Access to AP African American Studies is now in question for dozens of students in Arkansas, the latest state to challenge the course over what it calls “indoctrination.”
Teachers were told late last week about the shift, just ahead of the school year beginning across the state. The Arkansas Department of Education said students who take the course, banned earlier this year in Florida, could not earn high school credit for the class in part because it is still in a pilot phase.
The course, the agency said, is still being revised, and could violate Arkansas laws about prohibited topics. That could put teachers at risk of violating state law.
“The department encourages the teaching of all American history and supports rigorous courses not based on opinions or indoctrination,” state education department spokesperson Kimberly Mundell told USA Today Tuesday.
Several states questioned AP course
Arkansas began looking into the College Board course months ago, following executive orders from Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. One of those orders, signed on her first day in office, bans “indoctrination and critical race theory in schools.”
Two Arkansas high schools offered the course last year, and a total of six high schools in the state were set to offer the course this school year, as part of a second year of pilot testing the course.
After Florida banned the course, officials in Arkansas and three other Republican-led states, including Virginia, announced they were reviewing its curriculum to ensure it complied with policy.
Other states led largely by Democratic governors, however, embraced the course. Some 800 high schools across the country and about 16,000 students are a part of the testing, or about twice as many as originally planned thanks to a surge in demand for the course in recent months.
AP African American studies is an interdisciplinary college-level course that covers themes ranging from early African empires and the transatlantic slave trade to reconstruction and Black power and pride. Shortly after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis denounced the course in January, the College Board removed or made optional topics such as intersectionality and the Black Lives Matter movement.
“We share in their surprise, confusion, and disappointment at this new guidance that the course won’t count toward graduation credits or weighted the same as other AP courses offered in the state,” the College Board said Tuesday in a statement, also noting it has had an excellent working relationship with the Arkansas education department.
Arkansas Education Secretary Jacob Oliva told the Arkansas Advocate that shift means the state will not pay the $98 fee for students to take the end-of-year AP exam, as it does for other AP exams. Some institutions grant students college credit depending on how well they score.
The state said the pilot may not meet its graduation requirements and does not comply with the same rules as other Advanced Placement courses, such as AP European History, United States History and World History: Modern. Arkansas offers an African American History course that students can take for high school credit, the state education department noted.
In demand:Interest in AP African American Studies surges across US as Florida ban remains
‘An attack on our civil rights’
The College Board, which also administers the SAT, said more than 200 colleges and universities have agreed to grant college credit based on AP African American Studies exam scores, including the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, the University of Arkansas system’s flagship.
Groups including the NAACP were outraged by the move.
“The class teaches history. Students at Little Rock Central High School, where the AP African American History course is being piloted, have a right to learn about their history,” NAACP said. “Over 66 years ago in 1957, the ‘Little Rock Nine’ made history by integrating Central High School. This decision is reprehensible and an attack on our civil rights as well as the advancement of students of color in Arkansas.”
Five of the six schools slated to offer the course this school year did not respond to requests for comment. One declined to comment.
