The New York Times reported that the College Board plans to revise its controversial AP African-American studies course. Last year, it was about to roll out a syllabus when a writer in The National Review said it was a radical Marxist course that would teach students to hate America. The state of Florida, under Governor DeSantis’ direction, negotiated with the College Board to remove topics and authors that it wanted removed. DeSantis announced that unless the course satisfied Florida, the state would ban it.
The College Board revised the course to satisfy Florida, and many schols of African-American studies objected.
Now the College Board says the course will be revised yet again, this time to satisfy the angry scholars.
The College Board said on Monday that it would revise its Advanced Placement African American studies course, less than three months after releasing it to a barrage of criticism from scholars, who accused the board of omitting key concepts and bending to political pressure from Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had said he would not approve the curriculum for use in Florida.
While written in couched terms, the College Board’s statement appeared to acknowledge that in its quest to offer the course to as many students as possible — including those in conservative states — it watered down key concepts.
“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,” the College Board wrote on it website. “Regrettably, along the way those dual access goals have come into conflict.”
The board, which did not respond immediately to an interview request, said on its website that a course development committee and experts within the Advanced Placement staff would determine the changes “over the next few months.”
The College Board, a billion-dollar nonprofit that administers the SAT and A.P. courses, ran headlong into a conflict between two sides unlikely to find any room for compromise. Black studies scholars believe that concepts the board de-emphasized — like reparations, Black Lives Matter and intersectionality — are foundational to the college-level discipline of African American studies. Conservatives — politicians, activists and some parents — believe the field is an example of liberal orthodoxy, and they are concerned that schools have focused too much on issues such as racism and systemic oppression.
Stay tuned. If DeSantis boycotts the course, other red states will follow. Will the College Board stick with the scholars or the market?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
H-m-m, how do we maximize profits and make everybody happy?
How about this? How about these people (and the fed and state governments and school districts) get their noses out of curriculum development and let a free people write textbooks and sell them to teachers free to make their own decisions?
Oh, my Lord!!! Impossible! LMAO.
That’s how we did things for many, many decades.
“Will the College Board stick with the scholars or the market?”
Forget about the non-profit label. The answer to that question is who will cost them the most money. The historical facts that scholars want covered or the history the extreme right wants to revise and/or hide.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/College-Board-Salaries-E18437.htm
The College Board may be a nonprofit but not those that work for the College Board.
The terms “nonprofit” and “The College Board” should never be used together, not when execs there are pulling down the salaries and perks that they do. Same with most “nonprofit” charter schools, btw.
Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg only took a dollar a year in salary. That’s why he is so poor today, right?
LOL.
Nonprofit. Mama didn’t raise someone foolish enough to buy what they are selling there.
Non-Profit or 501 A,B,C,D,…or little cat zoom…Wealthy manipulators have turned “non-profit” into a cash cow…
Hmm. Pleasing the red states and putting forward a truthful account of the history of race in America. Sounds like trying to figure out how to incorporate the widely held “the stork brings them” theory into textbooks on obstetrics. Where does Governor DeStalin come down on that one? No. Don’t tell me. I don’t even want to know.
Marx and Engels were both, btw, racist and antisemitic. So, a course that treats topics like BLM and the intersection of racism with other varieties of oppression can hardly be called “Marxist,” not if we mean by “Marxist,” representing the views of Karl Marx. LOL.
The National Review needs to restudy this material for a retake next Tuesday.
Or I can just give them an F today.
cx: intersections
Well, we have David Coleman, THE GATES-APPOINTED DECIDER FOR THE REST OF US, running this. What could go wrong? ROFL.
So, the College Board has decided that the scholars have a point. Wow. Soon it might come out with a report to the effect that some doughnuts have holes in them.
It was an absolute outrage to make it only optional, and not mandatory, for teachers to teach about intersectionality in their AP African American Studies classes. One can only pray that the College Board reverses course.
Are you suggesting it is an outrage for teachers to teach an AP African American studies course where white politicians who know nothing about African American studies decide what topics should be optional and which should be part of the curriculum? If so, I agree.
The entire class is OPTIONAL — it is for students who want to take a course in African American studies. It is not for students who want to take a course in what conservative white politicians believe is worthy to learn. They are already learning that in all the other classes they have been taking for years.
