AP African-American Studies the center of a controversy in Florida for Black History Month

February is Black History Month and it just so happens that African-American history is at the center of a controversy with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis playing a major part. PBS NewsHour has the latest in College Board releases African American Studies course framework after DeSantis criticism.

The College Board released the official framework of a new Advanced Placement course on African American Studies. It comes after criticism from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who said the initial curriculum violated a state law limiting teachings on race in public schools. David Coleman and Brandi Waters of the College Board joined Geoff Bennett to discuss the course and the controversy.

I'm an academic, so I know how long it takes to develop a course. It looks like DeSantis and his allies seized on parts of the pilot version of the course that they disagreed with and it just happened that those were the same parts of the course that at least some teachers and students had problems with as well. The College Board then responded to the latter's feedback and made changes in response to that. The timing of the release of the revised standards was fortuitous, at least from DeSantis and his supporters' perspective. I would call it neither coincidence nor causation, but correlation — independent and simultaneous reactions to the same things. The timing is not as suspicious as it looks. Still, it won't stop DeSantis and his allies from seizing on the revisions to make themselves seem more influential than they really are.

It also won't stop their opponents from criticizing the College Board's decision as well as Governor DeSantis's words and actions. Fortunately, the former didn't happen in DeSantis politicizing ‘the whole debate’ over AP African American studies, professor says from MSNBC, but the guests did plenty of the latter.

The nonprofit group College Board is being accused of caving to political pressure by watering down its AP African American studies course after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rejected several specific subject areas. Department of African American Studies Chair at Princeton, Eddie Glaude, and Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University, Michael Eric Dyson, react to the changes made by College Board.

I found it refreshing to hear a pair of academics defending learning and scholarship against political interference.

This is part of a larger program, as explained in Alex Wagner Breaks Down how Ron DeSantis Is Whitewashing History on "Late Night with Seth Meyers."

Alex Wagner talks about being the only Asian American person to host a cable primetime show, hanging out with Chris Hayes in college and the dangers of Ron DeSantis' actions to ban certain books and curriculum in Florida.

Thank you, Alex, for putting DeSantis's attacks on public education in perspective. Not only is it scary in its own right, it's scary because, so far, it's working for him. Yikes!