLAN®, for tenth graders We hope this guide helps you assist your students as they plan and pursue their future studies The College Readiness Standards for the ACT are accompanied by ideas for progress that help teachers identify ways of enhancing students’ learning based on the scores students receive The College Readiness Standards Information Services provide six aggregate reports for the ACT Five of these reports are content specific: each presents the scores of your most recent graduates in one of the five content areas the ACT test measures— “The role of standardized testing is to let parents, students, and institutions know what students are ready to learn next.” — Ralph Tyler, October 1991 Chairman Emeritus of ACT’s Board of Trustees THE COLLEGE READINESS STANDARDS REPORT FOR ACT READING The College Readiness Standards report for ACT Reading allows you to compare the performance of students in your school with the performance of students at the national and state levels The report provides summary information you can use to map the development of your students’ knowledge and skills in reading Used along with your own classroom observations and with other resources, the test results can help you to analyze your students’ progress in reading and to identify areas of strength and areas that need more attention You can then use the Standards as one source of information in the instructional planning process A sample report appears on the next page An explanation of its features is provided below A This section briefly explains the uses of the report to help you interpret the test results These are the seven score ranges reported for the College Readiness Standards for the ACT To determine the number of score ranges and the width of each score range, ACT staff reviewed normative data, college admission criteria, and information obtained through ACT’s Course Placement Service For a more detailed explanation of the way the score ranges were determined, see page B This section compares the percent of graduating seniors who tested as tenth, eleventh, or twelfth graders and who scored in a particular score range at an individual school (Local) with the percent of all graduating students in the national and state norm groups who scored in the same range The percent of students at the local school and for the national and state groups are based on the performance of students who either took the ACT on a national test date or as part of a state testing initiative and who reported that they plan to graduate from high school during the most recent academic year The number of local school students who scored in each of the seven score ranges is provided in the column to the left of each bar graph; C the total number of graduating students tested locally is provided at the top of the report The College Readiness Standards were developed by identifying the knowledge and skills students need in order to respond successfully to questions on the ACT Reading Test As you review the report for ACT Reading, you will note that the Standards are cumulative, which means that if students score, for example, in the 20–23 score range, they are likely to be able to demonstrate most or all of the knowledge and skills in the 13–15, 16–19, and 20–23 score ranges Students may be able to demonstrate some of the skills in the next score range, 24–27, but not consistently enough as a group to reach that score range A description of the way the College Readiness Standards were developed can be found on pages 5–6 D The “ideas for progress” are statements that provide suggestions for learning experiences that students might benefit from These ideas for progress are arranged by score range and strand Although many of the ideas cross more than one strand, a primary strand has been identified for each in order to facilitate their use in the classroom Ideas for progress are not provided for students who score in the 33–36 score range, the highest score range for the ACT Students who score in this range on the ACT Reading Test have demonstrated proficiency in all or almost all of the skills measured by the test E Page of the report profiles the test results, College Readiness Standards, and ideas for progress for score ranges 24–27, 28–32, and 33–36 F Because the complexity of a passage on the ACT Reading Test plays such a key role in students’ ability to negotiate the passage (and to successfully respond to test questions), the College Readiness Standards also include Descriptions of the ACT Reading Passages These descriptions can be found on pages 8–9 G A B C D E F G COLLEGE DESCRIPTION OF THE READINESS STANDARDS WHAT ARE THE COLLEGE READINESS STANDARDS? The College Readiness Standards communicate educational expectations Each Standard describes what students who score in the designated range are likely to be able to with what they know Students can typically demonstrate the skills and knowledge within the score ranges preceding the range in which they scored, so the College Readiness Standards are cumulative In helping students make the transition from high school to postsecondary education or to the world of work, teachers, counselors, and parents can use the College Readiness Standards for the ACT to interpret students’ scores and to understand which skills students need to develop to be better prepared for the future HOW WERE THE SCORE RANGES DETERMINED? To determine the number of score ranges and the width of each score range for the ACT, ACT staff reviewed ACT normative data and considered the relationship among EXPLORE, PLAN, and the ACT In reviewing the ACT normative data, ACT staff analyzed the distribution of student scores across the score scale, 1–36 Because the ACT is used for college admission and course-placement decisions, differing admission criteria (e.g., open, liberal, traditional, selective, and highly selective) and the course-placement research that ACT has conducted over the last forty years were also reviewed ACT’s Course Placement Service provides colleges and universities with cutoff scores that are used to place students into appropriate entry-level courses in college; and these cutoff scores were used to help define the score ranges After analyzing all the data and reviewing different possible score ranges, ACT staff concluded that using the seven score ranges 1–12, 13–15, 16–19, 20–23, 24–27, 28–32, and 33–36 would best distinguish students’ levels of achievement so as to assist teachers, administrators, and others in relating ACT test scores to students’ attainment of specific skills and understandings HOW WERE THE COLLEGE READINESS STANDARDS DEVELOPED? After reviewing normative data, college admission criteria, and information obtained through ACT’s Course Placement Service, content experts wrote the College Readiness Standards based on their analysis of the skills and knowledge students need in order to successfully respond to the test questions in each score range Experts analyzed numerous test questions that had been answered correctly by 80% or more of the examinees within each score range The 80% criterion was chosen because it offers those who use the College Readiness Standards a high degree of confidence that students scoring in a given score range will most likely be able to demonstrate the skills and knowledge described in that range “The examination should describe the student in meaningful terms— meaningful to the student, the parent, and the elementary and high school teacher—meaningful in the sense that the profile scores correspond to recognizable school activities, and directly suggest appropriate distributions of emphasis in learning and teaching.” — E F Lindquist, February 1958 Cofounder of ACT As a content validity check, ACT invited nationally recognized scholars from high school and university English, Reading, and Education departments to review the College Readiness Standards for the ACT Reading Test These teachers and researchers provided ACT with independent, authoritative reviews of the ways the College Readiness Standards reflect the skills and knowledge students need to successfully respond to the questions on the ACT Reading Test Because the ACT is curriculum based, ACT and independent consultants conduct a review every three to four years to ensure that the knowledge and skills described in the Standards and outlined in the test specifications continue to reflect those being taught in classrooms nationwide HOW SHOULD THE COLLEGE READINESS STANDARDS BE I NTERPRETED AND USED? The College Readiness Standards reflect the progression and complexity of the skills measured in the ACT Because no ACT test form measures all of the skills and knowledge included in the College Readiness Standards, the Standards must be interpreted as skills and knowledge that most students who score in a particular score range are likely to be able to demonstrate Since there were relatively few test questions that were answered correctly by 80% or more of the students who scored in the lower score ranges, the Standards in these ranges should be interpreted cautiously The skills and understandings of students who score in the 1–12 score range may still be evolving For these students the skills and understandings in the higher score ranges could become their target achievement outcomes It is important to recognize that the ACT does not measure everything students have learned nor does any test measure everything necessary for students to know to be successful in college or in the world of work The ACT Reading Test includes questions from a large domain of skills and from areas of knowledge that have been judged important for success in college and beyond Thus, the College Readiness Standards should be interpreted in a responsible way that will help students understand what they need to know and if they are going to make a successful transition to college, vocational school, or the world of work Students can use the Standards to identify the skills and knowledge they need to develop to be better prepared for their future Teachers and curriculum coordinators can use the Standards to learn more about their students’ academic strengths and weaknesses and can then modify their instruction and guide students accordingly HOW ARE THE COLLEGE READINESS STANDARDS ORGANIZED? As content experts reviewed the test questions connected to each score range, distinct yet overlapping areas of knowledge and skill were identified For example, there are many types of questions in which students are asked to identify the main idea of a paragraph or passage Therefore, Main Ideas and Author’s Approach is one area, or strand, within the College Readiness Standards for ACT Reading The other strands are Supporting Details; Sequential, Comparative, and Cause-Effect Relationships; Meanings of Words; and Generalizations and Conclusions The strands provide an organizational framework for the College Readiness Standards statements As you review the Standards, you will note a progression in complexity within each strand For example, in the 13–15 range for the Main Ideas and Author’s Approach strand, students are able to “recognize a clear intent of an author or narrator in uncomplicated literary narratives,” while in the 33–36 range, students demonstrate that they are able to “identify clear main ideas or purposes of complex passages or their paragraphs.” Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Prose Fiction passage corresponding to sample test questions found on pages 21 and 22 PROSE FICTION: This passage is adapted from Carson McCullers’ short story “Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland” (©1955 by Carson McCullers) 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 76 Affairs in the music department were running smoothly Mr Brook did not have any serious embarrassments to deal with, such as the harp teacher last year who had finally eloped with a garage mechanic There was only this nagging apprehension about Madame Zilensky He could not make out what was wrong in his relations with her or why his feelings were so mixed To begin with, she was a great globe-trotter, and her conversations were incongruously seasoned with references to farfetched places She would go along for days without opening her mouth, prowling through the corridor with her hands in the pockets of her jacket and her face locked in meditation Then suddenly she would buttonhole Mr Brook and launch out on a long, volatile monologue, her eyes reckless and bright and her voice warm with eagerness She would talk about anything or nothing at all Yet, without exception, there was something queer, in a slanted sort of way, about every episode she ever mentioned If she spoke of taking Sammy to the barbershop, the impression she created was just as foreign as if she were telling of an afternoon in Bagdad Mr Brook could not make it out The truth came to him very suddenly, and the truth made everything perfectly clear, or at least clarified the situation Mr Brook had come home early and lighted a fire in the little grate in his sitting room He felt comfortable and at peace that evening He sat before the fire in his stocking feet, with a volume of William Blake on the table by his side, and he had poured himself a halfglass of apricot brandy At ten o’clock he was drowsing cozily before the fire, his mind full of cloudy phrases of Mahler and floating half-thoughts Then all at once, out of this delicate stupor, four words came to his mind: “The King of Finland.” The words seemed familiar, but for the first moment he could not place them Then all at once he tracked them down He had been walking across the campus that afternoon when Madame Zilensky stopped him and began some preposterous rigmarole, to which he had only halflistened; he was thinking about the stack of canons turned in by his counterpoint class Now the words, the inflections of her voice, came back to him with insidious exactitude Madame Zilensky had started off with the following remark: “One day, when I was standing in front of a pâtisserie (pastry shop), the King of Finland came by in a sled.” 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 Mr Brook jerked himself up straight in his chair and put down his glass of brandy The woman was a pathological liar Almost every word she uttered outside of class was an untruth If she worked all night, she would go out of her way to tell you she spent the evening at the cinema If she ate lunch at the Old Tavern, she would be sure to mention that she had lunched with her children at home The woman was simply a pathological liar, and that accounted for everything An hour later, as he sat before the fire, his irritation had changed to a scholarly and thoughtful wonder What he must do, he told himself, was to regard the whole situation impersonally and look on Madame Zilensky as a doctor looks on a sick patient Her lies were of the guileless sort She did not dissimulate with any intention to deceive, and the untruths she told were never used to any possible advantage That was the maddening thing; there was simply no motive behind it all Mr Brook finished off the rest of the brandy And slowly, when it was almost midnight, a further understanding came to him The reason for the lies of Madame Zilensky was painful and plain All her life long Madame Zilensky had worked—at the piano, teaching, and writing those beautiful and immense twelve symphonies Day and night she had drudged and struggled and thrown her soul into her work, and there was not much of her left over for anything else Being human, she suffered from this lack and did what she could to make up for it If she passed the evening bent over a table in the library and later declared that she had spent that time playing cards, it was as though she had managed to both those things Through the lies, she lived vicariously The lies doubled the little of her existence that was left over from work and augmented the little rag end of her personal life Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Prose Fiction passage corresponding to sample test questions found on pages 22, 23, and 24 PROSE FICTION: This passage is adapted from Elizabeth Bishop’s short story “The Housekeeper” (©1984 by Alice Methfessel) 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 Outside, the rain continued to run down the screened windows of Mrs Sennett’s little Cape Cod cottage The long weeds and grass that composed the front yard dripped against the blurred background of the bay, where the water was almost the color of the grass Mrs Sennett’s five charges were vigorously playing house in the dining room (In the wintertime, Mrs Sennett was housekeeper for a Mr Curley, in Boston, and during the summers the Curley children boarded with her on the Cape.) My expression must have changed “Are those children making too much noise?” Mrs Sennett demanded, a sort of wave going over her that might mark the beginning of her getting up out of her chair I shook my head no, and gave her a little push on the shoulder to keep her seated Mrs Sennett was almost stone-deaf and had been for a long time, but she could read lips You could talk to her without making any sound yourself, if you wanted to, and she more than kept up her side of the conversation in a loud, rusty voice that dropped weirdly every now and then into a whisper She adored talking To look at Mrs Sennett made me think of eighteenth-century England and its literary figures Her hair must have been sadly thin, because she always wore, indoors and out, either a hat or a sort of turban, and sometimes she wore both The rims of her eyes were dark; she looked very ill Mrs Sennett and I continued talking She said she really didn’t think she’d stay with the children another winter Their father wanted her to, but it was too much for her She wanted to stay right here in the cottage The afternoon was getting along, and I finally left because I knew that at four o’clock Mrs Sennett’s “sit down” was over and she started to get supper At six o’clock, from my nearby cottage, I saw Theresa coming through the rain with a shawl over her head She was bringing me a six-inch-square piece of spicecake, still hot from the oven and kept warm between two soup plates A few days later I learned from the twins, who brought over gifts of firewood and blackberries, that their father was coming the next morning, bringing their aunt and her husband and their cousin Mrs Sennett had promised to take them all on a picnic at the pond some pleasant day On the fourth day of their visit, Xavier arrived with a note It was from Mrs Sennett, written in blue ink, in a large, serene, ornamented hand, on linen-finish paper: 50 Tomorrow is the last day Mr Curley has and the Children all wanted the Picnic so much The Men can walk to the Pond but it is too far for the Children I see your Friend has a car and I hate to ask this but could you possibly drive us to the Pond tomorrow morning? Very sincerely yours, Carmen Sennett 55 60 65 After the picnic, Mrs Sennett’s presents to me were numberless It was almost time for the children to go back to school in South Boston Mrs Sennett insisted that she was not going; their father was coming down again to get them and she was just going to stay He would have to get another housekeeper She said this over and over to me, loudly, and her turbans and kerchiefs grew more and more distrait One evening, Mary came to call on me and we sat on an old table in the back yard to watch the sunset “Papa came today,” she said, “and we’ve got to go back day after tomorrow.” “Is Mrs Sennett going to stay here?” 70 “She said at supper she was She said this time she really was, because she’d said that last year and came back, but now she means it.” I said, “Oh dear,” scarcely knowing which side I was on “It was awful at supper I cried and cried.” 75 “Did Theresa cry?” “Oh, we all cried Papa cried, too We always do.” “But don’t you think Mrs Sennett needs a rest?” 80 85 “Yes, but I think she’ll come, though Papa told her he’d cry every single night at supper if she didn’t, and then we all did.” The next day I heard that Mrs Sennett was going back with them just to “help settle.” She came over the following morning to say goodbye, supported by all five children She was wearing her traveling hat of black satin and black straw, with sequins High and somber, above her ravaged face, it had quite a Spanishgrandee air “This isn’t really goodbye,” she said “I’ll be back as soon as I get these bad, noisy children off my hands.” 