AP AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES APPROVED New pilot course sheds light on African American stories past and present

BY FRANCES KASSOUNI franceskassouni@gmail.com

On April 23, the Roseville Joint Union High School District unanimously voted to approve a new AP African American Studies pilot course. The pilot will take place one year before the College Board starts a live, nationwide AP African American Studies course available to all high schools wanting to participate.

In the 2022-2023 school year, College Board introduced the first AP African American Studies Pilot course, available to only 60 schools. In the upcoming 2023-2024 school year, hundreds of more high schools will be able to offer the pilot course and provide feedback, including two RJUHSD high schools.

Students who take the course will be able to sit for an AP exam and get college credit starting in the spring of 2024.

Jessica Fork, a teacher at Roseville high school applied to bring the pilot program to her classrooms last summer.

“I was reading in the New York Times, and saw that they have this pilot program for African American Studies … that’d be something that would do really well in Roseville because we’re a very diverse school,” Fork said.

This can be attributed to the fact that “students are much more motivated to learn in classrooms that recognize them,” according to the University of Toronto.

Students will also be able to sit for an AP exam in the Spring of 2024, and get credit at more than 200 universities that have already pledged to give credit with a passing score or higher.

“I think eventually it will be another AP class and students will be able to take the test and have another way to improve their GPAs and outlook in going into college,” Hester said.

Antelope High School, one of the schools offering the pilot next year, has the largest African American population in RJUHSD. Roseville High School has the highest Hispanic and Latino population in the district.

“They’re trying to get a broad spectrum of experiences and get feedback from those schools to fine tune the framework,” Fork said. Hester teaches American History and African American History at Sierra College and serves as a representative on RJUHSD Curriculum and Instruction Leadership team. He is also a parent of an Oakridge student.

“The African American population at Sierra is probably around 3% to 4%...my classes are probably between 50% and 55% African American,” Hester said.

The district’s approval of the course follows recent national trends of state and local legislatures passing bills to restrict the teaching of critical race theory. The state of Florida, made the decision to ban AP African American Studies altogether.

“One of the things we’re seeing nationally and … in places like Florida, there’s a lot of resistance to what is perceived,” Jay Hester said.

“From my perspective as an instructor, to suggest that there’s no longer any sort of systemic racism institutionally in American society is a bit naive and short sighted,” Hester said.

In 2022, the State of California mandated Ethnic Studies to be a graduation requirement. The change was met with backlash within the Granite Bay community.

Kimberly Crabtree, a parent in RJUHSD, voiced concerns over content in the textbooks used in the pilot course. Crabtree is concerned with the breadth of the course covering politics and theory up to contemporary issues.

“I don’t understand what the purpose of the African American studies course is… what is this for if it’s not for activism?” Crabtree said.

Although Ethnic Studies is now a California graduation requirement for high school students, the AP African American Studies course aims to highlight “the vital contributions and experiences of African Americans” according to the College Board.

“It’s politics and literature and it’s really all of these sort of humanities put together to help better explain the Black experience and to highlight Black culture” Fork said.

Marla Franz, a board member who ran on a position against Critical Race Theory, voted to approve the pilot course.

“I just think this class is an opportunity for students to just engage with material that maybe they feel like they haven’t seen before,” Franz said.

Franz said she read portions of the curriculum to better understand if there were potential biases in unit 4, which covers contemporary history past the Civil Rights Movement.

“I was just reading to find areas where maybe there may not be a balanced perspective, and, for the most part, I was pretty impressed,” Franz said.

On Mar. 6, 2023, RJUHSD CILT approved 3 textbooks to be used as supplemental materials for the course.

The course covers a breadth of topics and perspectives, starting with the migration of slaves from the sub saharan region, progressing all the way to COVID-19, modern musical artists and more.

“There is a big misunderstanding about a lot of things like critical race theory as to what that actually means,” Hester said.

Although the College Board outlines a curriculum and a list of topics for teachers to cover, it’s up to the teachers to fill in the gaps and bring in information to reach key educational objectives. Should a teacher want to bring in additional information not covered in the textbook, such as additional primary sources, news articles and more, it would have to come in the form of additional supplemental materials.

Fork says she would like to include supplemental materials based on what students would find interesting.

“It’ll be up to us to help bring in resources and material,” Fork said.

Although teachers in RJUHSD have to get long term supplemental materials approved, one-off uses of supplemental sources do not need to go through a CILT approval process. “I assume (Fork) will be drawing in supplemental materials that will not go through CILT as she’s experimenting with how this class flows,” Franz said.

“Most people that are taking the class are taking the class because they genuinely want to learn about it,” Mann said.

Haddy Samba, a freshman at Granite Bay High School said she would support the class being taught at Granite Bay in the future.

“We don’t really get that many chances to learn about … African American culture or history. So I think that it’d be really nice to have a class where we could specifically learn that,” Samba said.

Should an RJUHSD teacher want to teach the course when it goes live in the 2024-2025 school year, they would have to seek approval from the district again.

For Mann, a Roseville High School student enrolled in the new pilot course, having a more interactive course is a positive.

“It’s not so much … test based, but you’re actually immersing yourself into the culture, which I thought was really interesting,” Olivia Mann said.

“I’m going to be going through this all over again next year,” Fork said.

Despite that, Fork says that the pilot is a special opportunity.

“I was trying to tell my kids this is one of the few times I think you can say your high school career you got to pilot a national class,” Fork said.