College Board purges material from AP African American studies course after pushback from Florida

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The Florida Department of Education blocked the introduction of a new Advanced Placement (AP) program that focused on over 400 years of African American history, alleging the course lacked “educational value” and was “indoctrination.” Afterward, the organization that created the program stripped away much of the contested material. 

Key Players

The Florida Department of Education (FDOE) oversees the state’s public education system, providing leadership, support, and accountability to Florida schools. 

After three terms as a U.S. representative, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was elected governor of Florida in 2018 and sworn in the following January. Recognized as a staunch conservative, he has been rumored to be considering a presidential campaign in 2024. DeSantis has promoted several pieces of legislation criticized for their effect on speech in schools, including the “Stop WOKE Act,” targeting critical race theory, and the act nicknamed “Don’t Say Gay,” which limits what teachers can say about sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom. 

The College Board created the AP program, which gives high school students the opportunity to take college-level courses and exams in various subjects. 

Further Details 

On Jan. 12, 2023, the FDOE issued a letter to the College Board, blocking the introduction of its “AP African-American Studies” program into the state’s curriculum, CBS News reported.  

This AP program was the newest offer since 2014 and took more than a decade to revise and curate. The four centuries of Black history in the program span several areas, including geography, civil rights, political science, and literature.

The FDOE claimed the program material lacked “educational value” and was “contrary to Florida law.”  Specifically, FDOE opposed six topics listed within the curriculum and proposed readings: intersectionality and activism, Black queer studies, “Movements for Black Lives,” “Black Feminist Literary Thought,” reparations, and “Black Study and the Black Struggle in the 21st Century,” CBS reported. 

Furthermore, the FDOE took issue with several writers and scholars, including Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, a Columbia University law professor and leading proponent of critical race theory; Roderick Ferguson, a Yale University professor who teaches about queer social movements; Ta-Nehisi Coates, a bestselling author who advocates for reparations; and bell hooks, a writer known for her discussions about race, feminism, and class.

On Jan. 23, DeSantis defended the FDOE. “We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them,” he said, calling the course “indoctrination,” CBS News reported. DeSantis said the course was an example of “somebody pushing an agenda on our kids,” asking “who would say that an important part of Black history is queer theory?”

“When you try to use Black history to shoehorn in queer theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes,” DeSantis added. 

DeSantis particularly took issue with the “Movements for Black Lives,” topic, such as the movement for elimination of jails and prisons. “How is that being taught as fact?” he said. “And I also think it’s not fair to say that somehow abolishing prisons is somehow linked to, like, Black experience, that’s what Black people want. I don’t think that’s true at all. I think they want law and order just like anybody else wants law and order.” 

Outcome

FDOE response causes outrage

Uproar followed after the program was blocked. Leon Russell, chair of the NAACP, said the ban was a decision that followed the “politics of hatred and atheism,” WTF9 reported. “We will not allow public officials to rip our part of American history out of textbooks, out of the classroom and out of the mouths of teachers.”

“It’s crazy how AP African-American studies made the chopping block in FL,” state Sen. Shervin D. Jones (D) tweeted, noting that AP courses in history and foreign languages had not been blocked. 

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) chimed in as well, saying that DeSantis “should not have the power to distaste the facts of U.S. history,” NPR reported. 

On Jan. 25, civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, alongside three Florida high school students, announced they were prepared to  challenge the FDOE legally. State Rep. Fentrice Driskell (D) was also present at the lawsuit’s announcement. “By rejecting the African American history pilot program, Ron DeSantis has clearly demonstrated that he wants to dictate whose history does — and doesn’t — belong,” Driskell said. 

A petition was drafted in response to the ban. “It’s clear that Fl. Gov. DeSantis has been using Black students as political pawns in his quest to build power and conservative outrage, and the Florida State Board of Education (SBE) has long enabled him,” the petition reads. 

As of March 23, the petition had amassed 44,284 signatures, including Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the United States.

College Board strips program materials, says changes were not related to ‘political pressure’

Shortly after, the College Board released a revised version of the program, stripping material that was associated with critical race theory, Black feminism, and the Black Lives Matter movement. 

David Coleman, head of the College Board, said that the changes were for pedagogical reasons, not because of political pressure, The New York Times reported. “At the College Board, we can’t look to statements of political leaders” but rather take account of “the input of professors” and “longstanding A.P. principles.”

Experts and activists lament decision

Crenshaw expressed disappointment with the College Board’s decision. “I would have made a different choice,” she said. “Even the appearance of bowing to political pressure in the context of new knowledge and ideas is something that should not be done.”

David Blight, an American history professor at Yale, withdrew his endorsement of the curriculum when he learned that some of its sections had been removed. “I withdrew it because I want to know when and how they made these decisions to excise these people, because that’s also an attack on their academic freedom,” he said.

Jeremy C. Young, senior manager of free expression and education at PEN America, said that the College Board “risked sending the message that political threats against the teaching of particular types of content can succeed in silencing that content.” 

College Board admits ‘mistakes in the rollout’

On Feb. 11, College Board released a statement affirming its commitment to the program. 

“Our commitment to AP African American Studies is unwavering,” the statement read. “This will be the most rigorous, cohesive immersion that high school students have ever had in this discipline. Many more students than ever before will go on to deepen their knowledge in African American Studies programs in college.”

College Board said it deeply regretted “not immediately denouncing the Florida Department of Education’s slander, magnified by the DeSantis administration’s subsequent comments, that African American Studies ‘lacks educational value.’ Our failure to raise our voice betrayed Black scholars everywhere and those who have long toiled to build this remarkable field.”

The organization also said that it should have made clear that the framework was only an outline of the course, and that subjects like BLM, reparations, and mass incarceration were optional topics in the pilot course. 

“Our lack of clarity allowed the narrative to arise that political forces had ‘downgraded’ the role of these contemporary movements and debates in the AP class,” College Board stated.