90 But the children on to her skirt and tugged at her sleeves, shaking their heads frantically, silently saying, “No! No! No!” to her with their puckered-up mouths 77 Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Prose Fiction passage corresponding to sample test question found on page 24 PROSE FICTION: This passage is adapted from Anne Tyler’s novel The Accidental Tourist (©1985 by Anne Tyler Modarressi, et al.) 10 15 20 25 30 78 “Now, this is not your ordinary airplane,” Macon told Muriel “I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea This is what they call a commuter plane It’s something a businessman would take, say, to hop to the nearest city for a day and make a few sales and hop back again.” The plane he was referring to—a little fifteenseater that resembled a mosquito or a gnat—stood just outside the door of the commuters’ waiting room A girl in a parka was loading it with baggage A boy was checking something on the wings This appeared to be an airline run by teenagers Even the pilot was a teenager, it seemed to Macon He entered the waiting room, carrying a clipboard He read off a list of names “Marshall? Noble? Albright?” One by one the passengers stepped forward—just eight or ten of them To each the pilot said, “Hey, how you doing?” He let his eyes rest longest on Muriel Either he found her the most attractive or else he was struck by her outfit She wore her highest heels, black stockings spattered with black net roses, and a flippy little fuschia dress under a short fat coat that she referred to as her “fun fur.” Her hair was caught all to one side in a great bloom of frizz, and there was a silvery dust of some kind on her eyelids Macon knew she’d overdone it, but at the same time he liked her considering this such an occasion The pilot propped open the door and they followed him outside, across a stretch of concrete, and up two rickety steps into the plane Macon had to bend almost double as he walked down the aisle They threaded between two rows of single seats, each seat as spindly as a folding chair They found spaces across from each other and settled in Other passengers struggled through, puffing and bumping into things Last came the copilot, 35 40 who had round, soft, baby cheeks and carried a can of Diet Pepsi He slammed the door shut behind him and went up front to the controls Not so much as a curtain hid the cockpit Macon could lean out into the aisle and see the banks of knobs and gauges, the pilot positioning his headset, the copilot taking a final swig and setting his empty can on the floor “Now, on a bigger plane,” Macon called to Muriel as the engines roared up, “you’d hardly feel the takeoff But here you’d better brace yourself.” 45 Muriel nodded, wide-eyed, gripping the seat ahead of her “What’s that light that’s blinking in front of the pilot?” she asked “I don’t know.” 50 “What’s that little needle that keeps sweeping round and round?” “I don’t know.” 55 60 He felt he’d disappointed her “I’m used to jets, not these toys,” he told her She nodded again, accepting that It occurred to Macon that he was really a very worldly and well-traveled man The plane started taxiing Every pebble on the runway jolted it; every jolt sent a series of creaks through the framework They gathered speed The crew, suddenly grave and professional, made complicated adjustments to their instruments The wheels left the ground “Oh!” Muriel said, and she turned to Macon with her face all lit up “We’re off,” he told her “I’m flying!” Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Prose Fiction passage corresponding to sample test questions found on page 24 “Ofelia and Serena understand why I ask them to be careful about what and when they eat,” his aunt said “Do you think I’m being unreasonable?” PROSE FICTION: This passage is adapted from Arturo Islas’s novel Migrant Souls (©1990 by Arturo Islas) Mama Chona is Miguel Chico and Josie’s grandmother In high school, Josie began to see that she was not kind or charitable in ways their mother taught them to be Nor was she popular like her cousin Miguel Chico, two years younger than she and already a class favorite 10 Even though he was one of Mama Chona’s pets, Josie adored him Together, they loved and argued about books and movies and from the start, felt they could talk honestly to each other about most family matters Their intimacy was born when they discovered that each found the wicked stepmother far more interesting than the boring Snow White, who deserved her even more boring and bland prince 50 55 60 20 25 30 35 40 “Me, too,” he said Josie prided herself on her intelligence and on seeing the world without sentimentality or exaggeration “I am the true scientist in this crazy family,” she said to her cousin “And the family, especially Mother, won’t forgive me because I tell them what I see, good and bad, without all that sugarcoating or denial.” Miguel Chico leaned to the clinical, if not the scientific, and took Josie’s side in most family quarrels Enjoying his popularity and the privileges of a favorite grandchild, he was still denying what he saw in himself, let alone others, in those early years of learning to be the consummate pleaser 45 65 70 75 80 “Hello, nephew,” Eduviges said to him warmly He and Josie were in the kitchen spreading apple butter on saltines “How nice of you to stop by on your way home from school.” 85 “Thank you, Tia I hope we’re not in your way,” he said Mama Chona had taught him the best of manners “Not you, Miguel You’re a growing boy You can eat as much as you want It’s only natural.” “What are you going to do, Mother? Put a padlock on the door?” Josie laughed “Malcriada,” her mother said “Ofelia and Serena know I mean it.” Josie watched him charm his life away through high school, where, with little effort, he carried off all the prizes How she hated it when her mother pointed out his accomplishments to her Only her sense that he was headed toward disaster kept alive her affection for him every time Eduviges asked, “Why can’t you be like your cousin Miguel?” “Not at all, Miguelito But Josie knows she’s not supposed to eat between meals.” She spoke as if her daughter were a stranger in the room Miguel Chico put down the cracker he had just buttered “Eat, cousin,” she said “You have permission from on high.” And she put the two remaining snacks in her mouth at the same time “Josie, I’m warning you,” Eduviges said “If you don’t feel like eating your supper later, there won’t be any midnight raids on the refrigerator.” “They’re so nice, they make me sick,” Josie told Miguel Chico 15 Her nephew mumbled something noncommittal and was glad when his aunt and cousin did not ask him to repeat it He felt the kitchen charged with their antagonism toward each other, very like when he was in his father’s presence Here, he was an observer, but he lost his appetite in an instant Josie fixed three more crackers and offered him one He took it and set it next to the other on the blue napkin in his lap 90 Josie licked the apple butter on the spoon “It sure is hard,” she said to Miguel Chico, “being the sister of a perfect child and a saint.” Then, looking at her mother with even darker eyes, she said, “Leave me alone, Mother I’m old enough to make my own choices And anyway, you’re never going to approve of anything I do, so why not just give up and be quiet about it?” Miguel Chico sat stunned by the boldness of his cousin’s words He knew it was a habit of the older generation of Angels to tell everyone else but one’s own children how much they loved them and how proud they were of their accomplishments Always, they made their own feel that nothing they did would ever be good enough Miguel Chico’s father was a master of that game Still, he had never spoken to him in such a tone and with such harsh words “Well,” Eduviges said “Just remember that I warned you, young lady Please come back and see us, Miguel You are always welcome in my house.” She left the room “I think you’re going to hear from Saint Wretched,” Miguel Chico said to his cousin after putting back the top on the apple-butter jar “Oh, shut up,” Josie said “Why didn’t you eat the crackers, Mr Perfect?” “Because I wasn’t hungry,” he said “Neither was I after she started giving orders.” 79 Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Social Science passage corresponding to sample test question found on page 20 SOCIAL SCIENCE: This passage, which describes land practices in the commons (tracts of land that belonged to and were used by a community as a whole), and the enclosure movement (when the commons were taken over by private interests and fenced off), is adapted from the essay “The Place, the Region, and the Commons” by Gary Snyder, which is included in his book The Practice of the Wild (©1990 by Gary Snyder) 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 80 I stood with my climbing partner on the summit of Glacier Peak looking all ways round, ridge after ridge and peak after peak, as far as we could see He said: “You mean there’s a senator for all this?” It is easy to think there are vast spaces on earth yet unadministered, perhaps forgotten, or unknown, but it is all mapped and placed in some domain In North America there is a lot that is in the public domain, which has its problems, but at least they are problems we are all enfranchised to work on American public lands are the twentieth-century incarnation of a much older institution known across Eurasia—in English called the “commons”—which was the ancient mode of both protecting and managing the wilds of the self-governing regions It worked well enough until the age of market economies, colonialism, and imperialism Let me give you a kind of model of how the commons worked Between the extremes of deep wilderness and the private plots of the farmstead lies a territory which is not suitable for crops In earlier times it was used jointly by the members of a given tribe or village This area, embracing both the wild and the semi-wild, is of critical importance It is necessary for the health of the wilderness because it adds big habitat, overflow territory, and room for wildlife to fly and run It is essential even to an agricultural village economy because its natural diversity provides the many necessities and