Advanced Placement and Unadvanced Schools

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in his
favorite pose: angrily lecturing the crowd

The College Board’s Advanced Placement program has existed since 1952, and in that time, no state has refused to certify an AP course. Until last week. In the latest salvo in his one-sided war against “wokism” and “Critical Race Theory,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued a blanket refusal to participate in a pilot program for African American studies. This despite the course not even being offered in Florida yet.

I never participated in Advanced Placement in high school. I was slated to take AP American History and AmLit in 11th grade, the first time that school offered any AP courses at that level. But circumstances changed and my family relocated that summer, to a school where AP only existed in 12th grade. I handled the adjustment with resentment, and mentally checked out of school, nearly flunking Senior Year.

Therefore I’ve watched subsequent AP developments through a lens of lingering resentment. But I’ve also watched through the recollection of how I reversed my academic skid; after a few years of desultory employment, I returned to school, graduated college with a double major, and earned a Master’s Degree. I taught Freshman Comp for four years, and had students report that my course was their favorite in four years of college.

I say all this so you’ll know who’s speaking when I say: American high schools aren’t equipped to teach Advanced Placement courses. AP began with noble intentions of shepherding advanced youth through college-level general studies courses without wading through tedious prerequisites or paying college-level tuition. But we have abundant evidence that American public schools are beholden to pressures that make AP teaching impractical, if not impossible.

Even assuming younger teens’ brains are sufficiently developed for deep dives into collegiate liberal studies—a premise I doubt—their schools aren’t equipped for such education. Teachers’ credentials are regulated at the state level, creating uneven standards across jurisdictions. Some states may permit intensive study of academic subjects, but my state requires more courses in classroom management than in any academic subject to receive a teaching degree.

This isn’t a knock against teachers individually. Rather, like police or landlords, good individuals often come a-cropper against institutions designed to preserve the status quo. As Dana Goldstein writes, American public (state) schools are organized to maximize cost efficiency, not pedagogical efficiency. Even the most dedicated teachers can’t provide intensive education when working short-staffed, underfunded, and with years-old textbooks.

Charlie Kirk

Worse, the DeSantis Administration’s attempt to kneecap African American Studies isn’t the first time states have undermined AP. In 2014, Colorado students staged a mass walkout when school boards tried to rewrite advanced history courses. Rather than teaching history, with all its messy contradictions, authorities wanted to teach patriotism and libertarian economics. The language presaged current anti-CRT rhetoric, which fears that kids might not unquestioningly love America anymore.

College-level education requires academic independence, something the America First crowd abhors. Charlie Kirk, a prominent young nationalist, kick-started his pundit career by complaining about supposed anti-American sentiment in higher education, despite having dropped out of online Bible college. Christopher Rufo almost single-handedly engineered conservative America’s pants-wetting paranoia over Critical Race Theory. They and others propose tighter state controls on education as the solution.

The DeSantis Administration’s rejection of AP African American studies explicitly cites fears about the subject’s “ambiguity.” High school teachers have long struggled with institutional fears of ambiguity. That’s why social studies teachers inevitably reduce history to lists of dates and vocabulary words, while literature teachers make students memorize plot points, and biology teachers often have to include disclaimers leaving room for seven-day creationism. State schools institutionally forbid ambiguity to creep in.

But any serious academic knows that real scholarship happens in ambiguous spaces. History isn’t just what happened; it’s the great debates about why it happened, and how events continue to influence us today. Great literature always emerges from, but also reacts against, its social environment, and therefore exists in dangerous tension. As scholars like James Loewen and Gerald Graff write, only where ambiguity exists can real learning ever happen.

The College Board generously wants to help advanced students clear academic hurdles in high school. But it ultimately can’t, because high schools face administrative burdens that prevent college-level learning. Again, this isn’t a knock against teachers, who generally enter the field for love of students. But public schools are motivated by political goals, not simple generosity. Schools simply aren’t free.

The solution is to get students out of high school faster, not move college into politically hampered high schools.