Presumably you don’t believe white politicians with no knowledge of Calculus or Art History should be deciding what content should be in the AP Calc or AP Art History curriculum and which content should be OPTIONAL, do you? The fact is that some conservative politicians don’t trust scholars of African American studies to design a curriculum in African American studies. Should conservatives who have no knowledge of women’s studies also be telling scholars of women’s studies what content must be “optional” in the classes they teach? Should white politicians peruse the curriculum of Asian-American studies classes to make sure the proper topics are taught because they believe they know better than scholars of Asian-American studies?
The snarky tone of your comment suggests that you believe that intersectionality needs to be excluded from the curriculum. Why? Because some conservative white politicians said so? Just forbid your kid from taking that optional AP class if you don’t want your kid to take an African American studies class. But the class should be designed by scholars, not by politicians. It will have the topics those scholars agree should be taught. Just like all the other AP classes are.
LOL, if teachers who are teaching this class want to teach about critical race theory and intersectionality, they’re free to teach it. I don’t see the need to hyperventilate over AP African American Studies teachers having the option to teach this stuff rather than being required to teach it.
It is literally impossible to teach an African American studies class without teaching critical race theory. The same might be said about teaching US history.
The logical conclusion to your argument is to make every topic in every AP class “optional”. Teachers can teach or not teach whatever of those subjects they want. You wrote that you don’t think it is a big deal to make some topics in an AP African American studies course optional, but certainly you aren’t holding yourself – or some Republican politicians who know nothing about the subject – to be experts on what topics in African American studies are “most” important.
You don’t see the need to hyperventilate on politicians with no knowledge of the subject making some content in an AP class optional, and you don’t want to defer to scholars on what subjects are important. So what else is to be done but just make every topic optional?
I would have thought we’d agree that politicians who know nothing about a subject shouldn’t be the ones deciding what is part of the curriculum and what isn’t, but you have informed me I am wrong. You don’t have a problem with politicians who know nothing about a high school subject deciding which topics are part of an AP curriculum, and which are optional.
In that case, why is anything at all required? Just make it all optional.
While I doubt very much Bernie Sanders and AOC would go through textbooks on various high school subjects to make some topics “optional” instead of required, I am glad to know that you would not be bothered at all if they did.
Not every idea should be followed to its maximal, logical conclusion. But I would think teachers generally would like to have the option to teach what they want to teach, rather than what is mandated forces outside the classroom.
So a teacher in Alabama could decide to skip the “war of northern aggression.”
“The same might be said about teaching US history.”
If it’s not possible to teach US history without teaching critical race theory, then somebody better go back and memory-hole all those “critical race theory is not taught in K-12” statements from a couple years ago.
CRT is not taught in K-12 as a formal study. But it is not possible to teach US history without teaching about slavery, KKK, Jim Crow, segregation, massacres, lynchings. Doing so is implicitly CRT. Could you teach US history and leave out the brutal treatment of people of color? Was it an accident?
Teaching about the KKK, Jim Crow, segregation, massacres, and lynchings is not “implicitly CRT.”
Of course it is. Do you know anything about CRT? At root, it acknowledges that the unjust treatment of Blacks is due to systemic racism.
Do you have a different definition? Please share it.
Anyone who teaches with honesty and depth about “the KKK, Jim Crow, segregation, massacres, and lynchings” relies on CRT to explain them. They were manifestations of systemic racism. How else would you describe them? Accidents? Incidents? Same things happen to whites? No. Deep-seated racism. Systemic racism.
“Anyone who teaches with honesty and depth about “the KKK, Jim Crow, segregation, massacres, and lynchings” relies on CRT to explain them.”
I disagree. Critical Race Theory dates from the 1970s. It didn’t become well-known until much later. I learned about lynchings, segregation, separate water fountains, dogs/waterhoses in Birmingham, church bombings, poll taxes, redlining, and the KKK long before that.
I didn’t need CRT to tell me George Wallace, Orville Faubus, JB Stoner, Lester Maddox, Bull Conner, et al were bullies and bigots, nor that the populace and power structure in their areas supported, or at least tolerated, their behavior. I didn’t need CRT to tell me extrajudicial lynching for looking at a white woman, or bombing a church were evil.
There’s a segment of the population that doesn’t want the past told. The GOP front group Moms for Liberty (sic) does not want the stories of Ruby Bridges and Rosa Parks told at all.
The term Critical Race Theory dates from the 1980s. Derrick Bell, the first Black professor at Harvard Law School, is usually credited with the term.
CRT is a way of looking at history through the lens of racism. You don’t need a label to do that. WEB DuBois was an expert in the application of CRT.