amenities that the privately held plots cannot It enriches the agrarian diet with game and fish The shared land supplies firewood, poles and stone for building, clay for the kiln, herbs, dye plants, and much else It is especially important as seasonal or full-time open range for cattle, horses, goats, pigs, and sheep In the abstract the sharing of a natural area might be thought of as a matter of access to “common pool resources” with no limits or controls on individual exploitation The fact is that such sharing developed over millennia and always within territorial and social contexts In the peasant societies of both Asia and 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 Europe there were customary forms that gave direction to the joint use of land They did not grant free access to outsiders, and there were controls over entry and use by member households The commons is both specific land and the traditional community institution that determines the carrying capacity for its various subunits and defines the rights and obligations of those who use it, with penalties for lapses Because it is traditional and local, it is not identical with today’s “public domain,” which is land held and managed by a central government Under a national state such management may be destructive (as it is becoming in Canada and the United States) or benign, but in no case is it locally managed One of the ideas in the current debate on how to reform our public lands is that of returning them to regional control An example of traditional management: what would keep one household from bringing in more and more stock and tempting everyone toward overgrazing? In earlier England and in some contemporary Swiss villages, the commoner could only turn out to common range as many head of cattle as he could feed over the winter in his own corrals This meant that no one was allowed to increase his herd from outside with a cattle drive just for summer grazing There is a well-documented history of the commons in relation to the village economies of Europe and England In England from the time of the Norman Conquest the knights and overlords began to gain control over the many local commons From the fifteenth century on the landlord class increasingly fenced off village-held land and turned it over to private interests The enclosure movement was backed by the big wool corporations who found profit from sheep to be much greater than that from farming The wool business had a destructive effect on the soils and dislodged peasants The arguments for enclosure in England—efficiency, higher production—ignored social and ecological effects and served to cripple the sustainable agriculture of some districts The enclosures created a population of rural homeless who were forced in their desperation to become the world’s first industrial working class The enclosures were tragic both for the human community and for natural ecosystems The fact that England now has the least forest and wildlife of all the nations of Europe has much to with the enclosures Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Social Science passage corresponding to sample test questions found on pages 21 and 23 SOCIAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from the biography Huey Long by T Harry Williams (©1969 by Alfred A Knopf, Inc.) 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 The story seems too good to be true—but people who should know swear that it is true The first time that Huey P Long campaigned in rural, Latin, Catholic south Louisiana, the local boss who had him in charge said at the beginning of the tour: “Huey, you ought to remember one thing in your speeches today You’re from north Louisiana, but now you’re in south Louisiana And we got a lot of Catholic voters down here.” “I know,” Huey answered And throughout the day in every small town Long would begin by saying: “When I was a boy, I would get up at six o’clock in the morning on Sunday, and I would hitch our old horse up to the buggy and I would take my Catholic grandparents to mass I would bring them home, and at ten o’clock I would hitch the old horse up again, and I would take my Baptist grandparents to church.” The effect of the anecdote on the audiences was obvious, and on the way back to Baton Rouge that night the local leader said admiringly: “Why, Huey, you’ve been holding out on us I didn’t know you had any Catholic grandparents.” “Don’t be a fool,” replied Huey “We didn’t even have a horse.” Some people would say today, as some said then, that the incident was characteristic of Huey P Long, that it revealed all the cynicism and contempt of democracy and all the scheming ruthlessness of the man who seemed in the 1930’s to be the first American dictator, the first great native fascist, who was compared to Hitler and Mussolini, who finally commanded one of the largest mass followings in the country and appeared to be on the verge of taking over the national government as he had his own state And he was a new type of leader on the American scene—this man whose reddishbrown hair dipped rebelliously over his forehead, whose full and facile face could in a moment shift from its usual expression of mischief to one of consuming anger, who could act like a rustic clown off the platform and turn into a magnetic spellbinder when he stepped on it A pudgy pixie who could suddenly become a demon, he was different—and yet in many ways he was completely traditional His many enemies missed the latter aspect But not even they could deny that something made him surpassingly interesting; something set him apart from other leaders of his time 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 He went to Washington with the conviction that his destiny would lead him to the presidency, just as from youth he planned step by step the career that would lead him to the highest office He entered the Senate as a liberal Democrat, a supporter of men and measures to curb big business In 1932 he advocated that his party nominate as its presidential candidate Franklin D Roosevelt Long stumped vigorously for Roosevelt in the campaign, and after the latter’s election there was a brief period when it seemed that the two were going to make an unusually effective combination, the Eastern and the Southern liberals working together for liberal reform That possibility evaporated almost immediately He realized that Roosevelt was a man who had a will fully as strong as his own and who was also just as great a politician Returning from an interview with Roosevelt, he said to a close friend: “I found a man as smart as I am I don’t know if I can travel with him.” Roosevelt feared what Long might accomplish as a conventional political operator, as a rival who might unseat him from the presidency On the eve of the election of 1936 most of the talk at Democratic headquarters concerned Long’s intentions, and it was scared talk Would Huey be a presidential candidate on a third-party ticket? Long himself had a somewhat different plan According to the testimony of intimates, he intended to run some liberal Democrat as a third-party entry and so divide the liberal vote that the Republican candidate would win The Republicans would be incapable of dealing with the depression, the economic system would go to pieces, and by 1940 the country would be crying for a strong leader to save it Conceivably, it might have happened just as he thought it would Just as conceivably, it might not have Long might well have foundered on the rock of the twoparty system, as other gifted political rebels before him had done Instead of grasping the supreme success he saw as his destiny, he might have lived out his life as a frustrated and embittered secondary politician What might have been can never be known Fate, which has shattered the dreams of other strong men, suddenly intervened On a warm September night in 1935 Huey Long, at the height of his power, apparently invincible, was shot down by an assassin in his capitol at Baton Rouge 81 Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Social Science passage corresponding to sample test question found on page 22 SOCIAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from an article by David Ferman, “Too Much of a Good Thing,” which appeared in the magazine Adbusters Quarterly (©1991 by Adbusters Media Foundation) Kermit the Frog should be proud At long last North America is learning what the famous amphibian has lamented for years: It’s not easy being green 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 82 The greening of our society has surpassed the media trend phase, and has taken root in our culture as a permanent imperative, an ongoing reality that will affect every facet of our society When even corporate America takes (at least the rhetoric of) environmentalism to heart we can be confident that the movement has been firmly entrenched When a corporate juggernaut like Procter & Gamble flies executives to a Victoria, B.C., city council meeting to beg that their disposable diapers not be banned from local landfills; and then offers to donate $100,000 in seed money to the city’s composting program, we can be certain that green will be around as long as greenbacks But a disturbing pattern has developed within the movement as it grows The pattern goes like this: scientists forecast a specific cataclysm (ozone depletion, global warming, rampant deforestation); the mass media disseminates the information (inevitably oversimplifying things); public reacts with shock and demands answers; the media redoes the story with household tips to prevent said cataclysm; corporate sector and finally government present “friendly” (bandaid) programs to slow down the inevitable; media drops the subject; public relaxes; scientists announce a new calamity and the merry jig goes on There are many drawbacks to this sort of feedback loop, not the least being that each successive crisis brings us closer to a jaded, “quit crying wolf” attitude Our problem lies in the nature of reaction itself Because environmental problems are so often presented in an air of crisis, we lose the opportunity to calmly examine the source of the problems When we explore the reasons behind ecological threats, we delve no further than