The College Board announced that it will once again revise its African American Studies course after being criticized for watering down its content due to conservative pushback.
“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 said in a Monday statement. “Regrettably, along the way those dual access goals have come into conflict.”
The nonprofit, which oversees the SAT college admissions tests, did not say what exact changes would be made, but promised that “regardless of how many students take this course, each one of those students should have access to the full breadth and beauty of this discipline.”
The course aims to provide students with a college level look into African American history and culture. It covers events and texts from the beginnings of chattel slavery, through Jim Crow, and through the Civil Rights Movement.
In January, Florida blocked the course from being taught in the state, saying it “lacks educational value.” Governor Ron DeSantis accused the College Board of promoting a "political agenda" with topics such as Black queer studies and intersectionality.
In February, the College Board released a revised version of the course, removing terms such as "intersectionality" and "systemic." Reparations and Black Lives Matter were only including as optional research topics.
After Florida officials accredited their policies with the revisions, allegding that they discussed the course with the College Board for months, College Board released a statement denying their claims, and accusing the state's education department of "slander."
Civil rights experts and advocates also accused College Board of bending to conservatives. Several African American studies faculty and researchers have signed petitions in a stance against censorship, threatening that “if the course continues to lack rigor and completeness some faculty will advise our institutions to reject advanced placement credit for the course."
The College Board acknowledged the frustrations in their statement, and pledged that their experts would review the course content over the next few months.
“We are committed to providing an unflinching encounter with the facts and evidence of African American history and culture. To achieve that commitment, we must listen to the diversity of voices within the field,” they continued. “The development committee and experts within AP remain engaged in building a course and exam that best reflect this dynamic discipline. Those scholars and experts have decided they will make changes to the latest course framework during this pilot phase. They will determine the details of those changes over the next few months.”
