College Board takes hits from all sides on AP African American studies

The College Board is struggling to move past the recent controversy surrounding its AP African American studies course, facing calls for an independent investigation as it rolls out even more changes to the class.

The controversy began in January, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said the course as proposed was not appropriate for Florida schools. The administration of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) also sought a review of the program.

Weeks later, the College Board announced changes to the class that removed many of the sources of complaints from Florida, causing critics to accuse the company of succumbing to political pressure, a claim it strongly denies.

The College Board’s most recent announcement last week admitted it made some missteps along the way with the course and said the class will undergo more changes. The move has not quelled anger against the company.

“There should also be an independent review conducted by Congress and/or all relevant agencies into the operation of College Board as a 501c3 nonprofit organization that has again, a considerable amount of power, and has demonstrated wanting disregard for the importance of integrity, especially at this point in our geopolitical environment,” said David Johns, executive director for the National Black Justice Coalition. 

When DeSantis raised his objections, saying the course “lacked educational value,” he specifically took issue with topics such as Black queer studies, the Black Lives Matter movement, Black feminist literary thought, the reparations movement, and the Black struggle in the 21st century. 

Whether announced changes along those lines were done before or after DeSantis’s comments is irrelevant at this point, Johns said.

“Leaders at the College Board should have demonstrated more competence and thoughtfulness when engaging in this process,” he added. 

The African American Studies course was piloted in 60 schools this past academic year and is planning to expand to 800 next year. 

With the company now going to make further, unspecified changes in the upcoming months, it is almost certain neither side of the spectrum will be pleased in the end.

“If College Board is to regain the nation’s trust, it must restore every element of the AP African American History course that it stripped away in its effort to pander to right-wing extremist censorship,” said National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial. “Further, the Board must pledge never again to allow political concerns to threaten the integrity of its academic curricula.” 

Johns went even further, saying College Board President David Coleman and others should step down.

“Anyone who has been engaged and colluding with the Florida Department of Education and the government of the current governor, and any other partisan actors, for that matter, should be replaced,” he said. 

The College Board did not respond to The Hill’s request for comment, but it did try to take some responsibility in last week’s statement for the way the changes and conversations around the class have taken place. 

“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 organization said. “Regrettably, along the way those dual access goals have come into conflict.”

However, turning the clock back to the curriculum before the controversy began will put the course back in the sights of Republicans who railed against it at the beginning. 

“I am a conservative. I like to see us conserve what is good about America, to teach things that we have ideals like all men are created equal, that when we have used those ideals and lived up to them. We have corrected problems as we did with the Civil War, as we did with the civil rights movement, the civil rights era,” said Mike Gonzalez, the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

“We need to teach that and we need to teach how we fell short of those ideals,” he said, adding that what “we should not be doing is to teach that the American regime itself — that founding was immoral. We should not be teaching an ideology that delegitimizes the United States.”

Reversing its previous updates would likely get the African American studies class banned in Florida and possibly Virginia or other states. 

“The College Board, if it wants to safeguard its reputation, should get out of politics, should get out of the business of changing society — should just teach things as they are, as they were, as they happen,” Gonzalez said.