Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
This week, public education in Florida came under attack once again, when the state’s Department of Education rejected a new Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies course from the College Board, the nonprofit that runs the nationwide program of college-level courses. The DOE wrote: “As presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.”
For the past year, with other education advocates, I’ve warned that educational gag orders such as Florida’s “Stop W.O.K.E. Act”—which restrict education on so-called “divisive concepts” relating to race, gender, and identity—could put at risk AP and other early college credit programs that enroll millions of students.
Now it’s happened: an AP course, developed by acclaimed scholars such as Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and piloted in a Florida classroom, has been banned because politicians disagree with its scholarship, and lawmakers have made viewpoint-based censorship of classroom subjects legal.