Georgia schools chief clarifies that advanced African American studies still offered

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A statue of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Georgia state Capitol.

Credit: Ross Williams / Georgia Recorder

Students across Georgia have gotten their schedules and supply lists and are preparing to head back to school as early as this week.

But the culture war does not respect the school calendar or the ringing of the class bell, and this year’s fight over how to discuss race in the classroom is already underway after state superintendent Richard Woods did not recommend advanced placement African American studies for course approval.

Woods, a Republican, says his decision provides communities with options. He says local districts can opt in to offering the course with the full rigor of an advanced placement class along with all the associated benefits, or they can offer a different curriculum.

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Georgia State School Superintendent Richard Woods in 2022 photo.

Credit: Ross Williams / Georgia Recorder

But some lawmakers and activists say treating African American studies differently than other AP classes will prevent students from learning about Black history and provide terrible optics for the state.

“It’s giving separate but equal, and that’s definitely not what we should be doing with African-American studies,” said state Rep. Jasmine Clark. “And it’s honestly kind of ironic that’s the approach that they’re taking, because that’s exactly why we need this class in the first place.”

Advanced placement classes are college-level courses offered to high schoolers in 39 topics from math and science to art and the humanities. The educational nonprofit College Board provides a framework for the classes, and teachers undergo special training to teach them. They are more difficult than standard high school classes, but they are weighted more highly on a student’s GPA. Students who score well on a standardized AP exam can often transfer their credit hours to college.

During the last school year, the College Board offered an AP African American studies class as a pilot program. Last week, Woods stated that he would not recommend the course for approval for state dollars. After pressure mounted, Woods clarified that individual districts would be able to offer the course with state money by using a pre-existing course number for an African American studies class that has been around since 2020.

Education department spokeswoman Meghan Frick said districts that want to offer the traditional AP class will be able to offer students all the perks of any other AP class, including the extra bonus to their GPA.

“That’s entirely up to the district,” she said in an email. “Grading, quality points, and weighted GPAs are all determined at the local level and within the local district’s authority.”

Frick also said districts can offer the class over two semesters as intended by the College Board

“It’s a full unit of credit, which districts can offer over the course of a semester (on a block schedule) or a full year (on a traditional/period schedule). That’s how this course code works and how any other course code works (including AP).”

At least one district, Atlanta Public Schools, has pledged to offer the course at the AP level, but other districts likely will not.

Separate but equal?

Individual teachers can create their own AP class curricula, which are audited by the College Board to confirm the teacher is aware of the scope of the course and what will be on the exam. According to the College Board, some resources like practice exams are only available to teachers of certified courses, and authorized courses are included in the official list of AP courses that colleges check when looking at high school transcripts.

Deviating too much from the framework could set students up for failure on the AP exam if glossed-over topics end up on the test.

And setting up a different structure for a class about Black history than any other class smacks of racism to some, including Sahara Prakash, a rising senior from Forsyth County.

“The only cultural AP class offered at my school is AP European studies, which has never received pushback,” she said. “But when it comes to AP African American Studies, our state superintendent says it’s not a priority. This seems to tell us that minority stories in history are less important and valued.”

Cobb County senior Erin Crawford said she grew up learning about African American history at home and through books and movies, but not very much in the classroom. The course is not scheduled to be offered in her school this year.

“As an African-American student in Georgia who has never had the opportunity to learn this material in a classroom, I know how valuable it will be to learn Black history at a school as a rigorous subject and be able to receive the proper AP accreditation for it. Blocking this class is deeply harmful, not just for African-American students, but all students in the state who have been looking forward to and deserve to take this class.”

Cobb County Schools was the first district in Georgia to fire a teacher under the state’s 2022 law banning the teaching of “divisive concepts” in the classroom. Woods and his office have so far declined to say whether the issues he has with the advance placement African American program stem from the teaching of divisive concepts.

Education advocate and Georgia’s 2020-2021 teacher of the year Tracey Nance said the idea that one AP course should be determined by community members while others are not is absurd.

“If we start making that course a discussion, how many other courses will become a discussion on down the road?” she said. “How much more are Georgia students going to miss out on? Or does it only come to courses that highlight Black and brown voices?”

The politics

The course has been a flashpoint in the culture wars nationwide, including in Arkansas, where a lawsuit involving the course is underway, and in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would ban the course because he said it represented an attempt to indoctrinate children.

Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, sent a letter to Woods Tuesday seeking information about the decision, inspiring tentative praise from Clark.

“First, I want to say thank you to Brian Kemp for acknowledging that there are a lot of questions unanswered, and a lot of the questions that he had, I also had,” she said. “However, what this boils down to is, number one, yes, Brian Kemp did sign the divisive concepts law, so he can’t really be left off the hook on this, and even if he’s questioning things, I am also questioning him, because we can’t deny that this is how we got here in the first place.”

“Me and Brian Kemp don’t really talk very often, but I do think that there are plausible reasons for him to want to be on the right side of history on issues like this, especially if he aspires to continue to run for office in the state of Georgia,” she added.

Kemp is rumored to be considering a run for U.S. Senate in 2026, when his term as governor is set to expire.

This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Georgia Recorder.