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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29470 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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I’m not sure what to think about the inciting event.

There’s also a little context I’d missed. When Florida attacked AP African-American History,

  1. We never received written feedback from the Florida Department of Education specifying how the course violates Florida law, despite repeated requests…The first and only written feedback we have received was through a tweet from Commissioner Diaz posted on January 20, 2023.
  2. Your February 7, 2023 letter alludes to course topics that you characterize as “historically fictional,” but does not specify which topics or why.
  3. …Your letter claims that we removed 19 topics that were present in the pilot framework at the behest of FDOE. This is inaccurate.
  4. We did not provide FDOE a “preview” of the College Board’s official framework.
  5. Finally, we need to clarify that no topics were removed because they lacked educational value.

This suggests that Florida has a prior history of pushing curriculum changes—and running premature victory laps—without reaching an agreement. In that light, Florida’s May letter was probably viewed as the start of another six-month squabble. The College Board could just be skipping ahead in the script.

Of course, Florida denied that. More details here claim that the College Board was being dishonest, and that FBOE was acting on leaked information. Frustratingly, I can’t find the original February 7 letter.

I would tend to agree that CB would have been better served by insisting they were already compliant. It probably wouldn’t have placated Florida. So I haven’t ruled out the possibility that this saved them some time.

Edit: letter is here.

On 7/22/22, the College Board’s Brian Barnes responded (inaccurately) in writing how the course did not conflict with Florida law.

So…they tried it. Florida said they were full of shit, various reviews were triggered, and they still had no agreement by February.

Come June, and Florida sends a similar warning about a different course. College Board decides to skip the pleasantries. And here we are.

Frustratingly, I can’t find the original February 7 letter.

It's barely-noticeably linked at the bottom of your second link.

But the very first point in its "recap" of communications is:

From January 2022 to June 2022 the College Board exchanged emails with FDOE’s Office of Articulation seeking to add AP African American Studies to the Credit by Exam list and the Course Code Directory

So this is a discussion that had been happening, apparently, for quite some time, with many emails to go through, and which the College Board decided to "take public" as, apparently, a negotiating tactic.

I am, for a variety of personal and professional reasons, not a fan of detached administrative interference in classroom content. But I am certainly more open to the regulation of public education by politically accountable figures, than by unaccountable NGOs like the College Board. It is apparently a somewhat recurring theme with the DeSantis administration that Florida lawmakers are not going to be pushed around by corporate-sponsored social agendas. I can understand why the College Board would prefer to not have its nationwide content influenced by the vagaries of one state's lawmaking. I can understand why Florida lawmakers would prefer not to have 25% of its annual expenditures going to teaching content over which it has no control.

But all of that only applies to the African-American Studies dispute. The psychology dispute seems more like an own goal by the College Board. There was nothing stopping them from just saying "yeah this all looks age-appropriate to us, please speak up if you disagree."

The College Board could just be skipping ahead in the script.

Important to note that classes start in about 25 calendar days, so it is important to the Florida schools (the College Board's clients) to figure out whether to offer the class now, rather than in December.

Important to note that classes start in about 25 calendar days

This is a minor point, but a quick Google search suggests that Jacksonville and Miami schools start next week, and Tallahassee, Tampa, and Orlando schools actually start tomorrow.

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