LETTER FROM DAVID COLEMAN DENYING LIBERAL BIAS IN AP HISTORY COURSE:
Open Letters From David Coleman and His Critics About Changes to U.S.
[AP] History Curriculum
August 12, 2014
JOY PULLMANN
Joy Pullmann (jpullmann@heartland.org) is a research fellow of The
Heartland Institute and managing... (read full bio)
Editor’s note: Yesterday, College Board President David Coleman
responded to critics of changes to his organization's advanced U.S. History curriculum and
tests, for which students can earn college credit. Following that letter below is an open
letter in response from retired AP teacher Larry Krieger and American Principles Project
Senior Fellow Jane Robbins, the pair who originally sounded the alarm about the changes to
AP U.S. history curriculum and tests, beginning in these pages. The texts of both letters
are original and reprinted here unaltered.
From: The College Board [mailto:thecollegeboard@collegeboard.org]
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2014 3:14 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: A note from David Coleman about the AP U.S. History
course
Dear Colleagues:
It is difficult for me to express the depth of my feelings about the
heroic actions of our country during World War II. Our veterans and our allies prevented
the extermination of my people.
I often wonder what my life would have been like had I lived in
another country or another time; being Jewish, I could have lived a life of horror and
helplessness. I am safe and free because of the spirit that moved this country to act.
That spirit is best expressed in the founding documents of our nation, an immovable
commitment to liberty and human dignity, a willingness to shed our blood when those rights
are threatened
It is with this in mind that I write to address recent concerns
regarding the new framework for the College Board’s AP® U.S. History course.
I want to begin by thanking our critics for their vigilance; they are
patriots who care deeply about what students learn.
I joined the College Board as president in October 2012, after
the new U.S. History framework was developed and released. But that fact does not mean I
take any more lightly my responsibility to ensure that this course, and everything we do,
prepares students to thrive in our democracy.
Although I did not work on the new AP U.S. History framework, I did
help shape the College Board’s recent announcement that, on every SAT®, we will now
require that students analyze a founding document or a work from the enduring great
conversations on liberty and dignity that those documents inspired. The College Board made
this historic decision for a simple reason — to have command of these documents opens
worlds of opportunity in college, career, and civic life.
So it is with deep concern that I’ve reviewed the claim that the new AP
U.S. History course “will erase the great sacrifices from the minds of America's
children.” That concern has moved the College Board to take an unprecedented action today:
We are releasing a full sample exam for the new AP U.S. History course to the American
public.
You can view it online here.
People who are worried that AP U.S. History students will not need to
study our nation’s founders need only take one look at this exam to see that our founders
are resonant throughout. The exam opens with an excerpt from The Autobiography of Benjamin
Franklin. On this college-level exam, students will need to not only analyze George
Washington’s “Farewell Address” with care, but also articulate the influence of
Washington’s words on American foreign policy in the 20th century. Students encounter one
of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s earliest calls to our country to gather itself to combat
tyranny abroad. Every question on the new AP U.S. History Exam now requires students to
demonstrate an understanding of America’s important historical documents and leaders.
Students who pass this exam will not only be more ready for college, they will be more
ready to be citizens.
We hope that the release of this exam will address the principled
confusion that the new framework produced. The concerns are based on a significant
misunderstanding. Just like the previous framework, the new framework does not remove
individuals or events that have been taught by AP teachers in prior years. Instead, it is
just a framework, requiring teachers to populate it with content required by their local
standards and priorities.
We will soon release a clarified version of the course framework to
avoid any further confusion. And, for the first time, we commit to releasing the AP U.S.
History Exam every year to the teaching community for consideration and deliberation. AP
courses and exams are designed not by the College Board but by college professors and
K–12 teachers throughout this country; we are grateful for their work and will do more
than ever to share the content with teachers, students, and parents.
Respectfully,
David Coleman
President and CEO
The College Board
An initial response from Larry Krieger and Jane Robbins:
One week ago we published an Open Letter to Mr. Coleman. The letter
called on him to address the flaws in the redesigned AP U.S. History Framework and Exam.
http://opposenewapstandards.us
We welcome Mr. Coleman’s willingness to seriously consider our
recommendations. Like Mr. Coleman we share a deep commitment
to liberty and to human dignity.
https://blu174.mail.live.com/default.aspx#tid=cm2dCADZQh5BGlhgAiZMIHOA2&fid=flinbox
One of our recommendations concerned the existence of a “Secret
Test” that was only available to certified AP U.S. History teachers. The Secret Test
prevented an open public debate on the new APUSH Exam and its relationship to the
redesigned College Board Framework and to state curriculum standards. We congratulate Mr.
Coleman on his decision to release this test for public scrutiny. We will soon post a
detailed analysis of the Exam.
We would like to take this opportunity to correct misleading
statements in Mr. Coleman’s letter. The Sample Test does open with an excerpt from The
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. However, the excerpt describes Franklin’s impression
of a sermon delivered by George Whitefield. Neither the excerpt nor the three following
multiple-choice questions have anything to do with Franklin’s life and achievements. Thus,
a student could know the answer to the question without ever having heard of Benjamin
Franklin.
The Sample Exam does contain an excerpt from Washington’s Farewell
Address that generates four multiple-choice questions. The questions do not require
students to articulate the influence of Washington’s words on American foreign in the 20th
Century. The multiple-choice question that Mr. Coleman refers to (Question 33) simply asks
students to know that World War II marked the time when Washington’s Address ceased to
influence American foreign policy. This also marked the only time that World War II
appears on the Exam.
Mr. Coleman asserts that, “every question on the new AP U.S. History
Exam now requires students to demonstrate an understanding of America’s historical
documents and leaders.” This statement is contradicted by the actual Exam questions. For
example, Questions 18 – 20 ask students to respond to a passage written by a contemporary
historian on the Immigration Act of 1924 – obviously not something that requires knowledge
of historical documents and leaders. This is true of many other questions on the Exam.
Mr. Coleman insists that “the new Framework does not remove
individuals or events that have been taught by AP teachers in prior years.” Unfortunately,
facts are stubborn things. The redesigned Framework omits Benjamin Franklin, James
Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Dorothea Dix, William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore
Roosevelt, Jonas Salk, Rosa Parks, Dwight Eisenhower, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and many
other notable American heroes. And unlike the previous APUSH five-page Topic Outline, the
new Framework does not rely on state history standards to fill in the content. Rather, it
makes it clear that students will be required to know ONLY the material contained within
the Framework itself. So a student will not have to learn anything about any of these
individuals to do well on the AP Exam
The dramatic expansion of the document governing the APUSH course from
five pages to 98 pages makes it even more significant and troubling that so many American
heroes have been excluded. We call upon Mr. Coleman to explain why the anonymous authors
of the redesigned Framework had space for Chief Little Turtle but not for Dwight
Eisenhower, or why they had room for the Black Panthers but not for Dr. King.
Releasing the Sample Test is a positive step. But it is only one test
and one step. One year ago, AP teachers had access to 8 released exams and 680
multiple-choice questions. In addition, AP Central provided a trove of information that
included 26 Document-Based Questions, 104 essay questions, and almost 400 graded sample
essays. These materials are all outdated by the new APUSH Exam. The lack of graded sample
essays is a particularly significant problem.
We continue to urge Mr. Coleman to delay the implementation of the new
APUSH curriculum. The delay will give the College Board an opportunity to fully address
the program’s flaws and create additional preparation materials.