Like Connections to the Philippine-American War, this assessment gauges students' knowledge of the past. Rather than measure whether students can simply recall decontextualized facts, this assessment requires students to make connections across time and construct an argument about how events are connected. Students with a strong sense of the past will be able to explain that the Iranian Revolution disrupted global oil supply, resulting in gasoline shortages in the United States. The line of motorists waiting for gas in the photograph was caused by the relative scarcity of fuel in 1979. Strong students will also explain that the scarcity that led to the gasoline lines up also caused gasoline prices to spike, leading to a surge in sales of Japanese automobiles, which tended to be much more fuel efficient than American cars at the time.
