D2.Civ.13.9-12C3 FrameworkSocial StudiesCivicsGrades 9-12

D2.Civ.13.9-12: Evaluating Public Policies by Intended and Unintended Outcomes

In plain English: D2.Civ.13.9-12 is the C3 Framework civics indicator for grades 9-12 that asks students to evaluate public policies in terms of their intended and unintended outcomes and related consequences. Students test whether a policy achieved its goals and caused the change, find results nobody aimed for and who bore them, and trace what followed, usually in U.S. Government or Civics.

Evaluate public policies in terms of intended and unintended outcomes, and related consequences.

C3 Framework for Social Studies (NCSS) · Dimension 2: Applying Disciplinary Concepts and Tools · Discipline: Civics · Processes, Rules, and Laws · Official standard

Start the lesson plan Go to the quiz

Lesson Plan

55-80 min

Overview

Students learn to evaluate public policies in terms of intended and unintended outcomes, and related consequences, the skill named in D2.Civ.13.9-12. Evaluating goes beyond describing: students state what a policy was meant to achieve, test whether it did and whether the policy caused the change, find results nobody aimed for and who bore them, and trace what followed from those results, including changes to the policy itself.

The case is national prohibition. Students read Amendments XVIII and XXI and passages from the 1931 report of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (the Wickersham Commission), a federal body that weighed benefits it found real against corruption, crowded courts and unequal enforcement. In the homework, students evaluate an invented city policy with invented data.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

Distinguish intended outcomes, unintended outcomes and related consequences of a public policy, and state an intended outcome in a form evidence can test
Evaluate whether a policy achieved its intended outcomes, weighing the quality of the evidence and other possible causes
Identify unintended outcomes of a policy, helpful or harmful, and explain who bore their costs
Trace related consequences that follow from a policy's outcomes, including responses that change or end the policy
Write an evidence-based evaluation of a policy that acknowledges evidence on the other side

Prior Knowledge Required

Students should already be comfortable with:

Analyzing the purposes, implementation and consequences of public policies D2.Civ.13.6-8
The amendment process in Article V of the Constitution
Citing specific textual evidence from primary sources RH.11-12.1

Lesson Procedure

55-80 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

Warm-Up5-10 minutes
Warm-Up Prompt
"A school bans phones from the cafeteria so that students will talk to each other at lunch. Name one result the school hoped for, one result it probably did not expect, and one thing that might happen next because of that unexpected result."
Record answers in three columns. Then label them intended outcome, unintended outcome and related consequence. Point out that the third column is often where the most important effects of a policy show up, and that it is hard to judge a policy by its goals alone. The school case is only a warm-up; the lesson's case is national prohibition.

Direct Instruction15-20 minutes

Part 1: Vocabulary for evaluation. To evaluate a public policy is to judge it against evidence and stated criteria, not only to describe it. The table gives the working terms used on this page.

Terms for evaluating a public policy (working definitions)
Term	Meaning	Question to ask
Intended outcome	A result the policy's makers and supporters aimed for	Was it achieved, and did the policy cause it?
Unintended outcome	A result no one aimed for; it can be helpful or harmful	Who gained, who paid, and could it have been foreseen?
Related consequence	A further effect that follows from the outcomes: responses, spillovers into other institutions, changes to the policy itself	What happened next because of the outcomes?
Attribution	Deciding how much of a change the policy caused, as opposed to other causes at the same time	What else changed in the same years?

Part 2: The policy. A long temperance movement, led by groups such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League, argued that liquor and the saloon caused poverty, crime, broken families and lost work. Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment in December 1917, and the states ratified it in January 1919. In October 1919 Congress passed the National Prohibition Act, often called the Volstead Act, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, to define "intoxicating liquors" and set up enforcement. National prohibition took effect in January 1920. Read Source 1, which gives both the amendment that began national prohibition and the amendment that ended it. Inoperative means of no effect, and to ratify an amendment is to approve it as part of the Constitution.

AMENDMENT XVIII
Passed by Congress December 18, 1917. Ratified January 16, 1919. Repealed by amendment 21.
Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
[...]
AMENDMENT XXI
Passed by Congress February 20, 1933. Ratified December 5, 1933.
Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

Congress of the United States and the ratifying states (National Archives transcription), Constitution of the United States, Amendments XVIII (1919) and XXI (1933) (Source 1: both amendments in full; Amendments XIX and XX, which come between them, are left out) (2025). US government work (17 U.S.C. 105). Source text.

