AP Cherry-Picking: College Board breaks students’ trust by manipulating new AP African American Studies course

A few years after the Black Lives Matter movement and an increase in accusations that standardized testing is inequitable or even racist, College Board slapped together a curriculum for AP African American Studies released on Feb. 1 — their first new course in eight years. The eyebrow-raising timing was overshadowed by the enticing opportunity to explore Black history in school. At first.

Then we watched the organization warp its course content, removing critical race theory, reparations and feminism from the “finalized” curriculum, following backlash from Florida and Oklahoma politicians. And we’re still supposed to believe that the lucrative College Board — with $887 million in revenue during 2021, charging $97 per course — has students’ best educational interests in mind. Spoiler: they don’t. 

Students can’t trust that College Board genuinely cares about ethnic inclusion in the history that it teaches after its questionable actions with the AP African American Studies pilot program, so the organization must rethink its approach to diversity.

Because right now, College Board’s message is clear:

Students had to earn their right to learn about Black history by organizing a huge social justice movement.

Plus, the Black history that the organization has finally decided to start teaching is cherry-picked to please politicians. College Board’s mission, according to its website, is to provide “excellence and equity in education” for students. Removing primary source documents regarding BLM that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis doesn’t like from the course doesn’t align with that mission. Conservative input should be included — but from professional historians instead.

Even mainstream Black historians and Ivy League professors who were originally supporters of the class have publicly renounced their support due to the changes, like a Yale history professor who originally published a written endorsement of the class and has since withdrawn it.

At the very least, the new course should provide the same information to each student. But College Board went so far as to add that course content “can be refined by local states and districts” to align with regional values. So mentions of the KKK or lynchings can be removed in conservative areas. 

These areas where curriculum will be watered-down are the places where students could benefit the most from eye-opening lessons about Black history.

Plus, no students will learn about Asian, Latino, Pacific Islander or Native American culture, since they aren’t trendy enough for College Board to pretend to care about. Currently, its only history courses are AP European, U.S. and World History. 

Do we have to organize a national movement for Asian lives before College Board starts teaching us Asian history? 

The AP African American Studies course is setting a precedent for the College Board to delay inclusion until after students have begged to be educated about a minority group for years.

If College Board truly prioritized cultural exposure, it’d curate courses for other ethnicities like Asians and Latinos — in addition to African Americans — with equal expert input from conservative and liberal historians. Not flashy politicians.

Still, this new course is better than no attempt to teach Black history. At least College Board’s apparent trend-hopping will allow students to learn about redlining, Afrofuturism and Black heroes. It’s certainly necessary at hyper-white schools like East, which will likely add the course to its catalog that already covers 80% of available AP classes. Administration is waiting to discuss the addition until teachers express interest in teaching the course. 

But only students who are already open-minded, motivated and curious about other cultures will enroll in this rigorous, college-level course. Close-minded students who would learn the most from Black history lessons likely won’t select the class.

So College Board should integrate diverse ideas into popular courses that are already offered, like AP U.S. History designed in the 1980s. Woven between textbook chapters on the 1918 flu pandemic should be lessons on the use of Black citizens as medical guinea pigs for testing vaccines.

We should learn about Hispanic segregation in schools, Filipino farm worker strikes and bans on Chinese immigration — all important parts of U.S. history. 

This would allow for less-open minded students who aren’t jumping at the chance to enroll in AP African American Studies to still gain exposure to Black history in their AP U.S. History class, widening their cultural perspective and potentially sparking interest in signing up for African Studies. And it’d prove that College Board genuinely cares about inclusion.

College Board needs to earn our trust back by teaching diverse history for the purpose of making students more well-rounded world citizens — not because it’s a trend or political statement.