Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies (also known as APAAS, or APAFAM) is a pilot college-level course and examination offered to a limited number of high school students in the United States through the

College Board The College Board is an American nonprofit organization that was formed in December 1899 as the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) to expand access to higher education. While the College Board is not an association of colleges, it runs ...

Advanced Placement program Advanced Placement (AP) is a program in the United States and Canada created by the College Board which offers college-level curricula and examinations to high school students. American colleges and universities may grant placement and course ...

. The course will be dedicated solely to learning about and researching the

African diaspora The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from native Africans or people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were ...

and is designed to elevate

African-American history African-American history began with the arrival of Africans to North America in the 16th and 17th centuries. Former Spanish slaves who had been freed by Francis Drake arrived aboard the Golden Hind at New Albion in California in 1579. The E ...

and education. Starting in the 2023–2024 school year, the pilot course will expand to approximately 200 schools. The course is expected to launch worldwide beginning in August 2024.

History and development

For decades, critics of

and advanced placement programs have argued that curricula have focused too much on

Euro-centric Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism) is a worldview that is centered on Western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-Western civilizations. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western world ...

history. Between 2017 and 2020, College Board partnered with the University of Notre Dame and Tuskegee University to pre-pilot AP African American Studies in 11 selected schools. In 2020, College Board reshaped some curricula among history-based AP courses to further reflect the

. In 2021, College Board announced that it would be officially piloting AP African American Studies course to begin in the 2022–2023 academic year. The course will be piloted in approximately 60 schools across the United States in its first year. AP African American Studies will be the first ethnic studies course offered by College Board, and the first pilot course since 1952. According to a source at College Board, topics in the pilot course will range from

Queen Nzinga Nzinga Ana de Sousa Mbande ( – 1663) was a Southwest African ruler who served as queen of the Ambundu Kingdoms of Ndongo (1624–1663) and Matamba (1631–1663), located in present-day northern Angola. Born into the ruling family of Ndongo ...

in northern

Angola , national_anthem = " Angola Avante"() , image_map = , map_caption = , capital = Luanda , religion = , religion_year = 2020 , religion_ref = , coordina ...

to the Harlem Renaissance and the

Black Panthers The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, Califo ...

. Topics will also include lesser-known activists like Valerie Thomas, the African American scientist who invented the Illusion transmitter at NASA. Brandi Waters, the director of the AP African American Studies course development, stated, "this course will offer students across the country a rigorous and inspiring introduction to African American studies." Advocates of the launch of AP African American Studies argue the course will help attract more African American students to AP programs and will bolster minority scores. According to 2019 data, 32% of Black students passed their AP exams compared to 44% of white and Asian students respectively. Some information regarding the course's structure and exam have not been released; College Board will reveal more about the course as the pilot program progresses. Additionally, College Board described that AP African American Students would further " ttractBlack and Latinx high school teachers".

Staff

Brandi Waters is the executive director of AP African American Studies for College Board. Leaders in the field of Black studies, such as

Henry Louis Gates Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African Ame ...

, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, and

Robert Patterson Robert Patterson (January 12, 1792 – August 7, 1881) was an Irish-born United States major general during the American Civil War, chiefly remembered for inflicting an early defeat on Stonewall Jackson, but crucially failing to stop Confed ...

assisted in the creation of the course.

Reaction

AP African American Studies Founding Group

Dawn Williams, dean of Howard University's School of Education, said that AP African American Studies consists of a "curriculum that's been vetted for years by experts in the field." In 2022, Gates stated, "Nothing is more dramatic than having the College Board launch an AP course in a field—that signifies ultimate acceptance and ultimate academic legitimacy... AP African American Studies is not CRT. It's not the 1619 Project. It is a mainstream, rigorously vetted, academic approach to a vibrant field of study, one half a century old in the American academy, and much older, of course, in historically Black colleges and universities." The ultimate goal of the course is to teach that Black history is not limited to slavery or the Civil Rights movement. In a September 2022 opinion column for '' The Wall Street Journal'', Jason L. Riley claimed that the College Board would probably pander to Black students with political indoctrination. College Board CEO David Coleman responded by stating, "There are no points ever awarded on nyAP exam for agreeing with a point of view. Rather, students encounter evidence and make up their own minds." Daniel Soderstrom, one of the teachers of the pilot course, stated in an interview with CNN, "we're teaching factual information, and everything is verifiable." The course was featured on America in Black, a television show that first aired on BET, VH1, and CBS February 19, 2023, where Soderstrom's class at Ridge View High School was interviewed. The segment highlighted the push-back from conservatives like DeSantis in the implementation of the course, as well as positive reactions from community members and students.

Florida controversy

Throughout 2022, under the administration of Republican governor Ron DeSantis, Florida state officials had repeated contact with the College Board, often discussing parts of the course found "objectionable." On January 12, 2023, the Florida Department of Education's Office of Articulation sent a letter to

saying the course was "inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value." The letter reportedly did not specify what was objectionable to the department, but a spokesperson for DeSantis indicated that the course left "large, ambiguous gaps that can be filled with additional ideological material." According to '' The New York Times'', the letter called the course "historically inaccurate" and a violation of Florida state law (likely referring to the Stop WOKE Act passed in Florida in 2022). DeSantis later gave his reason for the ban as the inclusion of queer theory and intersectionality in the course, as well as content regarding the role prisons play in systemic oppression, and stated that these topics were on “the wrong side of the line for Florida standards”. College Board later revealed that no such forced lessons existed and that students must use evidence from conflicting viewpoints. College Board, which finalized the official curriculum prior to the DeSantis announcement, released the current curriculum on February 1, 2023. The work of numerous writers associated with

Black feminism Black feminism is a philosophy that centers on the idea that "Black women are inherently valuable, that lack women'sliberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else's but because our need as human persons for autonomy." Race, gend ...

and

critical race theory Critical race theory (CRT) is a cross-disciplinary examination, by social and civil-rights scholars and activists, of how laws, social and political movements, and media shape, and are shaped by, social conceptions of race and ethnicity. Go ...

continues to be optional, and

Black conservatism Black conservatism is a political and social philosophy rooted in communities of African descent that aligns largely with the conservative ideology around the world. Black conservatives emphasize traditionalism, patriotism, self-sufficiency, an ...

continues as a suggested research topic. According to Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, one of the architects of the course, Florida's Department of Education saw "buzzwords" and falsely assumed that the material was required. Rather, Higginbotham maintained, students are expected to use sources from all sides of the political spectrum. In February 2023, in interviews with both

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

and

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...

, the president of

, David Coleman, and the senior director of the program, Brandi Waters, stated that students will still have access to materials of all political backgrounds and that College Board has not backed down or "watered down its curriculum" because of media attention. Coleman also said that the curriculum was changed well before DeSantis announced the state's intent to ban the course in Florida and that College Board does not "bend to politics."

Course development timeline

* 2017–2020 ** Pre-pilot in 11 schools * February 2022: ** Pilot schools and educators identified and briefed * July 2022: ** Pilot educators trained at Howard University * August/September 2022: ** Pilot course launched * May 2023: ** Pilot course exam * August/September 2023: ** Additional schools (approximately 200) and educators added to pilot program * May 2024: ** Pilot course exam II * August/September 2024: ** Official Course Launch

Course overview

Exam

A pilot exam will be administered in May 2023 and 2024 to prepare for the launching of the course in August 2024. These pilot exams, however, will not be scored like traditional AP exams and their data will not be sent to students, teachers, or colleges and universities.

References

{{reflist Advanced Placement Post–civil rights era in African-American history History education History of the United States