AP AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES CLASS GETTING UPDATES

Christiana Lilly

There are changes coming to the AP African American Studies course — again. The College Board, which manages the Advanced Placement courses, announced that it would be making edits to the new class. This comes after the board received criticism for bowing to political pressure to remove elements of the class, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, queer Black history, and slavery reparations.

“Access was our driving principle — both access to a discipline that has not been widely available to high school students, and access for as many of those students as possible. Regrettably, along the way those dual access goals have come into conflict,” the College Board said in a statement.

“The updated framework, shaped by the development committee and subject matter experts from AP, will ensure that those students who do take this course will get the most holistic possible introduction to African American Studies.”

Sixty classrooms participated in the pilot program for the course, and the College Board says that now there are 800 schools that will be teaching the course to 16,000 students. However, despite this popularity, Florida schools will not be offering the class to its high school students. Gov. Ron DeSantis said the class has a “political agenda.”

The College Board did not share what specific changes would be made to the course, simply that the team would “determine the details of those changes” over the next few months.