New York Regents United States History and Government (Framework): complete guide to the exam, the three parts, Enduring Issues and the Civic Literacy Essay

The New York Regents United States History and Government (Framework) examination is the high school US history test administered by the New York State Education Department (NYSED). It is the Framework-aligned exam, built on the K-12 Social Studies Framework, and it replaced the older thematic-essay version of the US History Regents. This page is the index: it explains the three-part format, the scoring, the Enduring Issues and Social Studies Practices the exam is built on, and how to study each era. The content is organized into six modules that run chronologically from colonial foundations to the present, with three of them carrying the exam-skills topics you need for the written tasks.

The exam at a glance

The exam runs for about three hours and you must answer every question in all three parts. A scaled score of 65 passes; 85 is the mastery mark.

• Part I: stimulus-based multiple choice. 28 questions, each worth 1 point. Every question gives you a stimulus (a document excerpt, a chart, a map, a political cartoon, or a photograph) and asks you to interpret it.
• Part II: short-essay questions. Two short essays, each based on a pair of documents, each scored on a 0 to 5 holistic rubric.
• Part III: the Civic Literacy document-based task. Part III A is 6 short-answer scaffold questions on a set of 6 documents (1 point each). Part III B is the Civic Literacy Essay, one extended essay using those same 6 documents, scored on a 0 to 5 holistic rubric and weighted so that it carries the heaviest share of the written marks.

How the exam is scored

Add the Part I multiple-choice points (out of 28), the Part II short-essay credits (out of 10), and the Part III A scaffold credits (out of 6) to get a combined score. The Part III B Civic Literacy Essay is scored 0 to 5 and is weighted heavily (its raw 0 to 5 score counts roughly three times in the conversion). NYSED then uses a two-dimensional conversion chart for that administration: your combined Part I, II, and III A score on one axis and your Civic Literacy Essay score on the other, meeting at your final 0 to 100 scaled score. There is no single fixed "out of" total; always read the official chart for your sitting.

The three written tasks

Each written task is scored differently, so practice them separately.

1. Part II, Set 1 (the relationship short essay). Two paragraphs in which you describe the historical context of two documents and identify and explain a relationship between the events or ideas in them. The relationship can be cause and effect, similarity or difference, or turning point. Scored 0 to 5.
2. Part II, Set 2 (the sourcing short essay). Two paragraphs in which you describe the historical context of two documents and then analyze how the audience, purpose, point of view, or bias of one document affects its reliability as a source of evidence. Scored 0 to 5.
3. Part III B (the Civic Literacy Essay). One extended essay on a constitutional or civic issue: describe the historical circumstances that produced it, explain the efforts of individuals, groups, or governments to address it, and discuss the extent of success or the impact. Scored 0 to 5 and weighted heavily.

The Enduring Issues

An Enduring Issue is a problem or challenge that has appeared across many eras and places and is still relevant today. It is not a single event; it is a recurring theme that societies face and respond to in different ways. New York names ten that run across the Social Studies Framework:

1. Conflict
2. Cooperation
3. Power
4. Inequality
5. Innovation
6. Interconnectedness
7. Ideas and beliefs
8. Environmental impact
9. Scarcity
10. Human rights violations

The skill is to recognize an Enduring Issue in the content and trace how Americans responded to it over time. Slavery, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement, for example, run through inequality, human rights violations, and power; the New Deal runs through scarcity and the role of government in the economy. The Civic Literacy Essay is essentially an Enduring Issue argument focused on a constitutional or civic problem.

The six Social Studies Practices

The Framework defines six Social Studies Practices, and the whole exam is built to test them in context:

1. Gathering, interpreting, and using evidence (the core skill, especially reading documents and judging their reliability)
2. Chronological reasoning and causation
3. Comparison and contextualization
4. Geographic reasoning
5. Economics and economic systems
6. Civic participation

How to study US History and Government

1. Learn each era as a story anchored to the Framework Key Ideas, not a list of disconnected facts.
2. Layer in specific evidence: dates, laws, people, and especially the landmark Supreme Court cases (Marbury, McCulloch, Dred Scott, Plessy, Schenck, Korematsu, Brown), which the stimulus questions and essays reward.
3. Drill the three written tasks separately against their rubrics. The Set 1, Set 2, and Civic Literacy essays look similar but are scored on different things.
4. Get fast at reading a stimulus. Practice pulling the main idea, the point of view, and the purpose from a cartoon, chart, or excerpt in under a minute.
5. Tie events to the Enduring Issues so you can group evidence quickly and write the Civic Literacy Essay under time pressure.

The modules, topic by topic

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

Module 1: Foundations and the Constitution

colonial foundations and self-government, the road to revolution and independence, the Articles of Confederation and its weaknesses, the Constitution and its principles, the Bill of Rights and the early republic, enduring issues and stimulus analysis.

Module 2: Expansion, reform and the Civil War

westward expansion and Manifest Destiny, Jacksonian democracy and Indian removal, antebellum reform movements, sectionalism and the causes of the Civil War, the Civil War and wartime powers, Reconstruction and its amendments.

Module 3: Industrialization and the Progressive Era

industrialization and the Gilded Age, labor, immigration and urbanization, the Populist response, the Progressive movement, Progressive reforms and amendments, the Part II short-essay technique.

Module 4: America as a world power

imperialism and the Spanish-American War, World War One and US entry, the home front and civil liberties in wartime, the 1920s: prosperity and tension, sourcing and document reliability.

Module 5: Depression, war and the Cold War

the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War Two and the home front, the Cold War and containment, McCarthyism and the Red Scare, the Civic Literacy Essay.

Module 6: Civil rights and modern America

the civil rights movement, the expansion of rights, the 1960s and 1970s: reform and crisis, the conservative resurgence and the end of the Cold War, the modern era and contemporary issues, the constructed-response question technique.

For the official guidance

NYSED publishes the United States History and Government (Framework) assessment page, the Educator Guide, the test design and rating guides, and released exams with their conversion charts. Always study from the current NYSED materials, because the three-part design, the rubrics, and the conversion chart are specific to this exam.