Common Core LiteracyGrades 11–12History & Social Studies

RH.11-12.8: Testing an Author’s Premises

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.8 · Cluster: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas.

The Official Wording

Evaluate an author's premises, claims, and evidence by corroborating or challenging them with other information.

Common Core State Standards, Grades 11-12, Reading: History & Social Studies · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RH.11-12.8 Means in Plain English

Juniors and seniors test a historical author’s starting assumptions, claims and evidence against other records and say where each holds up. Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous 1893 thesis rested on a premise, that the West was free land, which the treaties and wars of the same decades contradict.

Ninth and tenth grade (RH.9-10.8) judged whether an author’s evidence and reasoning support the claims inside the text. Grades 11-12 bring in outside records to confirm or challenge them. This is the last band of the line, the corroboration habit that college and career readiness expects.

RH.11-12.8 I Can Statements

I can name the premise an author’s argument depends on.
I can check an author’s claims and evidence against other records.
I can say which parts of an argument survive the check.

RH.11-12.8 Worked Example

Turner’s sentence is quoted from his 1893 essay, now in the public domain; the other records are summarized from the well-established history of the same years.

Read the Story

Context: In July 1893, a young historian named Frederick Jackson Turner read a paper to a meeting of the American Historical Association. He argued that the frontier, more than anything brought over from Europe, had made Americans who they were.Turner’s premise and claim: “The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.”Turner’s evidence: the superintendent of the 1890 census had reported that settlement was now so scattered across the West that there could hardly be said to be a frontier line. The census drew that line where settlement thinned to fewer than two people per square mile.Other information: Under the Dawes Act of 1887, the government divided reservation land into individual plots and sold the land it called surplus to settlers. Over the following decades, Native nations lost most of the land they still held.Other information: In December 1890, the year of that census, U.S. troops killed Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.

A short passage written for this page.

Question: Which parts of Turner’s argument hold up when you check them against the other information, and which fall apart?

Not Yet“Turner was wrong because he ignored Native Americans, so his whole thesis is worthless.”It dismisses the argument instead of testing it. It never separates premise, claim and evidence, so it misses that Turner’s census evidence is accurate even though his premise of free land fails.

Meets the Standard“Turner’s evidence holds up: the census really did report that ‘there could hardly be said to be a frontier line.’ But that line measured only density, fewer than two people per square mile, so it shows where settlers were thin, not that the land was empty. His premise of ‘free land’ falls apart against the other records. The Dawes Act took reservation land and ‘sold the land it called surplus to settlers,’ and in the very year of the census, troops killed Lakota families at Wounded Knee. The land was not free; it was taken. His broad claim that the frontier explains American development may still be worth testing, but it cannot rest on a premise the record contradicts.”It separates Turner’s evidence, premise and claim, corroborates the part that survives, challenges the premise with specific outside records, and limits the final judgment to what the check supports.

Question Stems to Use

What must be true for this author’s argument to work?Which of the author’s facts can you confirm in another record?Which outside record contradicts the premise, and how directly?Does the evidence measure what the author says it measures?Which parts of the argument survive, and which have to go?

Common Mistakes with RH.11-12.8

Dismissing instead of testing

“Turner was biased, so nothing he said counts.”

Try this: Have students sort the author’s statements into premise, claim and evidence, then test each one separately against another record.

Taking accurate evidence as proof

“The census said the frontier line was gone, so Turner was right.”

Try this: Ask what the evidence actually measured, here population density, and whether that measurement can support the author’s much larger claim.

Missing the unstated premise

An answer that never questions the phrase free land

Try this: Underline every phrase the author treats as obvious, then find one record from the same years that confirms or contradicts it.

Where RH.11-12.8 Fits

Comes BeforeRH.9-10.8Assess how far an author’s reasoning and evidence support the author’s claims.

AlongsideRI.11-12.8Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal U.S. texts, including their premises and arguments.RST.11-12.8Evaluate the hypotheses, data and conclusions in a science text, checking them against other sources.

Comes NextRH.11-12.9Integrate primary and secondary sources into a coherent account, noting discrepancies.WHST.11-12.1Write arguments that anticipate counterclaims and support claims with valid reasoning and evidence.

Practice RH.11-12.8

Quick Check

What premise does Turner’s sentence depend on?
That the West was an area of free land, open for settlement.
What did the 1890 census frontier line actually measure?
Population density: it marked where settlement thinned to fewer than two people per square mile.
Which two records challenge the premise of free land?
The Dawes Act of 1887, under which reservation land the government called surplus was sold to settlers, and the killing of Lakota people at Wounded Knee in December 1890.

RH.11-12.8: Other Names

RH.11-12.8CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.8