Related Links

●  Revised AP framework (College Board statement)

●  Conservatives declare victory 

●  Story in Inside Higher Ed

●  The College Board blinked (softens sections on racism)

●  College Board bows to critics, revises AP U.S. History course (WaPo)

The company behind Advanced Placement courses for U.S. high school students will release a revision to the standards for AP U.S. history on Thursday morning, after significant pushback from conservatives who claimed the redesigned course framework, released last year, painted American history in too negative a light.

The new framework significantly pares down last year’s framework, simplifying and condensing the course’s Thematic Learning Objectives from 50 to 19, according to an official at the College Board, the nonprofit organization that administers AP exams. In the process, a new section on the concept of “American exceptionalism” has been added. Some names that were omitted from last year’s framework, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, have been added—a key sticking point for critics of the prior document, who objected to Founding Fathers being omitted and negative aspects in American history being more emphasized, they claimed, than positive periods. Ben Carson, a GOP presidential candidate, said the curriculum was so anti-American that students who complete it would be “ready to sign up for ISIS.”

The revised framework will be effective immediately, and doesn’t require a change in any textbooks, according to the College Board. High school classes in many parts of the country begin in three weeks. The AP test that will be administered in May 2016 has already been written.