College Board To Revise African American Studies Course Under Pressure From Critical Race Theorists

Get ready for some exciting changes in the Advanced Placement African American Studies course! The College Board has announced that it will be revising its curriculum to better reflect the dynamic discipline, following pressure from critical race theorists who accused the organization of watering down its content for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.).

The College Board, a billion-dollar nonprofit that administers the SAT and advanced high school courses, has listened to the feedback and will be making changes to the latest course framework. This comes after the group stripped its curriculum of controversial critical race theory content earlier this year, following DeSantis’ announcement that he would ban a draft version of the course that covered subjects including the “queer experience” and “Black feminism.”

DeSantis in January said the draft curriculum was “inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.” The College Board walked back the controversial topics the next month and released a stripped down version. 

But now, the College Board is taking things up a notch and revising the course once again, this time in response to critical race theorists and left-wing activists who complained about the controversial subjects being cut from the curriculum. Several academics launched petitions calling for revisions of the advanced high school course. The College Board’s decision comes after an activist think tank called the African American Policy Forum planned a nationwide protest partly in response to the “anti-woke” revisions of the course. 

“We demand that the College Board restore critical concepts, scholarship, and frameworks to the African American Studies course, and to resist pending demands from other states to bend to their ‘anti-woke’ orthodoxy,” the group’s website calling for the May 3 protest says. 

The College Board will be determining the changes over the next few months, and Black studies scholars are hoping to see topics like reparations, Black Lives Matter, and intersectionality included in the curriculum, according to the New York Times.Read more about it here!