One day after Georgia prohibited state funding to be utilized for Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies courses, the school superintendent reverses his decision.
Initially, this caused some school districts to cancel plans to offer the class to their high school students for this upcoming school year. Superintendent Richard Woods made the decision to not recommend approving the class to the State Board of Education, but did not provide any reasoning for his decision.
In order for Georgia to approve the course, so that schools would be able to utilize funding from the state, which could help cover the teachers’ salaries and materials for the class, “either state school superintendent Richard Woods or the state board of education had to approve the course, said Meghan Frick, spokesperson for the state department of education.”
Per a statement from Democratic Georgia State Representative Jasmine Clark, “The fact that AP African American studies was removed from our schools is alarming and an injustice to our students who eagerly anticipated taking this course…Erasure of black history from our schools is not and never will be okay!”
But after immense backlash, “the Georgia Department of Education now says districts are free to teach the course and the state will pay for it as long as districts use a code linked to an existing state-approved course in African American studies.”
“Districts can choose to use that course code and teach some or all of the standards in the AP course, and students may take the associated AP exam,” said Frick.
This is the latest development which started in 2023 with complaints in Florida. Critics have alleged “that inclusion of political topics, along with the use of certain buzzwords, render the class ripe for indoctrination…[and] has put it into the crosshairs of Republicans who in recent years have subjected schools to an extraordinary degree of scrutiny.”
Now more states, including Arkansas, South Carolina and Georgia, have taken up this crusade. Howard University associate professor of Africana Studies Joshua Myers likened this phenomenon to a “political football.”
Proponents of the course include students who were enrolled in a pilot AP African American Studies course taught at Maynard Jackson High School in Atlanta, G.A. According to College Board, thirty-two other schools in Georgia participated in this pilot program. Some enrolled students even claimed they learned more in this one class than they had in their past ten years of schooling.
“I have learned so much about our culture in this course and I feel they should be sharing our culture with everyone else,” stated Da’Merra Handley who took the pilot class during the spring 2023 semester. “Everyone should be learning about it.”