In its Thursday announcement, the College Board declared the “Florida Department of Education has effectively banned AP Psychology in the state by instructing Florida superintendents that teaching foundational content on sexual orientation and gender identity is illegal under state law.”

Influencers on the left pounced. Here’s state Democratic Senate Leader Lauren Book on X/Twitter:

FL has banned AP Psychology in our schools. Once again, the DeSantis administration is politicizing the classroom, putting FL students at a disadvantage as they apply to colleges & compete against students from other states with the freedom to take this nationally-available…

— Lauren Book (@LeaderBookFL) August 3, 2023

First, that’s a tortured interpretation. Any fair reading of the announcement reveals the College Board pretty much banned itself. Second, Book’s interpretation is far from how Florida’s DOE sees it.

Cassie Palelis, an education department spokeswoman, said other “advanced course providers,” such as the International Baccalaureate program, had “no issue” with offering a college-level psychology course in Florida, and that the College Board should do the same.

“The Department didn’t ‘ban’ the course,” Palelis said in an email. “The course remains listed in Florida’s Course Code Directory for the 2023-24 school year. We encourage the College Board to stop playing games with Florida students and continue to offer the course and allow teachers to operate accordingly.”

In fairness, the College Board has a decent point, if not necessarily the high ground. Stipulated, high school students bright enough to earn college credit for AP Psychology are presumed to be operating at the intellectual level of university underclassmen.

But intellect is not maturity, and a fair amount of growing up occurs between the ages of 15 (when a 10th-grader could enroll in an AP Psychology course) and 20 (when a college student might encounter the same material). This is not a small consideration in the presentation of sensitive material. 

In a state where the demand for gender dysphoria care by children on Medicaid soared 63% from 2017-2022, and children receiving puberty blockers leaped 270% during the same period, attention to immature impulses, so often energized by trendy confusion, attention must be paid. Care must be taken.

It’s fascinating, then, where the College Board digs in its heels. For its AP African American Studies program, the Board revised its curriculum to make optional topics that included Black Lives Matter and Black queer studies. Only because of “the input of experts and longstanding AP principles and practices,” the Board said.

So, sometimes the Board’s idea of the ideal curriculum is open to compromise. For the record, Florida’s DOE still wasn’t having it. AP African American Studies remains unwelcome in the Sunshine State.

For AP Psychology, however, the Board has declined even to consider accommodating a workaround similar to its proposal for APAAS. DOE’s suggestion that districts keep the bulk of the curriculum but exclude lessons in sexual orientation and gender identity met an ivy-covered brick wall. Modify the lesson plan, the Board said, and the course cannot carry the advanced placement title, nor would students score college credits.

The AP class covers how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development, the College Board said. It has been taught for 30 years. The board can’t modify its AP Psychology content based on regulations that would censor college-level standards for credit, placement, and career readiness, the group said.

More than 28,000 Florida students took AP Psychology in the 2022-23 academic year, the College Board said.

The American Psychological Association said Thursday that it would be “an enormous disservice to students across Florida” to offer high-school psychology curricula that exclude content regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.

An enormous disservice? OK, we’re going to stipulate that people can (and do) type utterly unsupportable rubbish on social media. But here, taken with a dose of salt, is someone claiming experience in the teaching of AP Psych defending the curriculum as established.

I taught AP Psych for five years and my students always told me it was their most relevant class in hs. These
topics comprise of less than 2% of the curriculum. Florida students will sadly miss out on some very beneficial content. Sad.

— wheretheliteis (@wheretheliteis) August 4, 2023

This claim of gender and sexual orientation playing a teeny, tiny, minor role is corroborated by Elliott Hammer, psychology professor at Xavier University (Louisiana), a chief reader for AP Psych exams.

“It’s a pretty small topic,” he said.

He added that teachers may also explore the implication of these identities on how people “interact with the world,” but the extent of this discussion depends on the teacher.

Instructively, in defense of this molehill, the College Board is willing to turn its back on America’s third-largest student population. Hardly anyone is going to hear about the 2% solution, however. And the usual cohort already is wielding the College Board’s canny stubbornness to score political points against Florida’s anti-woke governor, Ron DeSantis, who’s also seeking the GOP nomination for president.

Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, called the state’s stance a “terrible decision” that is “100% politically motivated” and will hurt Florida students.

“As someone who graduated from Florida public schools with college credit via AP classes, I know how powerful and effective these classes are and I am sick to my stomach to see what Governor Ron DeSantis and the Republican Party are doing in our state,” she said in a statement.

Oh, woe is Florida. Poor, misguided, Republican-plagued Florida. If only there were alternatives, but, that’s silly. Of course, there aren’t. … Or are there?

This week, two organizations that also offer advanced coursework — International Baccalaureate and Cambridge International — said their psychology courses were already compliant with Florida’s standards. That’s because they already allow districts to pick and choose among a menu of lessons.

“Cambridge’s course gives teachers and local districts the flexibility to decide which material to use for different topics,” said Thomas Rodgers, a spokesman for Cambridge International, which offers the Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE) Diploma program.

Teachings about gender identity and sexual orientation, he said, were “always optional.”

Always optional. What a concept!

We’ll leave you with one final thought, at least partly illustrated by the revelation immediately above: Last month, Florida became the largest state to support unfettered school choice, allowing parents to use tax dollars — vouchers, more or less — toward everything from private school tuition to learning pod expenses to homeschool curriculum and supplies.

Parents and students dismayed by the loggerheads at which Florida and the College Board find themselves have the option of finding schools more to their liking — schools, even, that are not confined by the state’s Parental Rights in Education law. And they can attend said school with the blessing, and financial support, of the Legislature and the mean ol’ governor who signed their school choice bill into law.