Earlier this summer, the state superintendent in Georgia withheld approval for the College Board’s Advanced Placement African American Studies course, claiming it violated state law on instruction about race.
It was an avoidable controversy: Georgia’s law contains an explicit exemption for AP and other advanced courses. It always has.
As a result, as of Aug. 7, educators in Georgia can offer AP African American Studies this school year in full using its own course code for state funding.
Georgia is one of 17 states that have passed similar rules and laws banning instruction of “divisive concepts” such as the notion that “an individual, solely by virtue of his or her race, bears individual responsibility for actions committed in the past by other individuals of the same race.” These laws created roadblocks for approval of the AP African American Studies course in Florida, Arkansas, and South Carolina since last year.
The back and forth this summer over Georgia’s approval of the course disrupted schedules for teachers and students planning to participate in it this fall, said Lisa Morgan, president of the Georgia Association of Educators union.
Though some educators still have time to adjust and now offer the course, even as the school year has already begun across the state, it’s an administrative hassle educators didn’t need to add to their plates, she added.
“We didn’t have to go through all this,” Morgan said.
Georgia educators sought clarity over AP courses this summer
Schools must use course codes listed in a state’s course catalog to get state funding for instruction and create master schedules, Morgan said. Yet this summer, school leaders in Georgia found no course code listed for the new AP course.
After initially not recommending AP African American Studies for state approval, superintendent Woods suggested educators use the course code for the state’s Introduction to African American/Black Studies elective course. This would allow educators to get state funding for the AP course.
Yet educators questioned this decision because teaching contracts require teachers to teach the curriculum as designed and approved by the state and by local school board officials. Using the same course code for two distinct curricula created too much procedural ambiguity for some teachers, Morgan said. For instance, would students still get the appropriate credit bump from AP courses in their GPA under the course code for a non-AP course?
On July 31, Woods doubled down on his decision not to approve the course in full, saying that he reviewed the course’s content and found “it was clear that parts of the coursework did violate the law,” referring to the state’s divisive concepts law.
“As with most states with laws like Georgia on this issue that have raised concerns, the most glaring violation is on the topic of intersectionality,” he said. The AP course defines this topic as “a framework for understanding Black women’s distinct experiences through the interactions of their social, economic, and political identities with systems of inequality and privilege.”
In a statement to Education Week, the College Board said that “there are 74 topics covered in AP African American Studies, one of those required topics covers intersectionality.”
Woods said he sought legal clarification on the Georgia law.
The law, as passed in 2022, says it cannot “prohibit the full and rigorous implementation of curricula, or elements of a curriculum, that are required as part of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, or dual-enrollment coursework,” though it also says that the implementation must be done in a “professionally and academically appropriate manner and without espousing personal political beliefs.”
In an Aug. 7 statement, Woods said the state attorney general’s office clarified the law doesn’t restrict local school systems from adopting any AP, IB, or dual-enrollment courses, and that those courses will be exempted from the provisions of the divisive concepts legislation, so long as they meet the stipulations about teaching the course academically and non-politically.
As of Aug. 7, the AP African American Studies course appears in the state catalog of courses with its own course code. All existing AP courses in the catalog also now bear a disclaimer citing the exemption.
Georgia’s law still carries future implications for educators
The provision in the Georgia law exempting AP and similar courses makes the piece of legislation stand out from similar laws in other states.
According to Morgan of the Georgia teachers’ union, the provision came about in part due to conversations between the union and the original HB 1084 bill author, state Representative Will Wade, a Republican.
“While we oppose the divisive concepts bill, and worked vigorously to defeat it, we did have conversations with Representative Wade where we expressed our concerns that the divisive concepts bill would lead to situations as we just saw and he agreed to add the language that has ultimately proved our concerns were valid,” she said.
Wade did not respond to EdWeek’s requests for comment.
College Board officials said that they were aware of language as it was written and passed in Georgia’s law and that they were not aware of any other similar exemptions.
Education Week contacted public information officers of the 16 other states with rules or legislation in place banning instruction on “divisive concepts.”
Eleven of the 16 responded by the time of publication. Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas did not provide comments by publication deadline. Most state spokespersons cited language from state statutes that did not explicitly say AP courses were exempt from provisions of the law or statute, as in the case of Georgia.
In some cases, public information officers clarified the parameters of state statutes. For instance, in North Dakota, the state law known as HB 1508 does apply to AP and similar advanced courses. While the law does not ban the discussion of racism in the classroom in general terms, it does “prohibit teaching the idea that today’s American society is systematically racist.”
How such parameters interact with the College Board’s AP African American Studies course remains to be seen. In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis banned the pilot version of the course citing the state’s divisive concepts law. In Arkansas and South Carolina, state officials withheld approval for the course, leaving local schools and districts to cover costs on their own.
In Georgia, the confusion over approving AP African American Studies marked one of the first major statewide cases of the divisive concepts law impacting educators’ work directly, Morgan said.
However, she remains concerned about how local interpretations of the law and the state’s parents’ bill of rights law may continue to impact educators.
“This situation highlights the fact that when an individual is interpreting this law … a single individual’s interpretation may not match another individual’s interpretation, [and] may not match the intent of legislators in passing the law,” Morgan said.