learning that, say, fluorocarbons from aerosols deplete upper atmosphere ozone Rarely, if ever, we face the fact that all these impending natural disasters stem from the same man-made source All our specific little solutions make us miss the point of the problem as a whole Virtuous consumption, bringing home CFCfree deodorant spray in a biodegradable plastic bag, di- 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 verts our attention from the true source of our environmental woes—consumption itself Our culture’s highest aim, some would argue our only aim, is to grow, to consume Industrial and commercial growth are the measures of our nation’s strength Our work ethic has been so twisted and mutated that even language reflects that our dearest wish for ourselves is to grow, to be productive, and to consume This has not always been the case As social critic Stuart Ewen recently noted, “Up until the 17th century, ‘consumption’ had a negative connotation, essentially it’s about destruction.” Later, during the 17th and 18th centuries, consumption gained a neutral sense in describing the new marketplace economics By the 20th century consumerism and consumption were being exalted “To be a consumer is what we are,” says Ewen “Consumption is the ideal we seek Unfortunately, it is still what it meant before the 17th century A consumption-based economy is an economy driven by waste and therefore constant buying and disposing of goods starts clouding the environment, starts destroying the ozone layer, starts filling the waters that sustain us with garbage making life on earth impossible Then we have to realize that consumption as a way of life has to be thrown into question.” But when our ancestors prayed and worked for growth and productivity they didn’t have material gain as their only aim Growth could also be gained in spiritual, educational and other realms Somehow, somewhere, we lost sight of what success means and fashioned in its place a glorious, shining future where bigger is better, new is good, and old is to be replaced as quickly as possible I don’t think our forefathers and mothers would be satisfied with our fifty varieties of cereal, our traffic jams, our undisposable nuclear waste, and our landfills full of disposable diapers Impressed? Yes Horrified? Maybe Satisfied? I doubt it Even without knowing of the ecological drawbacks, they would probably say we are making pigs of ourselves: wasting far more than we use; and using much, much more than we need Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Social Science passage corresponding to sample test questions found on pages 22 and 24 SOCIAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from Thurman Arnold’s The Symbols of Government (©1935 by Yale University Press) 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 The ideal of a fair trial is constantly in conflict with other ideals As an example of this the writer recalls a conversation with a great law teacher Jake Factor, a notorious resident of Chicago, was resisting extradition (forced removal from one state to another for trial) He was represented by Newton D Baker, who was successful in getting the judges of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals to deny extradition The law teacher expressed dismay that a man of Mr Baker’s prominence at the bar should defend a member of the underworld He was reminded that the Bar Association had gone on record against the practice of criminal law by a class called “shysters” (crooked lawyers) and, therefore, persons like Mr Baker should be urged to defend criminals, since every criminal is entitled to a defense His reply was that while perhaps this might be so, the defense should consist only in a cold presentation of the possible points involved The answer was then given that if Mr Baker had done this, he would probably have lost the case, and this would be a breach of loyalty toward his client In the same way, in every criminal prosecution we see a number of absolutely contradictory ideals marching side by side: an attorney should not take cases the winning of which imperils the forces of law and order; every criminal, however, is entitled to a defense; criminal lawyers, however, should not resort to mere technicalities; nevertheless they should everything legally possible for their clients Here we have the contradiction between the ideal of a permanent unyielding law which must be enforced without respect to persons, and the ideal of justice, which can never ignore persons This conflict is resolved as most conflicts are resolved, by inventing a devil who can be blamed for the inconsistencies of the system In the American trial the part of the devil is taken by the jury We are constantly defending the jury as the best device for securing “Justice” ever invented, and at the same time attacking it and seeking to limit its functions The defense always refers to juries in general as an institution protecting our liberties, etc The attack always centers about juries in particular cases, considered as an unpredictable body, moved by emotional 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 considerations, and not careful of the fundamental principles of the law because of ignorance, prejudice, etc Yet the jury continues as the great symbol of justice, in spite of constant proof of its inadequacy in particular cases Actually, of course, the reason for the existence of the jury is to absorb the criticism of the numerous unsatisfactory results in the trial of cases When Samuel Insull is acquitted, we blame the jury if we not like the result We cannot blame the law, because according to the law there was a question of fact to be left to the jury which the law had no right to decide More efficient methods of judicial investigation can easily be imagined, but none more picturesque When a great government treats the lowliest of criminals as an equal antagonist and submits the case to twelve ordinary people, we have a gesture of recognition to the dignity of the individual which has an extraordinary dramatic appeal Its claim is on our emotions, rather than our common sense The only function which the criminal trial can perform is to express currently held ideals about crime and about trials It can act as a brake against a popular hysteria which insists upon following any one of the ideals to its logical conclusion, but it can only accomplish this by emphasizing some competing ideal Thus in prohibition times the ideal against searches and seizures was given a new emphasis in response to a popular demand, and thus the courts appeared as the great bulwarks of individual liberty In the play of conflicting ideals in the trial, we have a great stabilizing agency In the confusion so many different moral values are represented that everyone is more or less satisfied that his own ideals have not been entirely ignored Overwhelming evidence of this is found in the enormous appeal which such trials make to the public They permit the public to argue and discuss all the various contradictory attitudes about crime and criminals, since these different roles are all represented by the various persons connected with the trial, with tremendous dramatic effect Without the drama of the criminal trial, it is difficult to imagine on just what institution we would hang our conflicting ideals of public morality 83 Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Humanities passage corresponding to sample test question found on page 19 HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from “Jacob Lawrence: Art as Seen Through a People’s History” by Robert Wernick (©1987 by the Smithsonian Institution) 84 Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Humanities passage corresponding to sample test question found on page 19 his shoes, as Father swept us around the room HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from the essay “Albany, 1958” by Lydia Minatoya It appeared in her book Talking to High Monks in the Snow (©1992 by Lydia Minatoya) This story takes place in Albany, New York 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 The meter of my childhood was the rising and plunging of a sewing machine needle: rapid and smooth, like an endless distant drum roll My mother hummed as she sewed She guided the fabric this way and that In 1938, she had graduated from a school of costume design, and before World War II, she had her own boutique in Los Angeles It was a time when the dream of America never seemed finer The Albany of my childhood was a festive place, closer in spirit to the nineteenth century than to the twenty-first Italian pushcart grocers crowded southern city blocks, crafting tiered architectural wonders from fresh produce and pungent sausage Heavy-legged workhorses clopped along cobblestones, delivering bread from German bakeries and milk from Dutch dairies A cable car ran along streets named for trees Each year in early April, an annual dinner-dance was sponsored by the pharmaceutical institute where my father worked as a researcher A ballroom was rented in a downtown hotel Musicians were hired to play big-band music The dinner-dance was the only time when my mother would sew for herself It was the one time when my parents went out, alone, together I was a romantic child, dreamy and diffuse For me, the dinner-dance was an annual event: looked forward to in long anticipation and back upon with nostalgia Each year, on a snowy weekday evening, Father would take us window shopping The deserted downtown streets would be a magical glaze of snow-softened lights and shadowy shop displays My mother would linger in front of the mannequins clad in evening apparel I would follow along, drunk with wonder Each year before the tape had desiccated on the backs of the New Year’s cards and they had fallen to the floor, my mother would have decided on the design for her dinner-dance dress Then there would be a trip to the fabric store I would run my hands along graduated rainbows of thread spools I would watch their changing hues as they shimmered in the light As the dress took form, my parents would practice dancing “Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow,” Father would mutter with determination as he trod unmincingly on Okaa-chan’s feet and guided her into the walls 45 “Next lady?” he gallantly would inquire My sister Misa and I would take turns, balancing on the tops of 50 55 60 65 70 I always thought that Dinner-Dance Eve had some of the magic of Christmas Every year, I would perch on the bathtub’s edge I would watch my father fix his tie “See the nice dimple below the knot?” Father would turn from the mirror and bend to show me “The dimple is very important.” I solemnly would nod—the honored recipient of this arcane cultural wisdom Back in the bedroom, Okaa-chan would slide into her new dress She would glance at her reflection with modest pleasure When she moved, I could catch the sweet scent of face powder When I was seven or eight, the window shopping and the dinner-dances stopped The granite façades of the downtown stores were grimy with graffiti Display windows were boarded with plywood The elegant hotels had fallen into disrepair No one danced to bigband music anymore As I grew older, my mother began to sew for wealthy women The women lived in country homes where sunlight, reflected from swimming pools just beyond French doors, played across fine wood floors Once after a luncheon in the city, a woman came to our house for a fitting Standing erect in the doorway, then bowing slightly, my mother met her formally “Won’t you please come in? May I please take your coat?” “Here you go Try to put it somewhere clean.” 