Friend,
Since we launched our petition to the College Board a week ago, more than 12,000 People For members have signed on, calling for them to fully restore the AP African American Studies course.
Even as the College Board continues to distance themselves from the DeSantis administration, they’ve been unwilling to reverse the harmful cuts to the course curriculum – choosing instead to proceed with the watered-down course after removing content deemed too “political” by far-right Republicans.
This surrender to far-right political forces is a dangerous precedent as Republicans like Gov. Ron DeSantis seek to build their MAGA credentials at the expense of the freedom to learn in our nation’s K-12 classrooms.
Thanks for all that you do,
Zach, People For the American Way
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Friend,
Florida Governor and Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis has struck one of the largest blows to the freedom to learn in our nation’s classrooms, and, according to explosive new reporting by The New York Times, one of the nation’s largest education nonprofits gave him a hand. [1]
Just last week, the College Board – which administers SAT testing and designs “advanced placement” (AP) high school courses – caved to right-wing criticism over their new AP African American Studies class by eliminating content that the College Board once viewed as fundamental to the course. It was the latest victory in the Far Right's war on truth, history, and the freedom to learn.
This erasure of Black history, announced during Black History Month, is part of a dangerous campaign by the Far Right. The political attack on “wokeness” is a smokescreen for an effort to restrict teaching about topics that do not align with the right wing’s political worldview or advance its political agendas. We must speak out and demand accountability for those advocating for these changes – and those who enable them.
New reporting from the New York Times reveals that the College Board and the DeSantis administration were in regular contact for nearly a year as the DeSantis administration made demands and threats to keep the curriculum out of the state’s schools.
This revelation undermines an aggressive media campaign by the College Board trying to deny that any changes were made in order to appease the DeSantis administration and other critics.
Once considered a protégé of President Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis has been eager to win the loyalty of the MAGA crowd and is doing so by aggressively pushing destructive culture war attacks on voting rights, LGBTQ+ people, honest teaching about racism in our history and institutions, and more.
We can expect more outlandish and dangerous proposals from DeSantis in the months ahead as he seeks to replace Trump in the hearts of the MAGA movement ahead of the presidential primaries.
Thank you for joining us in speaking out against this egregious attempt to deny students access to the full story of Black history and culture—and therefore from the full story of American history and culture. We’ll keep you informed about future opportunities to resist the far-right war on the freedom to learn.
Thanks for all that you do,
Svante Myrick
President
People For the American Way
Source:
[1] "Florida Officials Had Repeated Contact With College Board Over African American Studies" The New York Times, 2/9/23
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