College Board backs down on APAAS, for now

Faced with Ron DeSantis’ resistance, the College Board has announced that it will revise the framework for its pilot AP African-American Studies (APAAS) course. DeSantis rejected the current framework, for very good reason.

The College Board claims it has long intended to revise the APAAS framework. Stanley Kurtz shows this claim to be transparently false.

The reality, as Stanley explains, is this:

The College Board is in a panic. Its repeated attempts to keep the APAAS curriculum secret have failed. That curriculum has now been widely published, and the teacher’s guide has been exposed here at NRO as well.

My sources tell me that at least one other red state is seriously considering pulling out of the course. More red states are likely doing the same. The College Board knows that if it doesn’t stop the bleeding, the red states will be lost.

So this is a victory for DeSantis and a defeat for radical left wokeism, right? Maybe. I think it’s a win for DeSantis. Whether it’s a genuine defeat for the left remains to be seen.

As Stanley points out, the College Board revised its leftist AP U.S. History framework in the face of criticism from moderate and conservative scholars. Yet, the revised framework wasn’t much of an improvement.

Stanley observes that this time, we’re at a much earlier point in the APAAS course-development process than when controversy broke out over AP U.S. History. Therefore, the College Board has more room for flexibility in revising the curriculum.

Flexibility, yes. Willingness, I doubt it.

The first version of APAAS is so thoroughly radical I can’t imagine that the body responsible for issuing it will come up with anything remotely fair minded. Moreover, the College Board operates in such bad faith — e.g. its concealment from the public of the APAAS curriculum — that it simply can’t be trusted.

I expect the College Board to throw in a few readings from non-leftists and then try to sell its revised course as fair and balanced. Perhaps it will tone down or eliminate the claim that color blindness is racism, as the teaching of this absurdity violates Florida law. But the radical preaching of APAAS extends much further than this.

A proper revision would center its readings on mainstream figures, none of whom try to hide the many evils inflicted on blacks in America, with a few radical leftists thrown in for balance — but none who attempt to justify violence or who argue for the overthrow of our economic system, the merits of which are a proper subject for economics, not black studies.

It won’t happen.

Nonetheless, DeSantis was shrewd to invite the College Board to revise APAAS, rather than nixing the course altogether. He doesn’t want to be viewed as inalterably opposed to an AP course in black studies. Nor, in an ideal world, would such opposition be necessary.

But what should DeSantis do now, in this less than ideal world? I think he should review the revised APAAS framework and (assuming the course is still slanted) politely reject the new version.

By doing so, DeSantis will protect Florida students from being indoctrinated, at taxpayer expense, by the far left, while again demonstrating his seriousness, foremost among the nation’s governors, as a courageous opponent of wokeism.