Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is amping up his battle with the College Board, now threatening to withhold state funding for all Advanced Placement programs and instead seek out other methods of college credit for students.
DeSantis suggested on Tuesday during a news conference in Jacksonville that the state could end the presence of all AP courses in Florida classrooms, not just AP African American studies, the course that thrust the College Board into the national spotlight.
DESANTIS ADMINISTRATION CANNOT TAKE CREDIT FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES CHANGES, COLLEGE BOARD SAYS
“AP is kind of with the College Board,” DeSantis said. “Who elected them? Are there other people that provide services? Turns out there are.”
He mentioned international education programs such as International Baccalaureate and Cambridge Assessment as alternatives that, like AP, enable students to receive college credit after passing the exam. Dual enrollment classes were also cited by DeSantis, which would allow students to take additional classes from professors at nearby colleges while enrolled in high school.
DeSantis said that he supports college credit opportunities for the state’s students.
“Does it have to be done by the College Board?” he asked. “Or can we utilize some of these other providers who I think have a really, really strong track record?”
“It’s not clear to me that this particular operator is the one that’s going to need to be used in the future,” he added of the College Board.
The governor’s comments stem from a dispute between the Florida administration and the College Board.
DeSantis’s Department of Education told the College Board in January that the course “lacks educational value” and cited several topics as “indoctrination.” On Feb. 1, the College Board released its framework that it had been working on for nearly a decade. Some topics, such as critical race theory, were removed, as well as terms including “systemic marginalization” and “intersectionality.”
However, the College Board denies that DeSantis or his administration had any influence over the framework, instead gathering feedback from over 300 scholars and experts. The organization claims the revisions were completed by Dec. 22, 2022, weeks before Florida raised objections.
The College Board said it should have denounced the DeSantis administration’s comments at that time and said his comments were nothing more than a PR stunt with “inflated rhetoric and posturing.”
“We have made the mistake of treating FDOE with the courtesy we always accord to an education agency, but they have instead exploited this courtesy for their political agenda,” the College Board wrote in a statement on Sunday. “The notion that we needed Florida to enlighten us that these terms are politicized in several states is ridiculous. We took a hard look at these terms because they often are misunderstood, misrepresented, and co-opted as political weapons.”
AP courses are embedded in high school classrooms nationwide, with the program offering over three dozen courses relating to humanities, history, math, science, languages, and other topics. Over 199,000 Florida students enrolled in AP classes in 2020-21, with over 366,000 AP tests given in 2021, according to the Washington Post.
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Florida state funds pay AP exam fees in public schools, according to the College Board. This year’s fee is $97 per test, with the College Board providing a fee reduction of $35 for low-income Florida students.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the College Board for comment.