Today, when conservatives attack CRT, they are criticizing teaching about racism. They don’t want any “divisive concepts” taught. They don’t want students to feel “uncomfortable.”
With all due respect, Diane, frankly I’m beginning to wonder whether you know anything about CRT. Your comments here suggest you think CRT is just “teaching about unjust things that happened to black people in American history.” That’s not what it is.
Yes, I read a fair amount of CRT when I was in law school over 20 years ago, and I’ve re-read a bit of it over the last several years. CRT could be called a framework for legal analysis, although it’s become broader than that. It developed in the late 70s and early 80s, initially by scholars like Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, Kimberle Crenshaw.
The best short explanation of what CRT is comes from Delgado’s now-canonical book “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction.” This is it:
With all due respect, Diane, frankly I’m beginning to wonder whether you know anything about CRT. Your comments here suggest you think CRT is just “teaching about unjust things that happened to black people in American history.” That’s not what it is.
Yes, I read a fair amount of CRT when I was in law school over 20 years ago, and I’ve re-read a bit of it over the last several years. CRT could be called a framework for legal analysis, although it’s become broader than that. It developed in the late 70s and early 80s, initially by scholars like Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, Kimberle Crenshaw.
The best short explanation of what CRT is comes from Delgado’s now-canonical book “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction.” This is it:
Of course no short definition of an intellectual and activist movement is going to be exhaustive or conclusive, and one can debate on the margins. But the idea that CRT is just “teaching honest history” is silly.
Although garbled, nothing you wrote contradicts what I said. CRT is the study of systemic racism in Anerican society and history.
One can’t possibly understand the outrage about CRT today without using a lens of CRT.
Not sure why my comment came out in such monstrous form. Anyway, you get the gist.
I posted this same definition of CRT a couple years ago here. The responses then show that the quality of the discourse on this topic remains as if frozen in amber.
https://dianeravitch.net/2022/07/14/florida-black-students-in-charter-schools-told-to-ippose-teaching-about-racism/#comment-3395182
Can you define “intersectionality’? I think it’s a fancy word to describe the fact that some people can be the victims of bigotry on multiple levels. Say, a black woman who is gay. Not a big deal.
Here is a discussion of intersectionality in feminist ethics that might be of interest: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-ethics/#Inte
That’s an extreme simplification of intersectionality. But apparently, if a teacher thinks that’s what intersectionality is and wants to teach that in an AP African American Studies class, they are totally free to do that. As they should be.
“Intersectionality” is a knee-jerk buzzword for RepubliQans like “woke”. They often manufacture rage over concepts they don’t even bother understanding.
Exactly
DeSantis is not going to approve this course, no matter what they decide, so they may as well do the right thing. Recall that Florida’s state board of education banned several Math textbooks for being too woke.
And solely because they contained a few exercises that had been labeled Social and Emotional Development activities. As though schooling should have nothing to do with Social and Emotional Development. Parents who beat their children and churches that indoctrinate them in ignorant superstition should be solely in charge of that.
Like Rupert Murdoch said, “It’s not red or blue, but green.”
I read a report that Carlson was in the midst of contract renegotiation and was asking for 100 million.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the reasoning was to lessen the impact of the former producer’s lawsuit against Fox’s misogynistic culture.
Possible, and perhaps the reasoning was, don’t be too big for your britches, _ucker; we made you, and we can make the next you.
It’s amazing, the power of the grift. Fox keeps getting sued for their toxic culture and keeps on trucking, changing little.
One wonders if there is a bombshell coming in the evidence for that lawsuit.
Let’s hope Fox is like the Bismarck. One sputtering biplane placing a torpedo in just the right place.
Fox deserves everything it has coming–a deluge of lawsuits and settlements. The damage it has done to our country is enormous.
Those torpedo bomber biplanes around the Bismarck–like flies around a rhinoceros. But the flies won, didn’t they?
Did you see this: https://news.yahoo.com/desantis-had-beef-college-board-203539619.html
Florida is spending 2.8 million to investigate alternatives to AP and SAT.
The Legislature is considering the Classic Learning Test, or CLT, as an alternative to the SAT and ACT on multiple fronts.
Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who DeSantis appointed as a New College trustee was recently appointed to the CLT board.
So the 2.8 million is just a down payment for DeSantis’ fight with AP.
It is frightening what DeSantis is able to do with his minions blindly following his lead with their hands out.