75 Like an eagle, her words slipped regally down a great distance and struck with awful ease After the fitting, my father was ashamed and angry 80 85 90 “Actually, I not like this work,” he stormed “You not have to this; we not need this kind of money.” He waved his arms dismissively at Okaachan’s sewing machine “They come and look at our home with contempt You kneel at their hems like a servant! Mo dame desu yo! It is no good, I tell you!” Okaa-chan was intractable Eloquent in anger, she blazed over the pronunciation of words that ordinarily would have left pondering pauses in her speech “I not care what they think of me, of our home They cannot affect our value.” My mother stepped in front of her sewing machine, as if to shield it from scorn “My work gives me happiness.” She squarely faced my father “I not care if you speak as Husband,” she said “I am a Designer!” 85 Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Humanities passage corresponding to sample test questions found on page 21 HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from Rob Swigart’s Women Poets of the World (©1983 by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.) 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 Poetry begins in life and its necessities, but in order to flourish as a written art it requires leisure, the time to pursue and to perfect The Heian Period (794–1185 A.D.) in Japan provided an abundance of that leisure and the desire to perfect a tradition which is unique in the histories of world literature The word Heian itself means “peace,” “tranquillity.” Culture—visual arts, literature, philosophy, music—was concentrated in Kyoto, where an elegant court gathered around the Emperor and his family Outside of the capital there was little of interest to these perhaps two thousand people; enormous energy was concentrated in just a few square miles, an energy which could be devoted entirely to clothing, poetry, food, incense and intrigue There were no wars, no invasions from outside this insulated and insular country, no popular uprisings to distract attention from the refinement of the senses Japanese was, during the entire Heian era, considered unsuited to the lofty thoughts of serious poetry, for which the Chinese language was reserved Japanese would be used for occasional poems, love verses, the literature of seduction and lament It was left to women to write in Japanese, in the vernacular, while men reserved the supposedly more difficult Chinese for themselves, unaware that what they were writing was imitation Chinese literature, inferior to the original, and, above all, inferior to what contemporary women were writing in their native tongue But in time it became apparent that all that once appeared trivial and marginal was in fact the outstanding achievement in Japanese literature, and one of the greatest achievements in all of world literature Women produced the best, the greatest classics in Japanese: not simply The Tale of Genji, Murasaki’s Diary, the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, but the poetry of Ono no Komachi, Ise, Otomo no Sakanoe and others So important were women to the native literature that when men set their hands to writing poetic diaries, as Ki no Tsurayuki did in the Tosa Diary, they often wrote under the persona of a woman It is clear then that women occupied a strong position in Japan during the first centuries following the development of literacy, so long as the vernacular remained outside the realm of power and prestige 86 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 During these first five hundred years they created the themes, forms and moods which shaped subsequent Japanese literary tradition: the tanka, with its elegiac tone and characteristic imagery; the diary; and the novel Deeply embedded in the poems of Japanese women are feelings of regret about the shortness of life, the fickleness of love, and the ravages of age, which imbue them with a brooding melancholy They rapidly became conventionalized and traditional, a sorrowful lament, perhaps, for the passing of desire as much as for the torment of it These elegiac feelings, and a dark mysteriousness, are an essential part of the tradition, with special literary terms and meanings; they are no longer confined to women At the end of the Heian era, when political and military upheaval destroyed the leisurely culture in Kyoto, men, and martial virtues, took over the vernacular as well as official culture Then poetry became something to occupy the rare moments of rest in a soldier’s life, or in the lives of hermits, priests, or courtiers confined to the distant court far from important events The imitation of Chinese poetry became a secondary occupation even for men; women surrendered their pre-eminence in the vernacular literature, and finally, as in so many other cultures, nearly vanished from the anthologies The tradition they had done so much to shape was carried on by men Not until the beginning of the twentieth century did women reappear as an important force in Japanese literature, despite the existence of one or two significant haiku poets, for example Chiyo, in the Tokugawa period Some modern women poets, like Yosano Akiko, returned to traditional forms, haiku and tanka (which had fallen into disuse), and made use of traditional imagery, but expanded the range of feeling and experience to include more psychological and emotional complexity Others, like Shiraishi Kazuko, have absorbed various manifestations of Western culture, from T S Eliot, Ezra Pound and other modern poets to jazz rhythms and cabaret songs The swift industrialization of post–World War II Japan has produced changes in lifestyle and in the conditions of women; these changes have had a profound effect on their poetry Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Humanities passage corresponding to sample test questions found on pages 23 and 24 and gingerbread trim, were shipped ’round the Horn from New England to be assembled in San Francisco and its environs A few of them still can be found in towns like Atherton, Benicia, and Sonoma HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from Kenneth Naversen’s article “19th Century Survivors: Northern California Victorians” (©1988 by the California State Automobile Association) 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 In the last couple of decades, Victorian houses have been enjoying a renaissance Recent generations raised on the skim milk of modern architecture lately have acquired a taste for the butterfat and flamboyance of late 19th century design As a result, restored Victorians have become newly conspicuous throughout the country Old cottages and mansions left over from the previous century are being refurbished everywhere, and in some communities entire neighborhoods are aglitter with freshly painted towers, turrets, fish-scale shingles, carved wooden fancywork, and other trappings from those fabled days before the turn of the century Northern California, as it happens, is especially well endowed with relics from its golden past American settlement of the West Coast, after all, coincided neatly with the Victorian era in architecture, and in that period a half-dozen uninhibited building styles fashionable in the East were brought to the Pacific, where they dominated house design until the turn of the century The gingerbread age began in California when that infamous horde of gold seekers flooded through San Francisco on their way to the mother lode country in the middle of the last century In the 50 years that followed, ornate mansions and more modest, but similarly inspired cottages sprouted up almost everywhere around the state Towered, frilly, eccentric, they were perfect architectural expressions of the heady, turbulent times in which they were born Today, most of them have disappeared, victims of ineluctable progress But, considering the phenomenal development that has overtaken the state in the last 100 years, California has been remarkably successful in preserving its architectural heritage—and not only in obvious bastions of tradition like San Francisco and Eureka Today it is rare to find a community founded before the turn of the century that does not boast at least a few architectural treasures Many towns—Napa, Santa Cruz, Woodland—have entire blocks of vintage houses Even Southern California, home of the fast lane, retains a small but select sampling 50 Other Victorian styles, Italianate, French Second Empire, Eastlake, Queen Anne, also were borrowed from the East But it was not long before house design on the West Coast began to take some idiosyncratic twists of its own 55 San Francisco, a town fueled from the start by dreams and gold dust, was particularly prone to flights of architectural fancy Architects and builders attracted by the unprecedented