SAT READING TEST CONTENT SPECIFICATIONS
Questions 1-5 are based on the following passage.
This passage is adapted from a speech delivered by
Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas on July 25,
1974, as a member of the Judiciary Committee of the
United States House of Representatives. In the passage,
Jordan discusses how and when a United States
president may be impeached, or charged with serious
offenses, while in office. Jordan’s speech was delivered
in the context of impeachment hearings against then
president Richard M. Nixon.
Today, I am an inquisitor. An hyperbole would not be
fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I
feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is
complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be
an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the
destruction, of the Constitution.
“Who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation
as the representatives of the nation themselves?” “The
subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which
proceed from the misconduct of public men.”* And that’s
what we’re talking about. In other words, [the jurisdiction
comes] from the abuse or violation of some public trust.
It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the
Constitution for any member here to assert that for a
member to vote for an article of impeachment means that
that member must be convinced that the President should
be removed from office. The Constitution doesn’t say
that. The powers relating to impeachment are an essential
check in the hands of the body of the legislature against
and upon the encroachments of the executive. The
division between the two branches of the legislature, the
House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to
accuse and to the other the right to judge—the framers of
this Constitution were very astute. They did not make the
accusers and the judges . . . the same person.
We know the nature of impeachment. We’ve been
talking about it a while now. It is chiefly designed for the
President and his high ministers to somehow be called
into account. It is designed to “bridle” the executive if he
engages in excesses. “It is designed as a method of
national inquest into the conduct of public men.”* The
framers confided in the Congress the power, if need be, to
remove the President in order to strike a delicate balance
between a President swollen with power and grown
tyrannical, and preservation of the independence of the
executive.
The nature of impeachment: a narrowly channeled
exception to the separation of powers maxim. The Federal
Convention of 1787 said that. It limited impeachment to
high crimes and misdemeanors, and discounted and
opposed the term “maladministration.” “It is to be used
only for great misdemeanors,” so it was said in the North
Carolina ratification convention. And in the Virginia
ratification convention: “We do not trust our liberty to a
particular branch. We need one branch to check the
other.”
. . . The North Carolina ratification convention: “No
one need be afraid that officers who commit oppression
will pass with immunity.” “Prosecutions of impeachments
will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole
community,” said Hamilton in the Federalist Papers,
number 65. “We divide into parties more or less friendly
or inimical to the accused.”* I do not mean political
parties in that sense.
The drawing of political lines goes to the motivation
behind impeachment; but impeachment must proceed
within the confines of the constitutional term “high
crime[s] and misdemeanors.” Of the impeachment
process, it was Woodrow Wilson who said that “Nothing
short of the grossest offenses against the plain law of the
land will suffice to give them speed and effectiveness.
Indignation so great as to overgrow party interest may
secure a conviction; but nothing else can.”
Common sense would be revolted if we engaged
upon this process for petty reasons. Congress has a lot to
do: appropriations, tax reform, health insurance,
campaign finance reform, housing, environmental
protection, energy sufficiency, mass transportation.
Pettiness cannot be allowed to stand in the face of such
overwhelming problems. So today we’re not being petty.
We’re trying to be big, because the task we have before us
is a big one.
*Jordan quotes from Federalist No. 65, an essay by Alexander Hamilton,
published in 1788, on the powers of the United States Senate, including
the power to decide cases of impeachment against a president of the
United States.
1. The stance Jordan takes in the passage is best described as that of
A) an idealist setting forth principles.
B) an advocate seeking a compromise position.
C) an observer striving for neutrality.
D) a scholar researching a historical controversy.
2. The main rhetorical effect of the series of three phrases in lines 5-6
(“the diminution, the subversion, the destruction”) is to
A) convey with increasing intensity the seriousness of the threat Jordan
sees to the Constitution.
B) clarify that Jordan believes the Constitution was first weakened,
then sabotaged, then broken.
C) indicate that Jordan thinks the Constitution is prone to failure in
three distinct ways.
D) propose a three-part agenda for rescuing the Constitution from the
current crisis.
content: Rhetoric / Analyzing word choice
focus: Students must determine the main rhetorical effect of the
speaker’s choice of words.
3. As used in line 37, “channeled” most nearly means
A) worn.
B) sent.
C) constrained
D) siphoned.
4. In lines 49-54 (“Prosecutions . . . sense”), what is the most likely
reason Jordan draws a distinction between two types of “parties”?
A) To counter the suggestion that impeachment is or should be about
partisan politics
B) To disagree with Hamilton’s claim that impeachment proceedings
excite passions
C) To contend that Hamilton was too timid in his support for the
concept of impeachment
D) To argue that impeachment cases are decided more on the basis of
politics than on justice
5. Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to the
previous question?
