Along with 14,000 of their high school peers statewide, my twins are taking Advanced Placement U.S. History — APUSH — this year.
The goal of the challenging class is understanding the good, the bad and the ugly in America’s past. A resolution in the state Senate — sponsored by the same coastal lawmaker, Sen. William Ligon, R-Brunswick, who attempted last year to not only rid Georgia of Common Core, but of any test or class that grew out of a national collective — seeks to eliminate some of the ugly.
Senate Resolution 80 calls for Georgia to dump APUSH if the College Board, which created the Advanced Placement program to provide high school students with college-level classes, doesn't offer a more sanitized view. (The College Board also owns the SAT college admissions test.)
The resolution condemns changes made this year to APUSH as “a radically revisionist view of American history that emphasizes recent negative aspects of our nation’s history.”
If the College Board doesn’t comply with these requests, SR 80 states, “the state Board of Education and the Georgia Department of Education are directed to explore alternatives to the College Board’s Advanced Placement program that would allow Georgia students obtain college credit by mastering the content dictated by Georgia standards.”
In supporting SR 80, new state school chief Richard Woods continues his call for state-created standards, saying, “I am in agreement with Governor Deal and the state Board of Education that our social studies — and science — standards must be Georgia-owned and Georgia-grown. We will conduct a full review of our social studies standards to ensure that they have proper focus on the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and all aspects of American history.”
If our students led in academic performance, I would say, go ahead: Puff, posture and preen about standards that are Georgia-grown and owned.
But we don’t lead the world or the country. Like the rest of the South, Georgia has never been an academic leader — an outcome of generational poverty and an indifference to the importance of an educated populace.
Georgia is attempting to improve its schools, although politics keeps derailing the progress. Taking on the College Board over APUSH makes us look provincial.
In its response to critics, the College Board said, “The redesigned AP U.S. History course and exam have the highest support of the history profession, with strong endorsements from the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the National Council for Social Studies, and the National Council for History Education. As important, the redesigned AP U.S. History course has received overwhelming support from AP teachers nationwide, and is currently in use in classrooms across the country.
“The College Board has the greatest confidence that AP U.S. History teachers understand how to reflect state and local requirements and the great story of America in their instruction.”
I will bet a latte and an apple fritter the only states willing to pull their students out of AP are other low-performing ones. Parents in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey — with higher AP participation and college-going rates — would not tolerate state lawmakers meddling with their children’s academic futures.
APUSH is not mandated. It’s a choice, typically made by high-performing students eyeing UGA, Tech or a select private college.
In writing about schools in Georgia since 1997, I’ve seen few instances of where General Assembly interference benefited students. In the last few years, most of the Legislature’s actions have been designed to appease special interests, not help students.
Lawmakers are not looking to make progress; they want to make points. This is another example.
