The Advanced Placement course will be widely offered at high schools in fall 2024.
After Criticism, College Board Debuts a Revamped AP Course on African American Studies
The revision of the new course, which eliminates critical race theory and some modern history, including Black Lives Matter, follows attacks by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The revision of the Advanced Placement course was a result of a months-long review by more than 300 African American college professors. “No one is excluded from this course,” College Board President David Coleman said in a statement.
The College Board unveiled a revised curriculum for its new Advanced Placement course on African American history, 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 comes 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.
Students may still choose to learn about those topics on their own as part of a research project – along with a newly added option, “Black conservatism” – but they are not requirements and they are not included on the exam. The College Board announced the creation of the AP class in August and timed the release with the start of Black History Month.
But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican and likely candidate for president, announced last month that he would ban the teaching of the AP course if the College Board didn’t modify the curriculum, blasting the leaked draft as historically inaccurate and noting that it violates a state law he signed last year that regulates how issues related to race and other politically fraught topics, like LGBTQ issues, are taught in public schools.
