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Is there any faint hope this is the reason the course was banned? I don't even know if it was banned, but that's the headline. Did the state officials decide "Nope, this doesn't qualify as an AP course because it's not long enough and doesn't have enough content" and that's why it's not been accepted?
Since we don't know what is in the curriculum, we can't say why it was quashed. It might simply be this was too soft and easy to reach the standard necessary for advanced classes. If the idea is "give black kids an easily passed course where they don't have to do work so they can have an AP class" then that's not good teaching, whatever it may be for political angle of "our schools increased numbers of minority students taking advanced courses" numbers.
There doesn't seem to be much actual information about the course, but some of the stuff put out about it by the College Board explicitly lists "get more black kids to pass AP classes" as a motivating goal for designing the course. Given general precedent, I would expect that "black kids will try harder because this is more engaging and relevant to them" is the PR rationale, and "standards will be particularly low" will be the reality. On a less CW angle, it would probably be less rigorous just because it's new. 20 years ago, I was taking AP tests for fun without having had a class, and getting top scores just because I was a generally well-read, nerdy kid. I am told that is much more difficult these days, as standards and expectations keep rising to match how much extra effort and specialization kids/parents/tutors/schools are putting in AP test prep.
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