Should AP Add African-American History?

From Inside Higher Ed:

August 7, 2007
Should AP Add African-American History?

The Advanced Placement program offers curriculums and testing in 37 areas — chemistry and calculus, art history and Latin literature, Chinese language and culture and European history, to name just a few. But there is no AP in African-American history.

Some school district officials have recently suggested that such an AP program be created — but the College Board is skeptical. College Board officials say their doubts have nothing to do with the significance of African-American history, but with the reactions they have received from college educators they have consulted. For a variety of reasons, the College Board says, college officials prefer to be teaching African-American history themselves, as opposed to having students enter college with AP credit in the field. If colleges wanted to have an AP offering in African-American history, the board would be open to the idea, its officials say.

The difference of opinion points to a number of questions that surround the AP program: Is its purpose to help students place out of introductory courses or to encourage them to study with greater rigor in high school (or both)? Why do some AP programs attract more members of certain ethnic or racial groups than others? Why are black students significantly less likely than the population as a whole to take AP courses? With many competitive colleges expecting applicants to have AP courses on their transcripts, should the College Board be trying new strategies to get more black students involved in the program?

Read the rest here.

A Question about AP

The College Board has just released its third annual Advanced Placement Report to the Nation. It includes plenty of facts and figures showing that more students are taking AP courses and more students are getting higher scores, but also that an "equity gap" persists. Much of the debate around AP courses has to do with whether or not students who take AP courses are more successful in college than those who don't. (The College Board is trumpeting the results of two new studies--which they funded--that show AP-taking students are more successful.) But the question I have is somewhat different. Given that AP courses seem to be playing a larger role in the secondary school curriculum, what are the implications for English educators? More and more frequently, I'm seeing the AP curriculum being held up as a benchmark for what an outstanding literature or composition course should be. Is that perception having any impact on our work with preservice and experienced teachers? What is your view of the AP English curriculum and/or of the role AP coursework and the College Board are playing in shaping English studies?