College Board strips down new AP course on Black studies
After heavy criticism from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the College Board released Wednesday an official curriculum for its new Advanced Placement course in African American studies — stripped of much of the subject matter that had angered the governor and other conservatives.
The College Board purged the names of many Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience and Black feminism. It ushered out some politically fraught topics, like Black Lives Matter, from the formal curriculum.
And it added something new: “Black conservatism” is now offered as an idea for a research project.
When it announced the AP course in August, the College Board clearly believed it was providing a class whose time had come. But the course quickly ran into a political buzz saw after an early draft leaked to conservative publications like The Florida Standard and National Review.
In January, DeSantis announced he would ban the curriculum, citing the draft version. State education officials said it was not historically accurate and violated state law that regulates how race-related issues are taught in public schools.
The College Board faced the possibility of other opposition: More than two dozen states have adopted some sort of measure against critical race theory, according to a tracking project by the UCLA law school.
David Coleman, head of the College Board, said in an interview that the changes were all made for pedagogical reasons, not to bow to political pressure.
“At the College Board, we can’t look to statements of political leaders,” he said. The changes, he said, came from “the input of professors” and “long-standing AP principles.”
He said that during the initial test of the course this school year, the board received feedback that the secondary, more theoretical sources were “quite dense” and that students connected more with primary sources, which he said have always been the foundation of AP courses.
In its revised 234-page curriculum framework, the content on Africa, slavery, Reconstruction and the civil rights movement remains largely the same. But the study of contemporary topics — including Black Lives Matter, incarceration, queer life and the debate over reparations — is downgraded. The subjects are no longer part of the exam and are simply offered on a list of options for a required research project.
And even that list, in a nod to local laws, “can be refined by local states and districts.”