Louisiana LEAP 2025 US History: complete guide to the set-based End-of-Course test, the content eras, the source-based and extended-response items, the achievement levels, and how to study every era from Reconstruction to the modern age

The LEAP 2025 US History assessment is Louisiana's statewide high school United States history End-of-Course test, administered by the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE). LEAP stands for the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program. It measures the Louisiana Student Standards for Social Studies for US History. This page is the index: it explains the set-based item format, the content eras and their weights, the scoring and achievement levels, the writing task, and how to study each era. The content runs from roughly Reconstruction and westward expansion to the modern age, and we have organized it here into six modules that follow the chronological story while mapping onto the test's content standards.

The course and the test

The high school US History course is a one-year survey of United States history from the post-Civil War era to the present, with content commonly capped around the early twenty-first century. The LEAP 2025 US History test is the End-of-Course assessment for that course, usually taken in eleventh grade. It has served as a social studies graduation requirement for the cohorts that still need it. LDOE has confirmed that the US History test keeps the same design, alignment, and reporting approach for its remaining administrations, while a new LEAP Civics assessment is being phased in as the social studies test for graduation. Whichever cohort you are in, the US History content and skills below are what the test rewards.

The standards the test measures

The Louisiana Student Standards for Social Studies organize US History into a skills standard and five chronological content standards:

Because Standard 1 is the skill set, almost every question on the test asks you to analyze a source before you answer. Getting fast and accurate at source analysis is the single most useful exam skill.

The set-based item format

The LEAP 2025 US History test is built on item sets. Each set presents two to six related source documents, a primary-source quotation, a political cartoon, a map, a chart, a table, or a photograph, and then asks several questions that make you analyze and use those sources. A handful of standalone items are not attached to a set. The item types are:

• Selected-response. Multiple-choice (one correct answer) and multiple-select (choose all the correct answers). Each is worth one point, with no partial credit.
• Technology-enhanced items (TEIs). The computer collects the response in another way: drag-and-drop, ordering events on a timeline, matching, completing a chart, or a hot spot on a map or image.
• Extended-response (ER) writing task. One task set ends with a written response built on its documents (see below).

The writing task

Unlike most other state US history End-of-Course tests, LEAP 2025 US History includes one extended-response (ER) writing task. It sits at the end of the test's single task set, which is built on a group of related source documents. The ER is worth up to eight points and is scored with a two-dimensional rubric:

• One dimension scores your use of historical content and evidence drawn from the documents and your own knowledge.
• The other dimension scores the strength of the claim or argument you build and support.

The practical lesson: the ER is not a recall question. You must state a clear claim, support it with specific evidence from the sources and from what you know, and address the other side. This library's dot-point pages model that claim-and-evidence move in their worked answers.

How the test is built and scored

Based on the LDOE assessment guide, the operational test is delivered in three sessions, has seven item sets and one task set, and totals about 69 points across roughly 225 minutes of testing time. The four content categories are weighted unevenly, so some eras carry more of the test than others:

The world-war decades and the Cold-War-to-modern era together carry more than half the test, so do not let the early eras crowd out your revision of the twentieth century. Always confirm the exact figures in the current LDOE assessment guide, because the guide is the authoritative source and the numbers can be refreshed each year.

The achievement levels

LEAP 2025 reports results in five achievement levels:

Your scale score places you in one level, and the score report breaks down how you did across the content eras so you can target your review.

The platform

The test is a computer-based assessment delivered through the DRC INSIGHT online platform. You read and interpret the source documents on screen and type your extended response into the engine. The test is timed, with no extra time unless a student has a documented accommodation, so practice the on-screen tools and pace yourself across the three sessions.

The modules, topic by topic

Each topic has a standard-level answer page with worked exam questions and cross-links, plus a deep-dive guide and a quiz. Browse the full set at /la-leap/us-history/syllabus.

Module 1: Reconstruction, the West, and the Gilded Age (Standard 2)

Reconstruction and the New South, westward expansion and American Indians, industrialization and big business, immigration and urbanization, labor and the Populist movement, Louisiana in the Gilded Age and the rise of Jim Crow.

Module 2: The Progressive Era and imperialism (Standards 2 and 3)

the Progressive Era, the women's suffrage movement, Progressive presidents and reform, American imperialism and the Spanish-American War, the Panama Canal and dollar diplomacy.

Module 3: World War I and the Twenties (Standards 3 and 4)

the causes of World War I and American neutrality, the United States in World War I, the home front and the peace, the Roaring Twenties, the culture wars of the 1920s, the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro.

Module 4: The Great Depression and World War II (Standard 4)

the causes of the Great Depression, the New Deal, the road to World War II, the United States in World War II, the World War II home front, the Holocaust and the atomic bomb.

Module 5: The Cold War and civil rights (Standard 5)

the origins of the Cold War, Cold War conflicts and the Red Scare, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and the 1960s, an era of social change.

Module 6: The Modern Age (Standard 6)

the conservative resurgence under Reagan, the end of the Cold War, a changing economy and globalization, September 11 and the war on terror, the United States in the modern age.

For the official guidance

LDOE publishes the LEAP 2025 Assessment Guide for US History, the Louisiana Student Standards for Social Studies, and assessment updates. Always study from the current LDOE materials, because the standards, the test design, the weights, and the item types are specific to this exam and can be refreshed each year.