Part 3: The evaluator. In 1929 President Herbert Hoover appointed the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, chaired by former Attorney General George W. Wickersham, to study crime and law enforcement. Its report on prohibition, dated January 7, 1931, is Sources 2-4. Tell students that the report is itself evidence: it was written by a federal commission partway through the policy, and it weighs testimony from many groups. Use Diagram 1 to set up the three questions for the rest of the lesson.

Guided Practice15-20 minutes
Reading the Commission on harms and benefits. Pairs read Sources 2 and 3 with the worked examples. Glosses: diversions of industrial alcohol are the illegal redirection of alcohol made for factories into drinks; tribute here means regular payoffs; a regime is a system or pattern; police courts were local courts for minor offenses; prosecutions terminated are cases finished; conserved means kept; the drink bill was the nation's total spending on liquor; "blue Mondays" were Mondays when workers stayed home after weekend drinking.
As to corruption it is sufficient to refer to the reported decisions of the courts during the past decade in all parts of the country, which reveal a succession of prosecutions for conspiracies, sometimes involving the police, prosecuting and adminstrative organizations of whole communities; to the flagrant corruption disclosed in connection with diversions of industrial alcohol and unlawful production of beer; to the record of federal prohibition administration as to which cases of corruption have been continuous and corruption has appeared in services which in the past had been above suspicion; to the records of state police organizations; to the revelations as to police corruption in every type of municipality, large and small, throughout the decade; to the conditions as to prosecution revealed in surveys of criminal justice in many parts of the land; to the evidence of connection between corrupt local politics and gangs and the organized unlawful liquor traffic, and of systematic collection of tribute from that traffic for corrupt political purposes. There have been other eras of corruption. Indeed, such eras are likely to follow wars. Also there was much corruption in connection with the regulation of the liquor traffic before prohibition. But the present regime of corruption in connection with the liquor traffic is operating in a new and larger field and is more extensive.
[...]
Our federal organization of courts and of prosecution were ill adapted to the task imposed on them by the National Prohibition Act. Serious difficulties at this point soon became apparent and enforcement of national prohibition still wrestles with them. The program of concurrent federal and state enforcement imposes a heavy burden of what was in substance the work of police courts upon courts set up and hitherto employed chiefly for litigation of more than ordinary magnitude. In the first five years of national prohibition, the volume of liquor prosecutions in the federal courts had multiplied by seven and federal prosecutions under the Prohibition Act terminated in 1930 had become nearly eight times as many as the total number of all pending federal prosecutions in 1914. In a number of urban districts the enforcement agencies maintain that the only practicable way of meeting this situation with the existing machinery of federal courts and prosecution is for the United States Attorneys to make bargains with defendants or their counsel whereby defendants plead guilty to minor offenses and escape with light penalties. Hence a disproportionate number of federal liquor prosecutions terminate in pleas of guilty. In the year ending June 30, 1930, over eight-ninths of the convictions were of this character. [...]
National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (the Wickersham Commission), Report on the Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws of the United States, 1931 (Source 2: "Corruption" and "The Strain on Courts, Prosecuting Machinery, and Penal Institutions"; cuts marked [...]) (1931). US government work (17 U.S.C. 105). Source text.
Such benefits as are clearly shown to have followed from the Eighteenth Amendment and the National Prohibition Act bear immediately upon the problem of enforcement. They cannot have resulted from abstract prohibition. They must have resulted from such enforcement as there has been in the past decade. Hence in passing judgment upon enforcement we should determine and appraise these benefits as something to be conserved in any program of improvement.
Disregarding the highly speculative assertions as to the so-called drink bill and its relation to industrial and financial conditions during the first decade of prohibition, the subjects upon which there is objective and reasonably trustworthy proof are industrial benefits—i. e., increased production, increased efficiency of labor, elimination of "blue Mondays," and decrease in industrial accidents—increase in savings, and decrease in demands upon charities and social agencies.
