College Board to Revise African American AP Course Again
The change comes after the College Board in February announced it was eliminating a requirement that students learn some modern tenets of Black history under pressure from conservatives.
The College Board will revise its Advanced Placement course on African American history once again, it announced on Monday – an about face that comes after watering down the course requirements in response to GOP outrage over the material covered.
“In embarking on this effort, access was our driving principle – both access to a discipline that has not been widely available to high school students, and access for as many of those students as possible,” a message posted to its website said. “Regrettably, along the way those dual access goals have come into conflict.”
“The updated framework, shaped by the development committee and subject matter experts from AP, will ensure that those students who do take this course will get the most holistic possible introduction to African American Studies.”
In February, the College Board revealed its revised curriculum for the new AP African American history course, eliminating the requirement that students learn about critical race theory and other modern tenets of Black history, including the works of seminal Black scholars and the entire Black Lives Matter movement that forced a national reckoning with race and equity in the U.S.
The move came in the wake of mounting opposition by conservative politicians to the leak of a draft of the curriculum that would have required educators to teach those topics, along with Black feminism, queer theory and other politically divisive subjects that anger Republicans.