On Thursday, the College Board, which oversees the Advanced Placement program, told Florida leaders that it will not revise its psychology course that covers the topic of sexual orientation and gender identity.
According to The Washington Post, the organization sent a letter to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to notify them that it will not change the course.
“Please know that we will not modify our courses to accommodate restrictions on teaching essential, college-level topics,” the organization said in a letter to Florida’s education department. “Doing so would break the fundamental promise of AP: colleges wouldn’t broadly accept that course for credit and that course wouldn’t prepare students for success in the discipline.”
Last year, Florida began enacting restrictions on curriculum surrounding gender identity and sexual orientation in public schools. A letter sent from DeSantis’ administration to the College Board last month asked the organization to review its courses and make changes to comply with the state law.
“Some courses might contain content or topics prohibited by State Board of Education rule and Florida law,” the department’s letter reportedly stated.
In April, Townhall covered how the College Board announced that it would revise its Advanced Placement African American studies course following criticism from scholars and from DeSantis’ administration. Reportedly, the course included lessons in “black queer” studies and “intersectionality.”
In addition to restricting lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity, DeSantis has come out against other “divisive” topics in schools, like Critical Race Theory.
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In a statement, the College Board said that it is “committed to providing an unflinching encounter with the facts and evidence of African American history and culture. To achieve that commitment, we must listen to the diversity of voices within the field. The development committee and experts within AP remain engaged in building a course and exam that best reflect this dynamic discipline. Those scholars and experts have decided they will make changes to the latest course framework during this pilot phase. They will determine the details of those changes over the next few months.”
Months prior, DeSantis had rejected the AP course over its “political agenda.”
“We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them when you try to use black history to shoehorn in queer theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes,” DeSantis said at the time.
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