There is strong and convincing evidence, supporting the view of the greater number of large employers, that a notable increase in production, consequent upon increased efficiency of labor and elimination of the chronic absence of great numbers of workers after Sundays and holidays, is directly attributable to doing away with saloons. On the other side, it is contended by an able and conscientious group of skilled workers, leaders in organized labor, who appeared before us, that this increased efficiency of labor is to be attributed rather to the efforts of the unions in bringing about better conditions of employment, better hours, and better wages. It is contended also that improved methods of selection of personnel, the results of industrial engineering, improved management and general progress in the organization of industry and methods of production must be credited with the greater part of the undoubted advance in efficiency. In addition, account must be taken of newer and better modes of recreation and of occupying leisure time which, it is said, would have superseded general resort to drink in any event. It may be admitted that much of this is well taken. But with all deductions we are satisfied that a real and significant gain following National Prohibition has been established.
National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (the Wickersham Commission), Report on the Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws of the United States, 1931 (Source 3: from chapter VII, "Benefits of Prohibition to Be Conserved," part 1, "Economic Benefits") (1931). US government work (17 U.S.C. 105). Source text.
- Intended outcome (Source 1)
  Section 1 of Amendment XVIII is a rule, not an outcome. State the intended outcome in a form that evidence could test.
  Result: The rule bans "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors" for "beverage purposes." The supporters' intended outcomes went further than the rule: close the saloon and reduce drinking and the harms they blamed on it. A testable version is "Fewer saloons and less drinking than before 1920, with fewer of the harms supporters named." Writing it this way tells us what evidence to look for, and it reminds us that a rule can be obeyed in name while its intended outcome is missed.
- Attribution of a harm (Source 2, paragraph 1)
  Did prohibition cause the corruption the Commission describes? Find the sentences where the Commission limits its own claim.
  Result: The Commission concedes that "There have been other eras of corruption" and that "there was much corruption in connection with the regulation of the liquor traffic before prohibition." Its claim is narrower: the corruption of the 1920s "is operating in a new and larger field and is more extensive." So a careful evaluation says that prohibition did not invent corruption, but it widened the field for it; that is an unintended outcome of scale, not of kind.
- Reading a related consequence in numbers (Source 2, paragraph 2)
  The Commission gives two multiples for liquor cases in federal courts. What does each compare?
  Result: First, "the volume of liquor prosecutions in the federal courts had multiplied by seven" in the first five years: the comparison is liquor cases after five years with liquor cases at the start. Second, prohibition cases finished in 1930 were "nearly eight times as many as the total number of all pending federal prosecutions in 1914": here one year of prohibition cases is compared with every kind of federal case pending before the war. The second figure shows how large the new load was.
- Weighing an intended outcome (Source 3, paragraph 2)
  How does the Commission decide which claimed benefits count as evidence?
  Result: It sets aside "highly speculative assertions" about the drink bill and keeps only "subjects upon which there is objective and reasonably trustworthy proof." This is the evaluator's first step: sort claims by the quality of their evidence before weighing them. Students should notice that a commission critical of enforcement still names benefits, which makes its findings more credible than a one-sided report.
Pair task: Fill Diagram 1 for national prohibition using Sources 1-3. Put each piece of evidence in one box, cite it by source and paragraph, and add one question you would need answered to judge it.
Independent Practice15-20 minutes
Who bore the costs, and what did the Commission decide? Students read Source 4 alone. Glosses: apprehend means arrest; to padlock a business is to close it by court order; immunity here means freedom from punishment; denatured alcohol is industrial alcohol made poisonous so that people will not drink it; deleterious means harmful; meagreness means smallness. Students then write a 200-word evaluation that answers: by 1931, was national prohibition achieving its intended outcomes at an acceptable cost? They must use at least one intended outcome, two unintended outcomes and one related consequence, each with a citation, and they may reach either conclusion. Diagram 2 shows the paragraph 2 figures.