boom taking place in the Golden Gate city soon were blending elements of several styles to produce effects that sometimes shocked visitors from the Atlantic “Extravagant and bizarre” was the judgment of one English commentator on some of their more exotic creations But, as the century progressed, the city’s architectural influence was felt in towns up and down the coast By the 1880s, elements of what had been dubbed “The San Francisco Style” could be found from Seattle to San Diego 60 65 70 75 80 85 Closer to home, the East Bay developed as a “desirable suburban location” where Victorian houses had space to expand more luxuriously than in the city Today, Berkeley and Oakland have many fine old residences dating from the 1880s and ’90s, and Alameda maintains one of the densest clusters of elaborate, wellmaintained Victorians in the country Redwood construction had a special influence on building in Northern California On one hand, the material lent itself readily to the sort of ornament that later was damned as Victorian excess; on the other, its resistance to decay was very real Its frequent use as a construction material helps explain both the extravagance and the longevity of many of the houses built during the period This is especially apparent in Eureka and Arcata, where local lumber barons vied with one another to build the consummate redwood palace The most famous of them all, the William Carson mansion, stands, a century after it was built, as one of the monuments of Victorian architecture in America But the two towns on Humboldt Bay also have many smaller, no less interesting examples The first of the Victorian styles, Gothic Revival, arrived in California in the form of prefabricated houses in the 1850s While local building industries were being developed, dozens of cottages, complete to windows 87 Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Natural Science passage corresponding to sample test questions found on pages 20 and 22 NATURAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from Frank Close, Michael Marten, and Christine Sutton’s The Particle Explosion (©1987 by Frank Close, Michael Marten, and Christine Sutton) 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 88 The detector is a kind of ultimate microscope, which records what happens when a [subatomic] particle strikes another particle, either in a fixed target such as a lump of metal or a chamber filled with a gas or liquid, or in an on-coming beam in a collider The 1950s and 60s were the age of the bubble chamber, so called because electrically charged particles moving through it produce trails of tiny bubbles in the liquid filling the chamber But today most experiments are based on electronic detectors Detectors rarely record all the particle collisions that occur in a particular experiment Usually collisions occur thousands of times a second and no equipment can respond quickly enough to record all the associated data Moreover, many of the collisions may reveal mundane ‘events’ that are relatively well understood So the experimenters often define beforehand the types of event that may reveal the particles they are trying to find, and program the detector accordingly This is what a major part of the electronics in a detector is all about The electronics form a filter system, which decides within a split second whether a collision has produced the kind of event that the experimenters have defined as interesting and which should therefore be recorded by the computer Of the thousands of collisions per second, only one may actually be recorded One of the advantages of this approach is its flexibility: the filter system can always be reprogrammed to select different types of event Often, computer graphics enable the events to be displayed on computer monitors as images, which help the physicists to discover whether their detector is functioning in the correct way and to interpret complex or novel events Imaging has always played an important role in particle physics In earlier days, much of the data was actually recorded in photographic form—in pictures of tracks through cloud chambers and bubble chambers, or even directly in the emulsion of special photographic film Many of these images have a peculiar aesthetic appeal, resembling abstract art Even at the subatomic level nature presents images of itself that reflect our own imaginings 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 The essential clue to understanding the images of particle physics is that they show the tracks of the particles, not the particles themselves What a pion, for instance, really looks like remains a mystery, but its passage through a substance—solid, liquid, or gas—can be recorded Particle physicists have become as adept at interpreting the types of track left by different particles as the American Indians were at interpreting the tracks of an enemy A number of simple clues immediately narrows down the possibilities For instance, many detectors are based around a magnet This is because the tracks of electrically-charged particles are bent in a magnetic field A curving track is the signature of a charged particle And if you know the direction of the magnetic field, then the way that the track curves—to left or right, say—tells you whether the particle is positively or negatively charged The radius of curvature is also important, and depends on the particle’s velocity and mass Electrons, for instance, which are very lightweight particles, can curve so much in a magnetic field that their tracks form tight little spirals Most of the subatomic zoo of particles have brief lives, less than a billionth of a second But this is often long enough for the particle to leave a measurable track Relatively long-lived particles leave long tracks, which can pass right through a detector Shorter-lived particles, on the other hand, usually decay visibly, giving birth to two or more new particles These decays are often easily identified in images: a single track turns into several tracks Neutral particles present more of a headache to experimenters Particles without an electric charge leave no tracks in a detector, so their presence can be deduced only from their interactions or their decay products If you see two tracks starting at a common point, apparently arising from nowhere, you can be almost certain that this is where a neutral particle has decayed into two charged particles Our perception of nature has deepened not only because the accelerators have increased in power, but also because the detection techniques have grown more sophisticated The quality of particle imagery and the range of information it provides have both improved over the years Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Natural Science passage corresponding to sample test question found on page 21 NATURAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from Lewis Thomas’s The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (©1979 by Lewis Thomas) 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 We tend to think of our selves as the only wholly unique creations in nature, but it is not so Uniqueness is so commonplace a property of living things that there is really nothing at all unique about it Even individual, free-swimming bacteria can be viewed as unique entities, distinguishable from each other even when they are the progeny of a single clone Spudich and Koshland have recently reported that motile microorganisms of the same species are like solitary eccentrics in their swimming behavior When they are searching for food, some tumble in one direction for precisely so many seconds before quitting, while others tumble differently and for different, but characteristic, periods of time If you watch them closely, tethered by their flagellae to the surface of an antibody-coated slide, you can tell them from each other by the way they twirl, as accurately as though they had different names Fish can tell each other apart as individuals, by the smell of self So can mice, and here the olfactory discrimination is governed by the same H2 locus which contains the genes for immunologic self-marking The markers of self, and the sensing mechanisms responsible for detecting such markers, are conventionally regarded as mechanisms for maintaining individuality for its own sake, enabling one kind of creature to defend and protect itself against all the rest Selfness, seen thus, is for self-preservation In real life, though, it doesn’t seem to work this way The self-marking of invertebrate animals in the sea, who must have perfected the business long before evolution got around to us, was set up in order to permit creatures of one kind to locate others, not for predation but to set up symbiotic households The anemones who live on the shells of crabs are precisely finicky; so are the crabs Only a single species of anemone will find its way to only a single species of crab They sense each other exquisitely, and live together as though made for each other 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 tiny vestigial parasite, in the form of a jellyfish, permanently affixed to the ventral surface near the mouth In curiosity to learn how the medusa got there, some marine biologists began searching the local waters for earlier developmental forms, and discovered something amazing The attached parasite, although apparently so specialized as to have given up living for itself, can still produce offspring, for they are found in abundance at certain seasons of the year They drift through the upper waters, grow up nicely and astonishingly, and finally become full-grown, handsome, normal jellyfish Meanwhile, the snail produces snail larvae, and these too begin to grow normally, but not for long While still extremely small, they become entrapped in the tentacles of the medusa and then engulfed within the umbrellashaped body At first glance, you’d believe the medusae are now the predators, paying back for earlier humiliations, and the snails the prey But no Soon the snails, undigested and insatiable, begin to eat, browsing away first at the radial canals, then the borders of the rim, finally the tentacles, until the jellyfish becomes reduced in substance by being eaten while the snail grows