Students at 60 U.S. high schools will soon be able to take African American Studies as an Advanced Placement course, the College Board announced this week.
The College Board, which administers several college prep programs, including the SAT and AP courses, announced that the African American Studies AP course will begin this year as a pilot program that will not award students any college credits, according to the New York Times.
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While the course is only being offered at 60 high schools this school year, that number will grow to 200 in the 2023-24 school before it becomes widely available the following year, CBS News reported.
The cross-disciplinary course, which incorporates literature, politics, and geography, in addition to covering 400 years of history, is the first addition to the College Board’s list of AP courses since 2014. AP courses provide students the opportunity to earn college credit while in high school.
The announcement comes as numerous state legislatures have pushed for or enacted bans on critical race theory in public schools. The academic theory posits that U.S. institutions and culture are systemically racist and oppressive to racial minorities and must be viewed through such a lens.
While schools don’t have a dedicated critical race theory class, the ideas of the theory are often incorporated into classroom instruction through other subjects, including history, literature, and even math.
It was not immediately clear how state-level bans on public school instruction of critical race theory could affect the widespread offering of the new AP course.
Trevor Packer, the head of the College Board’s AP program, specifically cited the May 2020 death of George Floyd and the surrounding protests and social response as reasons why the organization had chosen to announce the course now.
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted last year of second-degree murder for kneeling on Floyd’s neck for about nine minutes during an arrest.
A picture of George Floyd is seen amid protests across the United States over his death after an officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for several minutes.Video of the incident helped galvanize the Black Lives Matter movement and sparked protests across the country during the summer of 2020, many of which turned violent, resulting in numerous fires, including at a police precinct in Minneapolis and at historic St. John’s Church in Washington, D.C., near the White House.
“The events surrounding George Floyd and the increased awareness and attention paid towards issues of inequity and unfairness and brutality directed towards African Americans caused me to wonder, ‘Would colleges be more receptive to an AP course in this discipline than they were 10 years ago?'” Packer said, according to TIME.
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“We hope it will broaden the invitation to Advanced Placement and inspire students with a fuller appreciation of the American story,” he said in a statement to CBS News.
