Florida Officials Had Contact With College Board Over African American Studies

Dana Goldstein, Stephanie Saul and Anemona Hartocollis / The New York Times

In January, demonstrators in Tallahassee protested policies restricting how issues of race are taught in Florida schools. (photo: Alicia Devine/AP)

10 February 23

A letter from state officials is likely to fuel controversy over the College Board, which has been accused of stripping or minimizing concepts to please conservatives.

While the College Board was developing its first Advanced Placement course in African American studies, the group was in repeated contact with the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, often discussing course concepts that the state said it found objectionable, a newly released letter shows.

When the final course guidelines were released last week, the College Board had removed or significantly reduced the presence of many of those concepts — like intersectionality, mass incarceration, reparations and the Black Lives Matter movement — though it said that political pressure played no role in the changes. Florida had announced in January that it would not approve the curriculum.

The specifics about the discussions, which occurred over the course of a year, were outlined in a Feb. 7 letter from the Florida Department of Education to the College Board.

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