The Advanced Placement African American Studies class was designed to prepare more Black students for college. Now, it’s better known as a political wedge.
The mere existence of the high school Advanced Placement course in African American Studies has become a political wedge. It was created for two primary reasons: to legitimize Black history as a necessary subject matter in American schools and to reverse the underrepresentation of Black students in AP courses.
Instead, in some states, the course has wandered into the crosshairs of a culture war intent on banning all forms of race-conscious and inclusive education. The College Board, which provides these advanced courses for the country’s intellectually gifted high schoolers, has deemed African American Studies not only as worth studying but also as a gateway to educational advancement. That point, however, has been lost in the politics of the matter.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration blocked the course in Florida’s public schools after he signed the Stop WOKE Act last year, barring schools from teaching race-inclusive education. Classes that were midway through the year had to abandon the curriculum in January to avoid violating the law.
Not all states are following suit.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said 26 schools in the state will teach the course next year, beyond the single class at a school in Newark. “While the DeSantis Administration stated that AP African American Studies ‘significantly lacks educational value,’” Murphy said in a statement, “New Jersey will stand on the side of teaching our full history.”
What is indisputable amid the debate, however, is the disproportionate lack of Black students in such classes, which can offer significant advances for college-bound students.
Fifteen percent of high school students in the U.S. are Black, but they are only 9% of students enrolled in AP courses, according to the Education Trust, a think tank that proposes solutions to educational inequalities. In a 2020 survey, 40% of Black students said they were interested in pursuing science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, fields in college, but no more than 2% of Blacks students were enrolled in AP biology, chemistry, or physics.
Offering AP African American Studies was considered one measure the College Board would take to bridge the gap.
What’s at stake?
AP classes have become a boon for many college-bound students looking to stand out on college applications. They can count toward high school students’ weighted GPAs, which represent the difficulty of their course loads, in addition to how well they perform in class. Furthermore, an adequate AP test score can count toward college credit, depending on the school; that means paying about $100 for a standardized test versus the tuition and time for a first-year college course.
“The more advanced my classes have gotten, there were fewer and fewer kids who look like me.”
But not all AP offerings are equal. In some high schools, teacher availability and funding can limit AP courses. Some schools also shut out potentially strong AP students by relying on single metrics like GPAs or test scores to determine their readiness for advanced placement courses. The Education Trust also warns bias among teachers and guidance counselors can create a barrier between students of color and advanced classes.
Mehari Milton, a senior at New Albany Senior High School, in Indiana, plans to head to Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island — the only school he applied to — in the fall. To get there, he also took AP courses, but he observed that “the more advanced my classes have gotten, there were fewer and fewer kids who look like me.”
The broader result of the efforts to reverse the trend, however, has been political blowback. The two-year pilot program, in which 60 units of the African American Studies classes are being tested across the country, will expand. In some states the courses will exclude many of the topics that were deemed too controversial to teach in Florida, such as Black Lives Matter, issuing reparations for slavery and the intersection of race and LGBTQ identity. DeSantis even repeatedly publicly touted that his state was where “woke goes to die.”
‘This is not a question of lacking talent’
The original point behind the course has been overshadowed, “because the antics around it are so wild, but the original cause is what is even wilder,” said Daarel Burnette, a senior editor for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Even before the African American Studies course became a flashpoint, Black students were not afforded access “to all the other courses” that make students enticing to college admissions administrators, as well as earn college credit for scoring well on AP tests, he said.
“Why do we think that white kids are so much further ahead than Black kids when they go to college?” he said. “Because they had access to AP courses. Why are their GPAs so much higher when it comes to admissions? Because they had access to AP courses. It’s all interconnected, and it’s just so unfortunate.”
Sacha Rabkin, the president of Equal Opportunity Schools, which works with schools to break down barriers to advanced classes, said the disparity is not due to the “question of lacking talent or genius.”
“It’s really a fundamental question of segregated access, as we think about the barriers that are placed, visible and invisible, in front of young people, particularly Black students as they try to navigate the upper echelons of public education,” Rabkin said.
The Advanced Placement African American Studies class was designed to prepare more Black students for college. Now, it’s better known as a political wedge.
Source: nbcnews.com