Florida will not allow a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies to be offered in its high schools, citing examples of what it calls “woke indoctrination.” And after criticism from Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the College Board released a statement on Wednesday to indicate that it has modified it. Now the official course looks different: no more critical race theory, and the study of contemporary topics — like Black Lives Matter — is optional.
A.P. exams are deeply embedded in the American education system. Students take the courses and exams to show their academic prowess when applying to college. Most four-year colleges and universities grant college credit for students who score high enough on an A.P. exam. And more than a million public high school students graduating in 2021 took at least one A.P. exam.
The College Board purged the names of many Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience and Black feminism. It omitted 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.
The dispute over the A.P. course is about more than just the content of a high school class. Education is at the center of a bitter partisan debate, and the College Board’s decision to try to build a curriculum covering one of the most charged subjects in the country — the history of race in America — may have all but guaranteed controversy. If anything, the arguments over the curriculum underscore the fact that the United States is a country that cannot agree on its own story, especially the complicated history of Black Americans.
In January, Governor DeSantis, who is expected to run for president, announced he would ban the curriculum, citing the draft version. State education officials objected that it was not historically accurate and violated state law that regulates how race-related issues are taught in public schools.
The attack on the A.P. course turned out to be the prelude to a much larger agenda in Florida. On Tuesday, DeSantis unveiled a proposal to overhaul higher education that would eliminate what he called “ideological conformity” by among other things, mandating courses in Western civilization.
Florida is not alone in this battle, the College Board faced the possibility of other opposition as more than two dozen states have adopted some sort of measure against critical race theory, according to a tracking project by the University of California, Los Angeles, law school.
David Coleman, the 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 “longstanding A.P. principles.”
According to Coleman, 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 A.P. courses.
