Teachers' Union Chief: ‘I’m Disappointed’ College Board Dropped ‘BLM,’ ‘Intersectionality’ from AP History Course
Ron DeSantis had moved to ban Black history course in Florida
The head of the nation's largest teachers' union is registering her dismay over efforts to water down an advanced high-school course on Black history which came under fire from Florida's Republican governor.
A potential contender for the Republican presidential nomination, DeSantis moved to ban in his state the teaching of an Advanced Placement history course in African-American history.
The College Board hit back over the weekend at top Florida officials over the state's ban on a new AP African American Studies course that's being piloted in several states, while DeSantis on Monday suggested the state could “reevaluate” its relationship with the organization.
In a lengthy statement released Saturday, the national education nonprofit said it should have more quickly addressed claims by Florida's Department of Education that the course was indoctrinating students and lacked educational value, which the College Board called “slander.”
The College Board allowed DeSantis to essentially step into the role of America’s czar of high school curriculum, by bending to the will of the Florida Department of Education in dramatically whitewashing — literally and figuratively — the framework for the AP African American studies course, many observers contend.
Of the units that appeared in the pilot course, those about intersectionality and activism, Black feminist literary thought, and Black Queer Studies are not in the final curriculum. The teaching of Black Lives Matter has been downgraded in the revised curriculum.
And it's to those changes which American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten objects.
“I have taught not African-American studies, but I have taught AP [government classes]. And so, I was disappointed, as I said that day, with what the college board had taken out, and also some other choices, like the fact that A. Philip Randolph was not given the credit that he should be given as the kind of labor leader and African-American labor leader who really did do — who really did move the American labor movement,” Weingarten said as part of an on-camera panel discussion on MSNBC. “… I think Dana is right about what she just said about intersectionality. I think clearly there was a back and forth, but let me just say this.
“This curriculum was in place in three Miami high schools. And DeSantis took it out, pulled it out, and those kids in those three high schools have lost out. And now because the College Board has said to DeSantis, ‘You have defamed us or scapegoated us,’ or whatever else they said this weekend in their letter, what is DeSantis doing? Now he’s saying, 'Well, maybe I’ll take out all of the College Board classes.’ So the point is there have been politics involved here and this is the point we’ve tried to make throughout, which is stop the politics in schools, let us teach children, and let us make sure that kids, particularly these high school kids, have this kind of elective that would be really good in this country right now in terms of African-American studies,” she added. “And that’s what DeSantis is trying to stop. And I’m sorry that the College Board got in the midst of this and didn’t see who he was.
“But I think let’s watch what DeSantis does right now. He’s treating the College Board like he has treated Disney, as if he alone makes decisions about the educational needs of kids as opposed to teachers and parents,” Weingarten said.
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