Penalizing students from diverse backgrounds

In the January 2 LA Times, columnist Michael Hiltzik wrote, “Caving to the right on Black history, the College Board gives a course in cowardice” (https:// www.latimes.com/business/ story/2023-02-01/facing-attacks-from-right-wing-the-college-board-waters-down-itsap-black-studies-curriculum). He is describing the removal of key elements of Black history from a new Advanced Placement test, bowing to the racist values of Florida Governor Ronald DeSantis, while claiming to make the changes on the basis of “the input of experts and long-standing AP principles and practices.” Hiltzik writes, “Raise your hand if you believe the College Board. Me neither.”

Aside from this cowardice, the College Board has a 124year history of dabbling in and contorting the American secondary school curriculum. Founded in 1899 allegedly “to expand access to higher education,” CEEB was created by elitist eastern colleges (Harvard, Yale, Princeton and others) plus private college preparatory schools such as the New York Collegiate Institute (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ College_Board). Rather than increasing access, CEEB has penalized students from diverse backgrounds.

My own deep suspicion dates back to 1965 and the publication of “Freedom and Discipline in English,” which essentially endorsed a conservative and obsolete view of English studies and ignored key advancements in linguistics, literary study, and the teaching of writing.

I believe it is important to include Black studies in the curriculum, but not as established by a politically motivated College Board. And we must be equally if not more concerned with CEEB’s longstanding role in fostering an elitist curriculum that often excludes students who do not come from privileged backgrounds.

— Stephen Tchudi, Yankee Hill