College Board has announced that its new AP African American Studies course will undergo changes after the company was accused of watering down its curriculum amid political pressure.
On Monday (April 24), the College Board said authors of the AP course “will determine the details of those changes over the next few months,” per NBC News.
“We are committed to providing an unflinching encounter with the facts and evidence of African American history and culture,” the company said in a statement.
It's unclear what the changes will entail.
The course was piloted in 60 schools across the nation this year and is set to expand to 800 schools and 16,000 students in the upcoming school year.
News of the changes comes after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said earlier this year that he would ban the Black history course because it pushed a "political agenda."
“In the state of Florida, our education standards not only don’t prevent, but they require teaching Black history, all the important things. That’s part of our core curriculum,” DeSantis previously said. “We want education and not indoctrination.”
Following DeSantis' rejection of the course, College Board unveiled its official curriculum, which many said downplayed some of the components included in the draft version. Several topics from the framework, including Black Lives Matter, slavery reparations, and queer life were removed amid political controversy.
College Board previously said that revisions to the course weren't shaped by political influence. Authors of the course consulted with professors at colleges across the nation and used input from teachers piloting the course, College Board said.
On Monday, the company said that it launched the African American studies course to give as many students as possible access to the discipline. "Regrettably" the goals of the course "came into conflict," College Board said as it announced that changes were coming.
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