Important Updates
AP United States History Updates and New Resources for 2019-20
To help more students prepare for—and succeed on—the AP United States History Exam, we’ve clarified the course’s focus starting with the 2019-20 school year and are introducing new resources for your classroom. We’ve also moved exam registration to the fall, a best practice that improves students’ chances of earning college credit and placement.
Download the new course and exam description
New AP Resources
This August, we’re introducing AP Classroom, with a suite of new resources designed in collaboration with AP educators that will help give students personalized feedback throughout the year. These include in-depth unit guides, personal progress checks and a dashboard to measure student progress, and a question bank of real AP questions.
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AP U.S. History Course and Exam Description—Fall 2019
This is the core document for this course and is updated for the 2019-20 school year. New unit guides clearly lay out the course content and skills and recommend sequencing and pacing for them throughout the year. The CED also more clearly outlines how material will be assessed on the exam, provides instructional strategies, and gives information on the AP Program in general.
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AP U.S. History Scoring Guidelines
This document details how each of the sample free-response questions in the 2019-20 CED would be scored.
Course Overview
AP U.S. History is an introductory college-level U.S. history course. Students cultivate their understanding of U.S. history from c. 1491 CE to the present through analyzing historical sources and learning to make connections and craft historical arguments as they explore concepts like American and national identity; work, exchange, and technology; geography and the environment; migration and settlement; politics and power; America in the world; American and regional culture; and social structures.
Your updated course and exam description (CED) for the 2019-20 school year more clearly outlines all required course content and skills and defines how they will be assessed on the exam.
Course Content
Influenced by the Understanding by Design® (Wiggins and McTighe) model, this course framework provides a description of the course requirements necessary for student success.
The AP U.S. History framework is organized into nine commonly taught units of study that provide one possible sequence for the course. As always, you have the flexibility to organize the course content as you like.
Unit |
Exam Weighting |
| Unit 1: Period 1: 1491–1607 | 4%–6% |
| Unit 2: Period 2: 1607–1754 | 6%–8% |
| Unit 3: Period 3: 1754–1800 | 10%–17% |
| Unit 4: Period 4: 1800–1848 | 10%–17% |
| Unit 5: Period 5: 1844–1877 | 10%–17% |
| Unit 6: Period 6: 1865–1898 | 10%–17% |
| Unit 7: Period 7: 1890–1945 | 10%–17% |
| Unit 8: Period 8: 1945–1980 | 10%–17% |
| Unit 9: Period 9: 1980–Present | 4%–6% |
Historical Thinking Skills
The updated AP U.S. History framework included in the course and exam description outlines distinct skills that students should practice throughout the year—skills that will help them learn to think and act like historians.
Skill |
Description |
| 1. Developments and Processes | Identify and explain historical developments and processes. |
| 2. Sourcing and Situation | Analyze sourcing and situation of primary and secondary sources. |
| 3. Claims and Evidence in Sources | Analyze arguments in primary and secondary sources. |
| 4. Contextualization | Analyze the contexts of historical events, developments, or processes. |
| 5. Making Connections | Using historical reasoning processes (comparison, causation, continuity and change), analyze patterns and connections between and among historical developments and processes. |
| 6. Argumentation | Develop an argument. |
AP and Higher Education
Higher education professionals play a key role developing AP courses and exams, setting credit and placement policies, and scoring student work. The AP Higher Education site features information on recruitment and admission, advising and placement, and more.
This chart shows recommended scores for granting credit, and how much credit should be awarded, for each AP course. Your students can look up credit and placement policies for colleges and universities on the AP Credit Policy Search.
Meet the current Development Committee for AP U.S. History.