How AP African American studies became so controversial
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 March 2023
⏱️ 26 minutes
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Summary
Why did the College Board, which oversees Advanced Placement classes, change certain parts of the AP African American studies course framework? Post Reports digs into the latest controversy about the new AP course, still in its pilot stages.
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After Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis came out against the new AP African American studies course, it sparked a controversy. The state said it wouldn’t allow students to take the class because it lacked educational value.
Then the College Board changed the course framework just in time for its debut on the first day of Black History Month. Many questioned whether conservative leaders prompted changes to the program. Where the word “systemic” was mentioned in the previous plan for the class, it was completely removed from the new one. The same with other topics, such as Black Lives Matter and reparations, which went from 15 mentions in April 2022 to one in February 2023.
Education reporter Nick Anderson breaks down what happened to AP African American studies and why these changes occurred in the first place.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Over the past two and a half years, I've had the privilege of taking four AP courses, |
| 0:08.6 | three of which have been history related. |
| 0:11.0 | Juliet Heckman is a high school student living in Florida. |
| 0:14.5 | Last month, she spoke at a press conference in support of a new advanced placement course |
| 0:18.9 | that's still in its pilot stages. |
| 0:20.6 | It's called AP African American Studies, and it attempts to present a college level introductory |
| 0:29.0 | course experience to high school students in history and culture in the African American |
| 0:35.0 | Studies discipline. |
| 0:36.8 | And it's attempting to give this kind of immersion in an essential piece of the American |
| 0:42.9 | experience. |
| 0:44.4 | Nick Anderson is an education reporter with the post. |
| 0:47.6 | He's been following the development of this new course by the College Board, which is |
| 0:51.3 | the organization that runs the AP program. |
| 0:53.9 | He says a lot of students are excited for it, like Juliet. |
| 0:57.5 | When I heard the news that there was an AP course in the works that was designated specifically |
| 1:01.6 | to African American studies, I was grateful. |
| 1:05.2 | Grateful in the sense that this side of history, one which is notoriously ignored and disregarded, |
| 1:09.8 | would finally be given the proper and sufficient representation that it deserves. |
| 1:15.1 | Now you can only imagine how many of my classmates felt when we recently learned that because |
| 1:19.5 | we lived in the state of Florida, we would not be given the opportunity to take this course, |
| 1:23.8 | is it, and I quote, lacks educational value. |
| 1:30.5 | AP African American studies has become the center of a fraught battle in education. |
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