A) Lines 13-17 (“It . . . office”)
B) Lines 20-24 (“The division . . . astute”)
C) Lines 55-58 (“The drawing . . . misdemeanors’”)
D) Lines 65-68 (“Congress . . . transportation”)
Questions 1-6 are based on the following passage
and supplementary material.
This passage is adapted from Ed Yong, “Turtles Use
the Earth’s Magnetic Field as Global GPS.” ©2011 by
Kalmbach Publishing Co.
In 1996, a loggerhead turtle called Adelita swam
across 9,000 miles from Mexico to Japan, crossing the
entire Pacific on her way. Wallace J. Nichols tracked this
epic journey with a satellite tag. But Adelita herself had
no such technology at her disposal. How did she steer a
route across two oceans to find her destination?
Nathan Putman has the answer. By testing hatchling
turtles in a special tank, he has found that they can use the
Earth’s magnetic field as their own Global Positioning
System (GPS). By sensing the field, they can work out
both their latitude and longitude and head in the right
direction.
Putman works in the lab of Ken Lohmann, who has
been studying the magnetic abilities of loggerheads for
over 20 years. In his lab at the University of North
Carolina, Lohmann places hatchlings in a large water tank
surrounded by a large grid of electromagnetic coils. In
1991, he found that the babies started swimming in the
opposite direction if he used the coils to reverse the
direction of the magnetic field around them. They could
use the field as a compass to get their bearing.
Later, Lohmann showed that they can also use the
magnetic field to work out their position. For them, this is
literally a matter of life or death. Hatchlings born off the
sea coast of Florida spend their early lives in the North
Atlantic gyre, a warm current that circles between North
America and Africa. If they’re swept towards the cold
waters outside the gyre, they die. Their magnetic sense
keeps them safe.
Using his coil-surrounded tank, Lohmann could
mimic the magnetic field at different parts of the Earth’s
surface. If he simulated the field at the northern edge of
the gyre, the hatchlings swam southwards. If he simulated
the field at the gyre’s southern edge, the turtles swam
west-northwest. These experiments showed that the
turtles can use their magnetic sense to work out their
latitude—their position on a north-south axis. Now,
Putman has shown that they can also determine their
longitude—their position on an east-west axis.
He tweaked his magnetic tanks to simulate the fields
in two positions with the same latitude at opposite ends of
the Atlantic. If the field simulated the west Atlantic near
Puerto Rico, the turtles swam northeast. If the field
matched that on the east Atlantic near the Cape Verde
Islands, the turtles swam southwest. In the wild, both
headings would keep them within the safe, warm embrace
of the North Atlantic gyre.
Before now, we knew that several animal migrants,
from loggerheads to reed warblers to sparrows, had some
way of working out longitude, but no one knew how. By
keeping the turtles in the same conditions, with only the
magnetic fields around them changing, Putman clearly
showed that they can use these fields to find their way. In
the wild, they might well also use other landmarks like
the position of the sea, sun and stars.
Putman thinks that the turtles work out their position
using two features of the Earth’s magnetic field that
change over its surface. They can sense the field’s
inclination, or the angle at which it dips towards the
surface. At the poles, this angle is roughly 90 degrees and
at the equator, it’s roughly zero degrees. They can also
sense its intensity, which is strongest near the poles and
weakest near the Equator. Different parts of the world
have unique combinations of these two variables. Neither
corresponds directly to either latitude or longitude, but
together, they provide a “magnetic signature” that tells the
turtle where it is.
Adapted from Nathan Putman, Courtney Endres, Catherine Lohmann, and
Kenneth Lohmann, “Longitude Perception and Bicoordinate Magnetic Maps in
Sea Turtles.” ©2011 by Elsevier Inc.
Orientation of hatchling loggerheads tested in
a magnetic field that simulates a position at the
west side of the Atlantic near Puerto Rico (left)
and a position at the east side of the Atlantic near
the Cape Verde Islands (right). The arrow in each
circle indicates the mean direction that the group
of hatchlings swam. Data are plotted relative to
geographic north (N = 0°)
1. The passage most strongly suggests that Adelita used which of the
following to navigate her 9,000-mile journey?
A) The current of the North Atlantic gyre
B) Cues from electromagnetic coils designed by Putman and Lohmann
C) The inclination and intensity of Earth’s magnetic field
D) A simulated “magnetic signature” configured by Lohmann
2. Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to the
previous question?
A) Lines 1-3 (“In 1996 . . . way”)
B) Lines 30-32 (“Using . . . surface”)
C) Lines 53-55 (“In the wild . . . stars”)
D) Lines 64-67 (“Neither . . . it is”)
3. As used in line 3, “tracked” most nearly means
A) searched for.
B) traveled over.
C) followed.
D) hunted.
