Thirty organizations have signed a letter demanding the resignation of College Board CEO David Coleman after the Board modified its Advanced Placement African American studies course in perceived response to criticism from Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.
The signatory organizations are primarily LGBT advocate groups, but the letter was put together by the National Black Justice Coalition.
It accuses the College Board of being less than transparent about its conversations with the Florida Department of Education and failing to defend the course from “substantiated accusations” that it pushes a “woke agenda”.
“The public rollout of the College Board’s long-awaited Advanced Placement Black Studies Course has been a public relations and brand disaster for your institution causing pain, division, and turmoil for the community it sought to celebrate,” the letter reads.
Last month, Florida’s ED rejected the AP course for the state’s schools, saying the material was “lacking in educational value”.
“As submitted, the course is a vehicle for a political agenda and leaves large, ambiguous gaps that can be filled with additional ideological material, which we will not allow,” DeSantis’s press secretary previously said in a blistering statement. “As Governor DeSantis has stated, our classrooms will be a place for education, not indoctrination.”
DeSantis himself reiterated the point at a press conference, saying again the state of Florida wants “education, not indoctrination” for its students, where he also called out specific subject matter that he described as going beyond even the controversial critical race theory.
“What’s one of the lessons about? Queer theory,” he said. “Now, who would say that an important part of Black history is queer theory? That is somebody pushing an agenda on our kids. And so when you look to see they have stuff about intersectionality, abolishing prisons, that’s a political agenda. And so we’re on — that’s the wrong side of the line for Florida standards. We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them. When you try to use Black history to shoehorn in queer theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes.”
The revised curriculum axed writers associated with critical race theory and implemented “black conservatism” as a potential research topic.
While DeSantis’s office took credit for the changes, the College Board released its own statement insisting the changes were made independently of the state’s criticism.
The NBJC also took issue with that portrayal, accusing the Board of quietly meeting with Florida officials before publicly releasing the revised course.
“After the Florida Department of Education released documentation of letters and meetings, the College Board deleted that press release and admitted that ‘certain terms and concepts were removed because they were politicized in several states.’”
“New leadership is required if the College Board lacks the courage and character to advocate for students and academic freedom; and against the DeSantis regime’s book banning, censorship, and surveillance agenda,” the letter concludes.
The College Board has not made any further statements about its revisions.
WA, WA, WA! There’s little-to-no real educational value in LBGTQ, BLM, queer theory and such. The real COURAGE was for the College Board to admit that those topics were merely woke indoctrination and remove them from the AP course in African American studies.
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