[...] It is easier to detect and apprehend small offenders than to reach the well organized larger operators. It is much easier to padlock a speakeasy than to close up a large hotel where important and influential and financial interests are involved. Thus the law may be made to appear as aimed at and enforced against the insignificant while the wealthy enjoy immunity. This feeling is reinforced when it is seen that the wealthy are generally able to procure pure liquors, where those with less means may run the risk of poisoning through the working over of denatured alcohol, or, at best, must put up with cheap, crude, and even deleterious products. Moreover, searches of homes, especially under state laws, have necessarily seemed to bear more upon people of moderate means than upon those of wealth or influence. [...]
[...]
[...] During the year ending June 30, 1930, whereas for the federal courts as a whole 41.4 per cent of the convictions resulted in sentences to some form of imprisonment, in three urban districts in which there was obvious congestion the percentages were 6.3, 3.9 and 5.0, respectively, The meagreness of the result in proportion to the effort shows the seriousness of the difficulty under which the enforcement of national prohibition has been laboring. [...]
[...]
1. The Commission is opposed to repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment.
2. The Commission is opposed to the restoration in any manner of the legalized saloon.
[...]
10. Some of the Commission are not convinced that Prohibition under the Eighteenth Amendment is unenforceable and believe that a further trial should be made with the help of the recommended improvements, and that if after such trial effective enforcement is not secured there should be a revision of the Amendment. Others of the Commission are convinced that it has been demonstrated that Prohibition under the Eighteenth Amendment is unenforceable and that the Amendment should be immediately revised, but recognizing that the process of amendment will require some time, they unite in the recommendations of Conclusion No. 9 for the improvement of the enforcement agencies.
National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (the Wickersham Commission), Report on the Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws of the United States, 1931 (Source 4: on unequal enforcement, on the courts, and Conclusions 1, 2 and 10; cuts marked [...]) (1931). US government work (17 U.S.C. 105). Source text.
Closure5-10 minutes
Exit ticket: "The Commission found real benefits and serious harms. Name the one piece of evidence from Sources 2-4 that would weigh most in your evaluation, and explain why it outweighs one piece of evidence on the other side."
Teacher note: Sources 2-4 are a 1931 federal report, transcribed from the scanned printed copy. Its findings were contested at the time. Prohibition was repealed in 1933, but the page asks students to evaluate the policy with the evidence available in 1931, not to argue about present-day alcohol or drug policy. If students raise current debates, treat them as questions with defensible positions on more than one side. Source 5 is invented.
Homework passage. Source 5 is an invented scenario about a city policy, used to practice the same evaluation on a local setting.
The city of Millbrook (an invented city) closed four blocks of Harbor Street to cars and turned them into a pedestrian mall with benches, trees and outdoor tables. The City Council's resolution stated three goals: to bring more people downtown, to help the shops on Harbor Street earn more, and to make the street safer for people on foot. The city spent $1.2 million on the project.
One year later, the city's planning office released these numbers. Before the change, an average of 1,800 people walked on the four blocks each day; after, 2,700 did. Taxable sales by the shops on the four blocks rose from $8.0 million to $8.8 million. Crashes that injured someone on foot on the four blocks fell from 9 in the year before to 2 in the year after.
The report also found results that the council had not predicted. Average daily traffic on Elm Street, a parallel street lined with homes, rose from 6,000 cars to 9,600 cars. Delivery trucks now had to unload on side streets, and two businesses that depended on daily deliveries moved out of downtown. The owner of a hardware store said that his sales fell by about a quarter because customers buying heavy items could no longer park at his door, although restaurant owners reported their best year ever. A Saturday farmers market, which had found no room downtown before, opened on the mall in the spring.
In response, the council allowed delivery trucks onto the mall from 6 to 10 a.m., and it voted to spend $150,000 on speed humps and new crosswalks on Elm Street. Elm Street residents have asked the council to study whether one block of Harbor Street should reopen to cars.
SVHS (invented scenario), Source 5: the Harbor Street pedestrian mall (invented scenario written for this page, for the homework; the city and all numbers are invented) (2026). Original passage written for this page.