4. Based on the passage, which choice best describes the relationship
between Putman’s and Lohmann’s research?
A) Putman’s research contradicts Lohmann’s.
B) Putman’s research builds on Lohmann’s.
C) Lohmann’s research confirms Putman’s.
D) Lohmann’s research corrects Putman’s.
5. The author refers to reed warblers and sparrows (line 49) primarily to
A) contrast the loggerhead turtle’s migration patterns with those of
other species.
B) provide examples of species that share one of the loggerhead turtle’s
abilities.
C) suggest that most animal species possess some ability to navigate
long distances.
D) illustrate some ways in which the ability to navigate long distances
can help a species.
6. It can reasonably be inferred from the passage and graphic that if
scientists adjusted the coils to reverse the magnetic field simulating
that in the East Atlantic (Cape Verde Islands), the hatchlings would
most likely swim in which direction?
A) Northwest
B) Northeast
C) Southeast
D) Southwest
Questions1-3 are based on the following passage and
supplementary material.
This passage is adapted from Richard Florida, The
Great Reset. ©2010 by Richard Florida.
In today’s idea-driven economy, the cost of time is
what really matters. With the constant pressure to
innovate, it makes little sense to waste countless
collective hours commuting. So, the most efficient and
productive regions are those in which people are
thinking and working—not sitting in traffic.
The auto-dependent transportation system has
reached its limit in most major cities and megaregions.
Commuting by car is among the least efficient of all our
activities—not to mention among the least enjoyable,
according to detailed research by the Nobel Prize–
winning economist Daniel Kahneman and his
colleagues. Though one might think that the economic
crisis beginning in 2007 would have reduced traffic (high
unemployment means fewer workers traveling to and
from work), the opposite has been true. Average
commutes have lengthened, and congestion has gotten
worse, if anything. The average commute rose in 2008 to
25.5 minutes, “erasing years of decreases to stand at the
level of 2000, as people had to leave home earlier in the
morning to pick up friends for their ride to work or to
catch a bus or subway train,” according to the U.S.
Census Bureau, which collects the figures. And those are
average figures. Commutes are far longer in the big West
Coast cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco and the
East Coast cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
and Washington, D.C. In many of these cities, gridlock
has become the norm, not just at rush hour but all day,
every day.
The costs are astounding. In Los Angeles, congestion
eats up more than 485 million working hours a year;
that’s seventy hours, or nearly two weeks, of full-time
work per commuter. In D.C., the time cost of congestion
is sixty-two hours per worker per year. In New York it’s
forty-four hours. Average it out, and the time cost across
America’s thirteen biggest city-regions is fifty-one hours
per worker per year. Across the country, commuting
wastes 4.2 billion hours of work time annually—nearly a
full workweek for every commuter. The overall cost to
the U.S. economy is nearly $90 billion when lost
productivity and wasted fuel are taken into account. At
the Martin Prosperity Institute, we calculate that every
minute shaved off America’s commuting time is worth
$19.5 billion in value added to the economy. The numbers
add up fast: five minutes is worth $97.7 billion; ten
minutes, $195 billion; fifteen minutes, $292 billion.
It’s ironic that so many people still believe the main
remedy for traffic congestion is to build more roads and
highways, which of course only makes the problem
worse. New roads generate higher levels of “induced
traffic,” that is, new roads just invite drivers to drive
more and lure people who take mass transit back to their
cars. Eventually, we end up with more clogged roads
rather than a long-term improvement in traffic flow.
The coming decades will likely see more intense
clustering of jobs, innovation, and productivity in a
smaller number of bigger cities and city-regions. Some
regions could end up bloated beyond the capacity of their
infrastructure, while others struggle, their promise
stymied by inadequate human or other resources.
1. The passage most strongly suggests that researchers at the Martin
Prosperity Institute share which assumption?
A) Employees who work from home are more valuable to their
employers than employees who commute.
B) Employees whose commutes are shortened will use the time saved
to do additional productive work for their employers.
C) Employees can conduct business activities, such as composing
memos or joining conference calls, while commuting.
D) Employees who have lengthy commutes tend to make more money
than employees who have shorter commutes.
2. As used in line 55, “intense” most nearly means
A) emotional.
B) concentrated.
C) brilliant.
D) determined.
3. Which claim about traffic congestion is supported by the graph?
A) New York City commuters spend less time annually delayed by
traffic congestion than the average for very large cities.
B) Los Angeles commuters are delayed more hours annually by traffic
congestion than are commuters in Washington, D.C.
C) Commuters in Washington, D.C., face greater delays annually due
to traffic congestion than do commuters in New York City.
D) Commuters in Detroit spend more time delayed annually by traffic
congestion than do commuters in Houston, Atlanta, and Chicago.
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