Arkansas education department nixes AP African American Studies course at last minute
August 12, 2023
Word came Friday from distraught educators that a new Advanced Placement course on African American history was suddenly on the chopping block, just two days before the first bell of the school year was set to ring in Arkansas high schools planning to offer the class.
An official from the Arkansas Department of Education reportedly alerted high school teachers by phone on Friday that the class would not be recognized for course credit by the state in the 2023-24 school year. And unlike with every other AP class on offer, the state would not cover the $90 cost of an end-of-year test that gives students the opportunity to qualify for college course credit.
The College Board, which designs and administers AP exams, is currently piloting
AP African American Studies at select U.S. high schools. Sixty schools around the country, including Central High in Little Rock and The Academies at Jonesboro High School, piloted the course last year. For the coming school year, the pilot program will expand to hundreds of schools,
and students will test for college credit in the course for the first time in spring 2024.
Teachers at schools including Central High, North Little Rock High School, the North Little Rock Center for Excellence charter high school and Jacksonville High School prepared over the summer to offer the course in the upcoming school year. At least some of these teachers were at school prepping their classrooms and meeting with students and parents when they got the news from the state.
The full impact of the state’s move is still unclear. Teachers were reportedly told they could still offer the class, but the state will not recognize it on the same level as other AP courses. That may make African American Studies less attractive for students competing for top class rankings, who often seek out AP classes for the extra bump they provide to their GPAs (taking AP classes can shoot high-performing students above a 4.0). It could also have a chilling effect on other schools that might have been considering offering the course in the future.
The course will not count as a credit toward statewide graduation requirements, and students will have to pay their own test fees.
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Oddly, no one at the Arkansas Department of Education answered phone calls or returned emails about the decision Friday afternoon, nor could they be reached Saturday. And because the phone calls about the last minute change went directly to teachers — bypassing district administrators and even principals — there was no paper trail to follow to figure out what was going on.
On Saturday morning, the state sent emails to district curriculum administrators letting them know the course would not be recognized. The terse email appeared not to be an official announcement but simply an alert to a change made in the education department’s course management system. The message indicates AP African American Studies was deleted from the state’s roster of offerings at 4:02 p.m. on the Friday before school starts for most public school students in Arkansas