Differentiation Strategies

For Struggling Students

Give a three-column organizer (intended, unintended, related) with the first entry in each column filled in from Source 1 or Source 2
Read Source 2, paragraph 1 as a list: mark each "to the ..." phrase as one piece of evidence, then count them
Provide sentence frames for the evaluation: "The policy aimed to ___. The evidence that it worked is ___, but ___ may also explain it. An unintended outcome was ___, which fell on ___."

For Advanced Students

Read the next section of the full report, "Social Benefits," and decide whether it strengthens or weakens the case for an intended outcome made in Source 3
Evaluate Section 2 of Amendment XXI as a response to the related consequences in Sources 2 and 4: which problems does it address, and which might it create?
Design the data a 1931 evaluator would need to settle the attribution question in Source 3, paragraph 3, and explain why that data was hard to get

Assessment Guidance

What to Look For

Strong evaluations keep the three categories apart and judge each with evidence: an intended outcome is tested, not just named; an unintended outcome is linked to the people who bore it; and a related consequence is shown to follow from an outcome rather than simply coming later. Look for attention to attribution, such as the rival explanations weighed in Source 3, and for students who weigh evidence on both sides before concluding. Either conclusion about prohibition can earn full credit when it is supported.

Classroom Activities

3 Activities

Outcome Sort: Prohibition, 1920-1933

12 minPairs

Pairs sort 12 cards into four piles: intended outcome, unintended outcome, related consequence, and "not an outcome" (a part of the policy itself). For each card they name the source that supports it, then mark outcomes as well established or contested.

The 12 Cards

Saloons closed across the country.
Fewer workers stayed away from work after Sundays and holidays.
Savings rose in the 1920s, but the Commission found the link to prohibition not clearly established.
Corruption reached police and prohibition services in many communities.
Liquor prosecutions in federal courts rose sharply.
Most federal liquor convictions came through guilty pleas to minor offenses.
People who could not afford pure liquor risked poisoning from reworked industrial alcohol.
Amendment XVIII, Section 2 said who could pass laws to enforce the ban.
A federal commission studied enforcement and reported in 1931.
In congested districts, few convicted liquor offenders were sent to prison.
Amendment XXI repealed national prohibition in 1933.
Some states kept statewide bans on liquor for decades after 1933.

Answer Key for the Teacher

Intended outcome: cards 1, 2, 3 (card 3 is claimed but not established, so it is contested)
Unintended outcome: cards 4, 5, 6, 7
Related consequence: cards 9, 10, 11, 12 (card 10 follows from cards 5 and 6)
Not an outcome: card 8, which is the design of the policy (Amendment XVIII, Section 2)
Card 6 can also be argued as a related consequence of card 5; accept either with a reason.

Discussion

Which intended outcome has the strongest evidence in Source 3, and what rival explanation does the Commission report?
Card 8 is part of the policy, not an outcome. Can a feature of a policy's design produce an unintended outcome? Look for an example in Source 2.

Commission Hearing, 1930

25 minGroups of 5

Each group is a commission hearing in 1930. Four students testify from roles drawn from the sources; the fifth chairs and writes the group's recommendation. Every claim must cite Sources 2-4.

Roles

Witnesses A and B: the two sides of the debate in Source 3, paragraph 3; each finds who holds the view and testifies for that group
A federal prosecutor: describes the case load and plea bargains (Source 2, paragraph 2; Source 4, paragraph 2)
A city resident: testifies from Source 4, paragraph 1
The chair: asks each witness one follow-up question about evidence, then writes the recommendation

Procedure

Witnesses prepare for 5 minutes and testify for 2 minutes each
The group chooses one of three recommendations: keep the amendment and improve enforcement, revise the amendment, or repeal it
The chair writes the recommendation with two supporting pieces of evidence and one piece of evidence against it
Groups compare their choice with Conclusions 1 and 10 in Source 4, and then with Amendment XXI in Source 1

Debrief Questions

Did your group weigh intended outcomes or unintended outcomes more heavily, and why?
Compare your recommendation with what the Commission concluded in 1931 and with what happened in 1933. What does the comparison suggest about how evidence and public opinion interact when a policy is evaluated?

Consequence Chains for New Policies

15 minGroups of 3

Groups apply the frame to an invented policy and build a chain of at least four links: the policy, an intended outcome, an unintended outcome and a related consequence. Each group then names the evidence it would collect, and when, to evaluate the policy after one year.

Invented Policies (one per group)

A county requires every restaurant to post its latest health inspection grade in the front window
A school district moves the high school start time from 7:30 to 8:45 a.m. so that students sleep more
A state lowers the speed limit on one rural highway from 70 to 60 miles per hour to reduce serious crashes

Gallery Check

Groups rotate and add one sticky note to another group's chain: either a rival explanation for its intended outcome, or a group of people who might bear an unintended cost. Each group then revises its evidence plan.

