College Board Has Scrubbed Website of Previous Statements of Independence from Florida Officials

The College Board, the organization that produces Advanced Placement (AP) courses for high school students, recently deleted a statement defending its revisions to the new AP African American Studies course from its website. The statement, which was posted to the College Board website to combat a flurry of criticism, contained numerous false and misleading statements. The College Board has subsequently changed its narrative but is still defending the revisions, which appear to be politically motivated. 

On February 1, the College Board released a revised version of the AP African American Studies course. The new curriculum excised lessons on Black queer studies, Black feminism, mass incarceration, reparations, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Also missing were important Black writers that had been included in the pilot version of the curriculum, including Kimberlé Crenshaw and bell hooks. 

The revisions tracked concerns expressed weeks earlier by the Florida Department of Education. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) said the pilot version of the course was "political" and "lack[ed] educational value." The College Board faced critical media coverage reporting that it had caved to political pressure and watered down the course.

Later on February 1, the College Board released a statement rejecting this criticism, taking aim specifically at an article in the New York Times. The College Board asserted that the revisions could not have been "made in response to Florida" because "the core revisions were substantially complete… by December 22, weeks before Florida's objections were shared." It asserted that it had "time-stamped records of revisions from December 22, 2022" that substantiated its defense. 

The statement was deleted from the College Board website sometime after February 9. (A cached version remains available at archive.org.) It turns out that the College Board's primary defense was a lie.