correspondingly in size At the end, the arrangement is back to the first scene, with the full-grown nudibranch basking, and nothing left of the jellyfish except the round, successfully edited parasite, safely affixed to the skin near the mouth It is a confusing tale to sort out, and even more confusing to think about Both creatures are designed for this encounter, marked as selves so that they can find each other in the waters of the Bay of Naples The collaboration, if you want to call it that, is entirely specific; it is only this species of medusa and only this kind of nudibranch that can come together and live this way And, more surprising, they cannot live in any other way; they depend for their survival on each other They are not really selves, they are specific others I’ve never heard of such a cycle before [These creatures] are bizarre, that’s it, unique And at the same time, like a vaguely remembered dream, they remind me of the whole earth at once Sometimes there is such a mix-up about selfness that two creatures, each attracted by the molecular configuration of the other, incorporate the two selves to make a single organism The best story I’ve ever heard about this is the tale told of the nudibranch and medusa living in the Bay of Naples When first observed, the nudibranch, a common sea slug, was found to have a 89 Appendix Passages Corresponding to Sample Test Questions Natural Science passage corresponding to sample test question found on page 23 NATURAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from David Quammen’s Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature (©1985 by David Quammen) 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 90 Fallen leaves are the single chief source of fuel for the river ecosystem The chain of river life begins—in an important sense, the sense of energy transfer and the construction of living matter—in autumn, at just the time when life on land is closing down for the winter hiatus Yellowed alder leaves, aspen and willow and cottonwood, drift onto the water and float for a while, then sink, to become wedged between rocks; bacteria and fungi climb aboard and begin feasting, digesting, causing decay; the leaves crumble to a fine mulch that sails away on the current Downstream, the larvae of caddisflies, blackflies and mayflies scoop in the mulch with all manner of ingenious nets and filters, and devour it like a chef’s salad, bacteria and fungi included Where the mixture falls to rest in dead water, where half-decayed fragments catch in crannies, stonefly nymphs waddle up to browse, hungry crayfish appear, and those delicate shrimplike scudders, the amphipods Eaten once, passed once through a gut, the same stuff is taken again further downstream by other insects and shellfish, passed again through a gut, and still again after that, until all food value has been extracted It’s a system that brooks no waste This nutritious vegetable bounty is called detritus: the granola of rivers Other species of mayfly, stonefly and caddisfly, as well as midge larvae and snails, satisfy themselves grazing algae off rocks The common blackfly larva, bizarre of design and flexible of habit, hangs backward from hooked feet with its head swinging downstream, straining the current with bristly mustaches for detritus and floating diatoms, and then occasionally, for variety, bends over to scrape its foothold clear of algae A few stoneflies and caddisflies also raid the moss gardens All of these pacific invertebrates—grazing and cropping and savoring their tangy mulch—are the primary consumers in the river ecosystem, the creatures responsible for turning vegetables into meat After them, in hot pursuit, come their natural enemies, the small carnivores Most of these, too, are insects The dragonfly nymph is a formidable hunter, with a wildly improbable lower lip that springs out under hydraulic pressure, snags a tiny victim in its hooked teeth, and then, on retrieve, slaps the food straight back into the dragonfly’s mouth, brisk and indelicate as a chimp stealing peaches Making it even more deadly, the 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 nymph has a pair of large compound eyes that achieve their binocular focus at precisely the point before its nose where the lip structure reaches full extension: Any morsel seen with both eyes is a morsel perfectly targeted One type of caddisfly larva builds a conical silken net facing open to the current, then lurks at the narrow end and, when a smaller animal is swept in, rushes out like a spider to pounce on it Large nymphs from a branch of the stonefly clan are also estimable predators, as are both the larvae and adults of some water beetles, and even a few species of mayfly On their best days, these secondary consumers rule as lords of the streambottom jungle; one bad day, one mistake, one loss of footing, and they are in the belly of a trout Thousands of bad days for millions of cold-water insects, and the result is what we often call, with some narrowness of vision, a good trout stream But a good trout stream must first be an excellent insect stream, a superior haven for algae and fungi and bacteria, a prime dumping ground for dead leaves, a surpassing reservoir of oxygen and calcium It will then also, and thereby, be a good osprey stream, a favorite among otters, a salvation to dippers and kingfishers and bank swallows and heron, mergansers and Canada geese and water shrews, mink and muskrat and beaver Not to mention the occasional grizzly bear And who knows but that, sometime, a human might want to drink The essence of vitality for any ecosystem is complexity and balance In a free-flowing mountain river, the physical, chemical, and biological conditions that constitute habitat for a single living creature change drastically over short distances in all directions—upstream, downstream, shallower, deeper, in front of a rock, behind it, under it This heterogeneity makes for spectacular diversity of species, comparable to an ocean shelf, or the heart of an equatorial rainforest And that diversity in its turn makes for great complexity of interlocking relationships, great richness of life, and balance [...]... colleges use ACT scores as one piece of information in making decisions about admissions and course placement, high schools can use students’ ACT scores as they review their schools’ performance It is important to tie all the assessment information you gather to the goals of your English Language Arts program and to discuss how these goals are aligned with information about postsecondary institutions... assessment information that a school or school district can collect Some types yield quantitative data (performance described in numerical terms), others qualitative data (performance described in nonnumerical terms, such as text, audio, video, or photographs, etc.) All types, when properly analyzed, can yield useful insights into student learning For example, schools and teachers can collect information... reflect postsecondary institutions nationally The Benchmark Scores are median course placement values for these institutions and as such represent a typical set of expectations College Readiness Benchmark Scores have also been developed for EXPLORE and for PLAN, to indicate a student’s probable readiness for collegelevel work, in the same courses named above, by the time the student graduates from high... are given in Table 4 Note that, for example, the first row of the table should be read as follows: An eighth-grade student who scores 13, or a ninth-grade student who scores 14, on the EXPLORE English Test has a 50 percent probability of scoring 18 on the ACT English Test; and a tenth-grade student who scores 15, or an eleventhgrade student who scores 17, on the PLAN English Test has a 50 percent probability... MAKING THE I NVISIBLE VISIBLE Using assessment information, such as ACT’s Educational Planning and Assessment System (EPAS), can help bring into view factors that may affect—either positively or negatively—student performance Reviewing and interpreting assessment information can encourage conversations between parents and teachers about what is best for students Using data is one way of making the... from which students might benefit Based on the College Readiness Standards, these ideas for progress are designed to provide classroom teachers with help for lesson plan development These ideas, which are given in Table 1, demonstrate one way that information learned from standardized test results can be used to inform classroom instruction Because students learn over time and in various contexts, it... challenging passages ■ read texts containing challenging sequences (e.g., flashback, flashforward), discussing how the order of events affects understanding of the text ■ develop and use strategies for deciphering the meanings of words or phrases embedded in richly figurative or technical contexts ■ synthesize information in challenging texts, making valid generalizations or conclusions about people... from figurative or somewhat technical contexts ■ Use information from one or more sections of a more challenging passage to draw generalizations and conclusions about people, ideas, and so on ■ employ strategies for defining a difficult concept, such as identifying its characteristics or providing examples of what it is and is not like ■ examine information from multiple sources and perspectives (including... through their assumptions Because of technological advances and the fast pace of our society, it is increasingly important that students not only know information but also know how to critique and manage that information Students must be provided with the tools for ongoing learning; understanding, analysis, and generalization skills must be developed so that the learner is able to adapt to a variety of situations... believes that students’ preparation for further learning is best assessed by measuring, as directly as possible, the academic skills that students have acquired and that they will need to perform at the next level of learning The required academic skills can most directly be assessed by reproducing as faithfully as possible the complexity of the students’ schoolwork Therefore, the ACT test questions are