Conservative School Board Members Who Pushed For ‘Patriotic’ History Get Booted

In Colorado’s second-largest school district, residents overwhelmingly voted to recall three conservative school board members who floated a controversial proposal that the Advanced Placement U.S. history curriculum be changed to “promote patriotism.” Voters ended up creating an entirely new school board in Jefferson County.

The College Board, which created the guidelines for the AP history standards, recently faced major backlash from conservative groups that claimed the standards should include “American exceptionalism” and did not approve of the College Board’s choice to include more information about violence against Native Americans and the growing influence of social conservatives. Conservatives also complained that there was not any mention of the Founding Fathers.

After the guidelines became controversial and state legislators and school board members decried them as unpatriotic, College Board announced the guidelines for AP history curriculum would be changed to include “American exceptionalism” and include the founding fathers. Those changes were immediate. The College Board said it had “previously assumed it wasn’t something it needed to spell out as part of what would be taught in an American history course.”