Diagrams & Visual Aids

2 diagrams

Diagram 1: Evaluating a Policy, National Prohibition

The three parts of D2.Civ.13.9-12 applied to national prohibition. Outcomes in the middle row follow from the policy; related consequences in the bottom row follow from those outcomes. The question at the bottom applies to every box.

Diagram 2: Prison Sentences in Federal Liquor Convictions, 1929-1930, Drawn to Scale

Share of federal liquor convictions that ended in any prison sentence in the year ending June 30, 1930, for all federal courts and for three congested urban districts the report does not name. Bars are drawn to scale, 10 pixels per percentage point. Data from Source 4, paragraph 2.

Homework Assignment

~30 min

D2.Civ.13.9-12 Homework: Evaluating the Harbor Street Mall

Directions: Use Source 5, the invented scenario about the Harbor Street pedestrian mall, printed in the Closure phase of the lesson plan. Cite paragraph numbers and show your arithmetic.

Part 1: Intended Outcomes (Problems 1-2)

List the three goals in the council's resolution. For the first goal, compute the percent change in people walking on the four blocks each day, and say whether the goal was met.
Compute the percent change in taxable sales on the four blocks and the change in crashes that injured someone on foot. Then name one other cause, besides the mall, that could explain part of the rise in sales, and say what data would test it.

Part 2: Unintended Outcomes (Problems 3-4)

Compute the percent change in daily traffic on Elm Street. Explain why it is an unintended outcome and who bears its cost.
Find one helpful unintended outcome and two harmful ones in paragraph 3 besides the Elm Street traffic. For each harmful one, say which group bears it.

Part 3: Related Consequences and Evaluation (Problems 5-6)

Describe the council's two responses in paragraph 4 and explain why each is a related consequence. How much has the city now spent in all on the mall and the Elm Street changes?
Write a one-paragraph evaluation answering the residents' question: should one block of Harbor Street reopen to cars? Use at least one intended outcome, one unintended outcome and one related consequence, and address the strongest evidence against your position.

Rubric

Criterion	Full Credit (2 pts)	Partial Credit (1 pt)	No Credit (0 pts)
Intended outcomes	Tests each goal against the numbers and considers another cause	Names goals and numbers without testing them	Missing or wrong
Unintended outcomes	Identifies helpful and harmful outcomes and who bears each	Identifies outcomes without saying who bears them	Confuses goals with unintended outcomes
Related consequences	Shows how each response follows from an outcome and includes its cost	Lists responses without the link	Missing
Evaluation and accuracy	Arithmetic is correct and the judgment weighs evidence on both sides	One error, or a one-sided judgment	Several errors or no judgment

Quiz: 20 Questions

Interactive, with answers

Instructions

Questions 1-2 and 14 use the amendments (Source 1); Questions 3-6 use Source 2, Questions 7-10 use Source 3, and Questions 11-13 use Source 4, all from the Wickersham Commission report of 1931. The short-answer questions evaluate the policy across the sources. All sources are in the lesson plan phases above. Choose the best answer, then check your work.

Multiple choice: pick an option to check it. Short answer: write your answer, then reveal the model answer.

