The school year has started and some of our administrators have not been doing their homework. How is that? Well, the curriculum for those entering ninth grade has drastically changed, and many global teachers are unaware of the new reality for ninth graders.

The Regents exams are going to change.

In June, 2018 the first new Global exam will be given. It will test content identified in the SS Framework as part of “Global History and Geography II.” The old scope and sequence was divided up into four parts, the new one is divided up only into two.

So, Global II focuses on the world from 1750 to the present. The US exam will change in June, 2019, however, there was not explicit information on what these changes will look like.

The material for ninth graders will thus only focus on 1750 and onward.

Another change will involve the cesation of multiple choice questions. It used to be that there were 50 multiple choice questions that spanned all of global history. Now all the questions will be in the form of DBQ questions – all of them.

This change will only affect ninth graders this year – not tenth graders.

According to a recently released memo, “new test items for the Global exam will be piloted in the spring of 2016, and then field tested in 2017, with testing for the US History exam to follow. They [the state] said that information about the design of the assessment, and the kind of test items they will use, will become available in the summer of 2016.

There has been speculation, the sort that a discerning historian might not cite as a reliable source, that the tests will probably move in the same direction that the AP History tests are moving. Meaning, less recall multiple-choice questions and more “stimulus-based” multiple choice. These types of questions start with a stimulus like a reading, an image, or a chart, then ask students three to five questions about that text. Students will need to have sharp analytical skills and bring in background information to answer the questions correctly. Here are some examples from a document of AP US History sample questions. We’ve also heard that the DBQ will stay though the focus will be argumentative writing, and that the Thematic essay is likely on the way out in favor of testing items that assess the social studies practices listed in the SS Framework.