Florida officials detail contact with college board

While the College Board was developing its first Advanced Placement course in African American studies, the group was in repeated contact with the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, often discussing course concepts that the state said it found objectionable, a newly released letter shows.

When the final course guidelines were released last week, the College Board had removed or significantly reduced the presence of many of those concepts — like intersectionality, mass incarceration, reparations and the Black Lives Matter movement — although it said that political pressure played no role in the changes.

The specifics about the discussions, over the course of a year, were outlined in a Feb. 7 letter from the Florida Department of Education to the College Board.

The existence of the letter was first reported by The Daily Caller, a conservative news site. A copy of the letter was posted on Scribd. Its authenticity was verified by a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education, which released a copy early Thursday.

The College Board responded to the letter with one of its own, released Thursday, saying that Florida's concerns had not influenced any revisions to the course, which had been shaped instead by feedback from educators. “We provide states and departments of education across the country with the information they request for inclusion of courses within their systems,” the letter said, adding: “We need to clarify that no topics were removed because they lacked educational value. We believe all the topics listed in your letter have substantial educational value.”

The discussions between the College Board and the state took place as rightwing activists across the country were increasingly taking aim at school lessons that emphasize race and racism in the U.S. DeSantis, who has presidential ambitions, has cast himself as the voice of parents who are fed up with what he has called “woke indoctrination” from progressive educators.