0 of 20 answered · 0 correct

Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Read Section 1 of Amendment XVIII in Source 1. Which activity did the amendment itself not prohibit?
Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Section 2 of Amendment XVIII gives "The Congress and the several States" "concurrent power" to enforce the article. What does this mean?
Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice
According to Source 2, paragraph 2, what did "The program of concurrent federal and state enforcement" do to the federal courts?
Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Source 2 says that in the year ending June 30, 1930, "over eight-ninths of the convictions were of this character," meaning guilty pleas. About what percent is eight-ninths?
Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Source 2, paragraph 1 supports its claim about corruption with several kinds of evidence. Which kind does it not cite?
Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice
According to Source 2, why did United States Attorneys in some urban districts make bargains with defendants?
Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice
In Source 3, paragraph 1, why does the Commission say that benefits of prohibition "bear immediately upon the problem of enforcement"?
Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice
In Source 3, paragraph 3, how do "leaders in organized labor" explain the rise in the efficiency of labor?
Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice
According to Source 3, paragraph 3, whose view does the "strong and convincing evidence" about production support?
Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Source 3 ends: "But with all deductions we are satisfied that a real and significant gain following National Prohibition has been established." What does "with all deductions" mean here?
Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Which unintended outcome does Source 4, paragraph 1 describe?
Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice
In Source 4, paragraph 2, 41.4 percent of federal liquor convictions led to some prison sentence, against 6.3 percent in one congested district. About how many times as high is the national share?
Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Which statement fits Conclusions 1 and 10 in Source 4?
Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice
According to Source 1, what did Amendment XXI do?
Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer
Using Sources 1 and 3, state one intended outcome of national prohibition in a form evidence could test. Then evaluate how far the Commission found it achieved, including the attribution problem it raises.
Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer
Identify two unintended outcomes of national prohibition from Sources 2 and 4. For each, explain why it was unintended and who bore its cost.
Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer
Trace a chain of at least three links from Source 2, paragraph 2 to Source 4, paragraph 2, showing how an unintended outcome led to a related consequence.
Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer
Read Section 2 of Amendment XXI. Explain how its design responds to at least one consequence described in Sources 2 or 4, and name one new consequence it might create.
Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer
In Conclusion 10 (Source 4), the commissioners split. Explain the two positions. Then argue which is better supported by the evidence in Sources 2-4. Either position can earn full credit.
Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer
An invented state bans the sale of consumer fireworks to reduce injuries. Name one intended outcome, one unintended outcome and one related consequence, and describe the evidence you would collect to evaluate the policy after two years.

0 of 20 answered · 0 correct

Frequently Asked Questions

10 Questions

What does D2.Civ.13.9-12 mean?

D2.Civ.13.9-12 asks high school students to judge public policies by their results. Students test whether a policy achieved what it was meant to (intended outcomes), find results nobody aimed for (unintended outcomes) and trace the further effects that follow from both (related consequences).

What is the difference between an unintended outcome and a related consequence?

An unintended outcome is a direct result of the policy that no one aimed for; a related consequence is a further effect that follows from the outcomes. For example, if an invented city raises downtown parking fees and drivers start parking on nearby residential streets, that is an unintended outcome; if the city then creates residential permit zones, that is a related consequence.

How is D2.Civ.13.9-12 different from D2.Civ.13.6-8?

The 6-8 indicator asks students to analyze a policy's purposes, implementation and consequences; the 9-12 indicator asks them to evaluate it. High school students judge whether outcomes were achieved and caused by the policy, weigh unintended results and their costs, and reach a supported conclusion.

Why use prohibition to teach policy evaluation?

Because it has clear goals, well-documented unintended results and a dramatic related consequence: repeal by a second amendment. The 1931 federal commission report gives students a primary source that itself weighs benefits against harms, so students see evaluation done in public.

Was the Wickersham Commission for or against prohibition?

Its report is mixed, which is why the page uses it. It names benefits it judged real and harms it judged serious, and students read its conclusions in Source 4 to see how its evidence and its recommendations fit together.

What is attribution, and why does it matter when evaluating a policy?

Attribution means deciding how much of a change the policy caused. A result that would have happened anyway is not evidence that a policy worked. In Source 3, the Commission weighs rival explanations for a rise in production before it reaches a conclusion.

How should students write an evaluation of a policy?

Start with a clear judgment, then support it with evidence for intended outcomes, unintended outcomes and related consequences, each cited. A strong evaluation states the criteria it uses, such as effectiveness, cost and fairness, and answers the best evidence on the other side.

How do I keep this lesson nonpartisan?

Grade the reasoning, not the conclusion. The lesson evaluates a policy that ended in 1933 with the evidence available in 1931, and the homework uses an invented city. If students connect prohibition to present-day alcohol or drug policy, treat those as questions with reasonable positions on more than one side.

Is the Harbor Street mall in Source 5 real?

No. Millbrook and all of its numbers are invented for this page. The scenario is built so that the policy meets some goals, misses none outright and produces costs for people who were not its target, which makes the evaluation genuinely two-sided.

What standards build on D2.Civ.13.9-12?

D4.7.9-12 asks students to assess options for individual and collective action using complex causal reasoning, the same thinking about outcomes and consequences that policy evaluation trains. D2.Eco.8.9-12 applies the idea of intended and unintended consequences to economic policy.