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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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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."