The course had run into criticism from scholars, who accused the board of omitting key concepts and bending to political pressure.
The College Board said on Monday that it would revise its Advanced Placement African American studies course, less than three months after releasing it to a barrage of criticism, reports the New York Times.
The Board was accused of omitting key concepts and bending to political pressure from Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had said he would not approve the curriculum for use in Florida.
In a statement on Monday, the College Board said the development committee and experts charged with authoring the Advanced Placement course “will determine the details of those changes over the next few months.”
“We are committed to providing an unflinching encounter with the facts and evidence of African American history and culture,” the College Board said. “To achieve that commitment, we must listen to the diversity of voices within the field.”
“Hunger for this course has exploded around the country,” the College Board said, according to the Washington Post.
The course gained national attention this winter when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2024, said he would ban the course in his state because it pushed a political agenda.
“In the state of Florida, our education standards not only don’t prevent, but they require teaching Black history, all the important things. That’s part of our core curriculum,” DeSantis previously said, according to the Associated Press. “We want education and not indoctrination.”
The College Board, a nonprofit organization that oversees the SAT college admissions test and the AP program, touts the new course as a milestone effort to present high school students with a sophisticated, college-level immersion in African American history and culture.
The course starts with the origins of the African diaspora and sweeps through the epochs of slavery, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement.
