Open Letter on AP African American Studies
Last week, the South Carolina Post and Courier published pieces revealing that the Department of Education had quietly declined to provide SC school districts with a course code to allow them to offer AP African American Studies. Following the article, and subsequent pressure from teacher groups, parents, and students, the Department released a June 4 memo that sowed much more confusion than clarification.
To help clarify the teacher/ district perspective on the issue, I collaborated with teacher, magnet director, and SC for Ed board member Nicole Walker, on this open letter to decision-makers. Since Weaver and the Department have subsequently described this as a “manufactured controversy,” we hope this letter clarifies why many students, parents, teachers, and district officials are confused and disturbed by the Department’s actions.
To whom it may concern,
We are South Carolina AP teachers writing with deep concern about the recent actions of the South Carolina Department of Education.
The memo released by the Department on June 4, entitled “Clarification on Course Offerings,” ironically did not offer any clarity about the situation. Instead, for those of us in public education, it confused the situation further, and at times appeared to be deliberately misleading.
First, while the memo says the Department has not added a course code for AP African American Studies for the 2024-25 school year, it does not offer a substantive explanation of why. And, given the timing, it seems unlikely that there would have been any statement at all had the press not found out the course wasn’t being offered, and had many of our colleagues, parents, and students not contacted the Department.
Secondly, although the Department argues that districts can still “offer AP African American Studies as a locally-approved honors course should they choose to do so,” this statement ignores the fact that AP courses, according to the Department’s own guidance, are offered as weighted ALO (Advanced Learning Opportunities) courses. This means they can count towards a 5.0 scale. (Honors courses, by contrast, count towards a 4.5.) By deciding not to offer an ALO designation to the AP African American Studies course, the Department is knowingly and intentionally reducing the amount of grade points students can receive for taking the course.
Further, districts without a course code will presumably be responsible for all of the expenses related to offering the course. This includes large expenses like buying textbooks and sending teachers to required College Board trainings, which for many districts means the course is out of reach for students who want to take it. In practice, many districts cannot afford this additional expense, so by refusing to provide a course code the Department is effectively killing the course in under-resourced districts, and interfering with ability of all districts to make their own decisions about which courses to offer.
The Department’s memo also misleadingly ties its decision to the regular cyclical review of the South Carolina social studies standards, suggesting that the course might not meet the requirements of those theoretical standards. Of course, since the new standards have not yet been created, it is impossible to know if any AP or non-AP course will comply with them. It is also true that AP courses traditionally are not expected to meet state academic standards; by adopting the courses, the state is relying on frameworks already created by the College Board. One of us was on the standards review and writing teams for the newly-adopted state English Language Arts standards, and at no point during the review or writing process were standards required to adhere to AP course requirements for AP English Language and Composition or AP English Literature, or vice versa. There seems to be no reason to bring up state social studies standards in the memo, unless the goal is to create additional confusion.
The memo also fails to explain why other AP social studies courses, such as AP European History, are not being held to the same standard as AP African American Studies. We do not feel that the course’s status as a “new” course is a sufficient reason, since the state participated in a pilot process and the course has been taught in South Carolina schools for the past two years. We also feel it is irresponsible to label a course as “controversial,” as the Department’s statement does, while offering absolutely no evidence of controversy or other issues in the state of South Carolina during those years. On the contrary, there were several news stories, including a national story run by CNN, interviewing students who took the course— and which included interviews with our own students and teachers— and they had nothing but positive things to say.
And ultimately, whether African American culture and history are “controversial” or not should never be the metric for determining what we teach in our schools. The Department has provided no evidence that the course, which was designed with internationally-recognized scholars like Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was not providing factual information about these topics. Our students, many of whom are Black, were personally alarmed and hurt to find out that the Department had taken actions which make it much more difficult for students like them to learn about Black history and culture.
Unfortunately, it is unsurprising that Superintendent Weaver is attending a Heritage Foundation event in Washington, DC, as we write this. The Heritage Foundation has a history of politicizing this course, and encouraged its ban in Florida. Weaver has made previous statements that implied, again without evidence, that the course was not fact-based, or that it was somehow problematic for students to explore African American culture in this way. Therefore, it is hard to believe any statement which claims the Department Weaver runs is not attempting to effectively ban the course, even if it is using bureaucratic loopholes to do so1. We hope South Carolina officials will prioritize the needs of South Carolina students over those of political operatives in other states.
The Department’s actions, instead of providing the requested clarification, have thrown parents, students, teachers, and districts into unnecessary confusion. It seems to be their obvious intention to make it more difficult to offer or take AP African American Studies. But even if this is not their intention, that is the effect the Department’s actions are having in South Carolina schools right now. Before the College Board’s statement was released, as multiple media outlets have reported, several districts which previously offered the course had already decided, based on the lack of a course code, to stop offering the class.
This is especially frustrating since one of us, Nicole, wrote the initial application for the course to be piloted in South Carolina. Many of our students, including one of Nicole’s own children, were able to take the course and to engage with the African American story in ways they had never previously been able to experience. Whatever loopholes the Department might choose to use in order to presumably shift blame to districts, the immediate consequence of the Department’s actions is that our students and children will not be able to take the course at all.
Please support any efforts to hold the Department accountable for providing a more honest and transparent explanation of its actions, and to pressure the Department into offering a course code for this elective course, so that all districts, regardless of local funding, will have the option of offering it. Parents and students, not state officials, should have the final say as to whether students have access to courses. Superintendent Weaver herself campaigned on the rights of parents to be involved in determining what children learn. This should not be a politicized or partisan issue.
We are happy to answer any further questions or to do anything else which will support a positive outcome for all students in South Carolina.
Sincerely,
Steve Nuzum
Former AP Seminar and AP Language Teacher at Ridge View High School
Nicole Walker
Magnet Director and AP Research Teacher at Ridge View High School
Following our writing of this letter, two of our former students who participated in the pilot for the course, Clementine and Nacala, participated in a press conference with multiple South Carolina civil rights and education groups. We are very proud of their testimony, and believe their perspectives, and perspectives of students like them, should have been considered before any decision about the course was made.
On a personal note, I feel it bears repeating: I personally taught students who sat and politely listened to— and politely pushed back on, at times— Freedom Caucus Chair Adam Morgan’s hours-long remarks about a variety of topics that ultimately included his personal feelings about “cultural Marxism” (which has been repeatedly called an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory) in schools. And yet Morgan, Weaver, and their ilk have been allowed to use state power to block access to books and courses which would provide an alternative viewpoint. That is, nakedly, state viewpoint discrimination and censorship, and it is something I hope anyone reading this will speak out against in the strongest terms.
From Steve: I plan to write more about this soon, but it is striking to me how much the Department’s actions and rhetoric resemble the de jure racist discrimination of the 1960s, when state legislators blocked Black Americans’ right to vote by creating bureaucratic obstacles like poll taxes and literacy tests, in order to skirt the law. The Department seems to want us to argue about whether or not this is a “ban,” just as Weaver has in the past tried to focus discussion around state book censorship on whether or not those books are technically “banned”; I would argue that it doesn’t matter. When the state deliberately creates obstacles for students and other citizens to access material or courses, and does so for nakedly partisan purposes, that is both ethical and potentially illegal.
Another attempt to hide the truth so as not to "discomfort" some. If we don't start confronting our past, we can never advance.