The College Board lied about AP AfAm
Revisions were not done according to AP procedures, despite what they said repeatedly
I’ve got an editorial out this week in Science about the continued gaslighting by the College Board around AP African American Studies. I wrote about the situation in February in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
As a refresher, the College Board administers Advanced Placement courses across many disciplines. Last year, they launched a course in African American studies that was true to the radical, activist nature of Black studies. But in February, they announced a revised version of the course that moved some of the material on the topics most likely to make white politicians uncomfortable to the optional pile. Scholars called them on this, and the College Board insisted that it was not done in response to conservative politicians, most conspicuously Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who called it “woke indoctrination,” and that it was all done according to AP policies.
Now the Wall Street Journal has reported on emails where Professor Nashani Frazier who led the unit of the course in question, castigated the College Board for not consulting her on the changes and called out the effort to hide their institutionalized racism. In response, Trevor Packer apologized to her privately and conceded that it was a “violation of our core processes for developing AP frameworks.” All the while Packer and CEO David Coleman were assuring the world that all processes were followed properly. Coleman told Geoff Bennet on PBS NewsHour that they adhered to “principles that are true of every single AP course.”
Apparently not the core processes.
This is a bizarre and provocative sentence: "Last year, they launched a course in African American studies that was true to the radical, activist nature of Black studies."
I do not see why one should characterize Black studies as either radical or activist in nature. I would say that for "Black studies" to be activist goes against the definition of "studies".
Thank you for the summary! Yucky but not surprising.