Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration rejected the unique curriculum for the African American research course in January.

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration rejected the unique curriculum for the African American research course in January.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

The College Board launched the official curriculum for a brand new Advanced Placement course in African American research on Wednesday, the primary day of Black History Month. But individuals are divided on among the adjustments introduced within the curriculum weeks after the state of Florida banned the course.

In the announcement, College Board CEO David Coleman known as the newly revised course, which excessive schoolers can take for faculty credit score, “an unflinching encounter with the facts and evidence of African American history and culture.”

But critics level out that the latest iteration of the course is now lacking a number of themes and voices from Black students that have been initially offered in a pilot program already being taught at dozens of colleges this yr throughout the nation. Others are saying that adjustments to the curriculum have been made to appease Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis after his administration rejected the original iteration of the course last month.

The state’s Department of Education didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark by NPR.

The College Board refuted claims from a New York Times article that it eliminated all mentions of Black feminism or the “gay experience” from its curriculum, or that among the revisions have been made to appease the DeSantis administration.

The College Board additionally stated that the revisions have been “substantially complete … weeks before Florida’s objections were shared.”

Duke University professor Kerry Haynie, who helped develop the AP course, additionally known as Times‘ claims “wildly misleading, at best.”

“We reject any claim that our work either indoctrinates students or, on the other hand, has bowed to political pressure,” Haynie stated in a statement issued by the College Board on Wednesday.

What the College Board modified within the course

Though the nonprofit maintains it didn’t “purge” the curriculum of key classes regarding “Black feminism” and “gay Black Americans,” it additionally acknowledged a discount within the “breadth” of the brand new framework.

Of the items that appeared within the pilot course, these about intersectionality and activism, Black feminist literary thought, and Black Queer Studies aren’t within the last curriculum.

The framework additionally drops its exploration of the origins, mission and world affect of the Movement for Black Lives. Instead, Black Lives Matter is listed alongside Black conservatism as a pattern course venture, labeled “Illustrative Only.”

With these revisions, works by students together with Roderick Ferguson, a professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Yale University, at the moment are faraway from the curriculum totally.

“This ‘culture war’ targeting intellectuals, artists, and academics has a long, distressing history,” Ferguson wrote in an op-ed within the Chronicle of Higher Education, connecting the Florida criticism to his elimination earlier than the revisions have been made public.

What Florida officers discovered objectionable within the course

The adjustments to the AP course come after weeks of pressure between the College Board and the DeSantis administration. Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz Jr. known as the course “woke indoctrination masquerading as education.”

Diaz additionally labeled as concerning a listing of subjects featured within the unique curriculum for the course, together with Black queer research and feminist thought. Some of those subjects are notably absent from the newly revised curriculum launched by the College Board.

The state’s rejection of the AP course led to criticism across the country from different state lawmakers and civil rights organizations. Three Florida highschool college students introduced that they might file a lawsuit against the governor if the state didn’t change its thoughts. More than 200 African American historical past professors additionally signed an open letter denouncing the adjustments.

In response, the College Board introduced that it will be releasing “the official framework” for the course on Feb. 1. When contacted for remark after that announcement, the group didn’t affirm whether or not Florida’s rejection of the course would play a task in its revisions.

“No states or districts have seen the official framework that is released, much less provided feedback on it,” the College Board stated in its announcement on Monday. “This course has been shaped only by the input of experts and long-standing AP principles and practices.”

Groups blast the College Board’s revisions as political

But civil rights teams, educators and the labor unions that symbolize them lambasted the brand new revisions to the AP course.

David Johns, government director of the National Black Justice Coalition, a civil rights group that advocates for Black LGBT folks, requested the College Board to “consider pulling all AP classes from the State of Florida if Governor DeSantis continues to try to inject his political agenda into our classrooms.”

“We urge the College Board to reconsider censoring its curriculum and the education of our young people to meet the demands of a Governor with a radical political agenda and stand firm in the belief that Black history in its beautiful diversity is American History,” Johns stated in a statement on Wednesday.

Randi Weingarten, the president for the American Federation of Teachers, a labor union, stated she is “disappointed” with the adjustments to the curriculum.

“Too often politics interferes with education, which is exactly what DeSantis attempted here,” Weingarten tweeted on Wednesday. “Despite this rewrite, we maintain our conviction that AP African American Studies should be available to every high school student nationwide.”

At the start of the college yr, Marlon Williams-Clark shared his pleasure with NPR over instructing the unique model of the course as a part of the pilot program. Williams-Clark could be instructing the category at a highschool in Tallahassee, the capital of Florida.

Williams-Clark stated it wasn’t his place to debate how among the course’s material sat with the state’s governor.

“I let them know, point-blank, there may be some topics in which it is a thin line and that we’ll just have to be careful how we talk about some things and how we approach some subjects,” he instructed NPR. “I can’t lead any conversations.”