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Hundreds of people railed against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s Department of Education n Tallahassee this month for rejecting the College Board’s Advanced Placement African American Studies class. The College Board claimed the rejection was “inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.”
In the newest framework of the class, released in early February, the College Board removed much of what the DeSantis administration opposed, which critics called the “watering down of history.”
My name is Ana Goñi-Lessan, and I’m a reporter for the USA TODAY- Florida network, covering children and families.
I wanted to really dig into what exactly changed in the two frameworks, before and after DeSantis rejected the class. So I got a draft of the AP class from a university faculty member, dated for May 2022, and compared it to the most recent framework.
I found most of the class was unchanged, but there are differences in the source material for lessons about recent African American history, debate topics and contemporary issues.
It was alarming to see notable works from authors like Te-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations,” and Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” were removed.
I can remember the first time I read Coates in The Atlantic. These titles shaped the way I think about our country’s history.
At the rally, there were children from elementary school and elderly grandparents in wheelchairs, all there for the same reason.
“If you would study history, governor, you would have known to mess with us in education always ends to your defeat,” Rev. AlSharpton said as the crowd cheered.
📰 Read the full story: A breakdown of what was removed or changed in the AP African American Studies framework
Stories we’re reading this week on race, identity, and justice:
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