ap african american studies

The College Board just broke their silence after their Advanced Placement African American Studies course was rejected by Florida’s Department of Education for violating state law due to its “woke” curriculum.

To “set the record straight” and address the “misinformation” about the proposed Advanced Placement (AP) course, the College Board released a statement Saturday claiming the program was merely a pilot version of the course and not the official framework.

The College Board, a nonprofit that specializes in college preparation, admitted “mistakes were made” in the initial rollout, such as needing to clarify that the topics in question were merely optional for students to study. But now, the nonprofit said that “misinformation” is being spread for a “political win.”

“There is always debate about the content of a new AP course,” said the nonprofit. “That is good and healthy; these courses matter. But the dialogue surrounding AP African American Studies has moved from healthy debate to misinformation.”

They went on, “We deeply regret 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.”

But Governor Ron DeSantis slammed the nonprofit for including “historically inaccurate” information in the course, with many of the topics involving principles from Critical Race Theory and “Black Queer Studies.”

“The College Board was the one that in a Black studies course put ‘queer theory’ in, not us – they did that,” DeSantis stated. “They were the ones that put in ‘intersectionality,’ they put in other types of neo-Marxism into the proposed syllabus.”

DeSantis recently signed a bill called the Stop WOKE Act that’s designed to “take on both corporate wokeness and Critical Race Theory.” The new law encourages African American studies to be taught, but it prohibits the teaching of one race to be superior to another, or that individuals should be defined by race. As such, the Florida DOE felt that the College Board’s proposed AP course was in direct violation of state law due to its teachings on the Black Lives Matter movement and the need for reparations.

The College Board has since released its official framework for the AP course, which offers those topics as options for students to study for their required research project. Florida’s DOE said they communicated with the College Board for several months and were “grateful” to see the changes to the course. However, the College Board said that the changes were unrelated to Florida’s or any other state requests.

Additionally, according to the College Board, Florida failed to specify in their communications how the course violated state law.

But DeSantis is now questioning the authority of the New York-based nonprofit, alluding to the fact that they’re not elected members.

“[The College Board has] provided these AP courses for a long time, but, you know, there are probably some other vendors who may be able to do that job as good, or maybe even a lot better,” DeSantis said. “I think the legislature is going to look to reevaluate how Florida’s doing that.”

“And again, this is the proposed course, so our Department of Education looked at that and said, ‘In Florida we do education, not indoctrination. And so that runs afoul of our standards,” he continued. “You know, many people agree with that in other states, we were just the only ones that had, you know, the backbone to stand up and do it because they call you names and they demagogue you when you do it.”

Florida’s DOE is expected to reconsider the course for schools starting this fall.


Read more about how Governor DeSantis has worked against “woke” curriculum in Florida schools.

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One Comment

  1. […] this year, the Florida Department of Education faced backlash after rejecting a pilot Advanced Placement African American Studies course from the College Board. […]

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