New AP Course Development: African American Studies

College Board company logo

College board is developing a new AP course, African American Studies. College Board is a non-profit organization that administers standardized tests such as the SAT and Advanced Placement exams (College Board). College Board develops AP courses which are college leveled courses taken in high school; AP courses give college credit upon passing the Advanced Placement exam at the end of the course. AP courses are extremely popular among students. In 2021, 1,178,256 public high school graduates took at least one AP course (College Board).

The African American Studies AP course plans to dive deep into African American history, culture and the African American influence on the United States. The class will give an insight into the American American experience while touching on literature, arts and humanities, political science, geography and science. Dr. Nikki Taylor, Chair of the Howard University History Department states, “A solid understanding of how African Americans have shaped America, its history, laws, institutions, culture and arts, and even the current practice of American democracy, sharpens all knowledge about our nation.” (College Board). The course will be a great way to educate students on the commonly overlooked accomplishments and influence of African Americans in the US and how it formed the modern systems of the nation.

Being a new course, it is important to consider the possible complications of implementing it in high schools; like with anything new there will be bumps in the road. Mr. Raskopf, a first year AP student at WCHS, teaches AP US History. Raskopf says teachers are given a “vast network of groups and trainings to assist new teachers and peers…I have found them to be helpful at times,” Mr. Rutherford, an AP statistics teacher at WCHS is going on his third year of teaching AP and has found AP classroom helpful. College Board describes AP classroom as “an online platform where students can access free practice resources and instructional videos on every topic and skill that will be covered in their course and assessed on the AP Exam.” Rutherford states, “They also provide a question bank via AP Classroom which is pretty helpful.” It is Mr. Concilio’s first year teaching AP as well. Concilio is teaching AP Computer Science, he says one of the challenges faced in teaching the course is having students push themselves more than they expected. Concilio has found College Board incredibly helpful. Concilio states, “College Board is amazing about giving assistance, they are continuously offering trainings and their online platform allows people to get additional assistance when needed.”

Nailah Rivers (left), Amya Ramsey (right)

African American Studies will definitely be a popular AP choice among AP students. Amya Ramsey, freshman at WCHS is currently taking AP Psychology and AP Human Geography. Ramsey states, “I would take [AP African American Studies], because I am half African American personally, and I want to learn more about my culture, because it is not talked about in schools as much as it should be.” Ramsey would want to see new information about African American history taught in the AP African American class and would highly anticipate learning about it.  Nailah Rivers, sophomore at WCHS, is currently taking AP Computer Science and would be interested in taking AP African American Studies. Rivers states, “[I would like to see] things I wouldn’t know about myself, like what my people did or if they created something or [if] something now that is modern was created by them.” Furthermore, Julianne Grassi, a junior taking AP Language Composition, would consider taking the AP African American Studies course and finds it could be beneficial towards her future career in humanities. Grassi states students could learn important information through the course by studying different cultures. Senior, Amber Reyes, is currently taking AP environmental science, AP psychology, AP language and composition, and AP macroeconomics. Reyes believes it is extremely important to learn about African American history. Reyes feels “AP US history does have material about African American history, but with such a vast amount of history [African American history] is largely ignored, it deserves a class of its own.” Reyes says she would definitely take AP African American Studies and would want to learn more about the Civil Rights Movement and leaders in the movement such as Angela Davis, along with the Harlem Renaissance and the influences of soul and rap music. Reyes states, “In general I would just love to learn about the overall influence African Americans have in not just American culture, but in other cultures as well.” Raskoff concurs, “I love the idea of providing a course that allows people to see history through a lens that they may not have experienced themselves…I also think that understanding this content will reveal commonalities and similarities of the human condition, which leads to understanding and empathy for others.” Geiger agrees, stating, “I think the course would be extremely beneficial for students. Instead of looking at the African American experience through the lens of US or World History, they will view it as a group with unique set of contributions, culture and history.”

According to College Board, more than 200 institutions will accept and recognize AP African American Studies. WCHS PawPrints reached out to PHSC but a definitive answer to if PHSC would accept the credit could not be reached.