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Notes -
The Washington Post reports: Florida schools drop AP Psychology after state says it violates the law, a good example of the media getting as close to lying as you can get while still remaining in not-quite-lying territory.
As far as I know, this all started last Thursday, when the College Board issued a statement regarding its AP Psychology course and Florida law. In this statement, the College Board wrote: "The state has said districts are free to teach AP Psychology only if it excludes any mention of [content on sexual orientation and gender identity]."
Citation (desperately) needed! Contrary to what the College Board says, I have been unable to find any source on the internet prior to the College Board's statement corroborating their claim about what the Florida department of education requires. The Washington Post claims that the statement was based on a "conference call" between the board of education and school superintendents, but again, I have found no stories where the reporter interviews someone involved in the call in order to confirm the College Board's characterization of what was said.
On the contrary, on Friday, the day after the College Board published its statement, the director of the Florida Department of Education wrote a letter to the school superintendants, clarifying that
As far as I know, this letter is the only official statement from the Florida Department of Education regarding the application of the Parental Rights in Education ("Don't Say Gay") law to the teaching of AP Psychology. And yet a google search of "ap psychology Florida" returns headline after headline of major news outlets reporting the College Board's interpretation of this law as if Florida had gone out and "banned" the teaching of AP Psychology in its schools.
Without knowing anything about the conference call (because no reporter bothered to check), I have to caveat that maybe Florida did suggest that some parts of AP Psychology could not be taught, only to backtrack after being called out by the College Board. But for me, it seems like a dishonest characterization of the law intended to make Florida and DeSantis look bad.
EDIT:
Okay, having done a bit more research by going back to read the College Board's previous statements on this matter, I have to admit that my characterization was mistaken. In particular, in their June statement on the AP Psychology course, they reference correspondence from the Florida Department of Education Office of Articulation (what a name!), asking the College Board to affirm that their AP Psychology course conforms to the new Florida law. Still not a "ban," but definitely the College Board is not engaged in the unprovoked attack on Florida that I was imagining. There was definitely some provocation.
I do still think this is more about grandstanding by the College Board than a straightforward application of the law, but I was wrong in thinking that the College Board was one-sidedly attacking the Florida Department of Education.
It seems pretty clear to me what happened. The Florida Department of Education of thinks it’s perfectly fine to teach AP Psychology without the gender identity and sexual orientation stuff, and the college board thinks those topics are integral to the course and cannot be omitted.
Of course, a media worth a shit would actually get into the weeds of the curriculum to find out what the gender and sexuality topics really are and how inseparable they are from the rest of the course. Unfortunately you’re going to have to do your own research.
To be fair to the College Board here, I have no clue what counts as “age appropriate” content for 11th and 12th graders either.
This is clearly not what happened. The FDE statement doesn't say the gender identity and sexual orientation stuff must be omitted; the relevant law is quite clear that such instruction may be offered in grades 9-12. The College Board appears to be claiming that its material is not age-appropriate for high schoolers, or at least that the Florida Law is likely to deem it so. But there is no apparent basis for the College Board to believe this. The statute is arguably vague, but if they weren't just playing culture war politics the College Board should be arguing that its material is age appropriate, not that the law forbids its inclusion.
Although I suspect that you are probably correct that the College Board is being disengenuous when it says that the course cannot be offered without the gender/sexuality stuff (it is a small part of the course; in my experience, albeit re AP World rather than AP Psych, teachers are not expected to have time to cover literally anything; hence, I suspect but do not know that the AP Course Audit has in the past approved individual teachers' syllabi that do not include coverage of gender/sexuality), the FDE's May 19 letter to the College Board says the following:
Since AP Psychology is neither required by state academic standards nor a reproductive health course, that certainly sounds like they were saying at that time that including those subjects in an AP Psych class is unlawful, or at least that an AP Psych teacher who taught that material would be subject to discipline.
But the amount of material incorporated by reference there is... daunting, I guess I want to say. Rule 6A-1.09401 leads with--
--and then bullet-points and hyperlinks fifteen more documents. In SC.912.CS-PC.2.3 (part of the science standards) we read, for instance, that the Grade 9-12 benchmarks include
In SS.912.HE.2.5 (part of the social studies standards) we read that the Grade 9-12 benchmarks include
So some understanding of both gender and sexual orientation is essential to meeting Grade 9-12 benchmarks, which were incorporated into the rules here. Either the College Board has shitty lawyers (a real possibility, I admit!) or they just didn't want to make the argument. And as @netstack suggests, maybe the College Board was just tired of making arguments after the African-American Studies thing, maybe they think it's futile and the DeSantis bureaucracy is just out to get them regardless of what they say. Maybe they're right about that! But that doesn't get the College Board off the hook, I think, for the blatant mischaracterizations they decided to trot out instead.
I don’t think that would have been much of an argument. The AP Psych course requires teaching, as part of unit on developmentalpsychology, "how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development." That is nowhere close to what your examples from state standards relate to, and an argument that a standard that requires teaching how the Nazis treated homosexuals somehow brings within its ambit "how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development" would seem to be frivolous.
Edit:
I doubt that they have it out for the College Board. But I do note that DeSantis is running for President on an anti-"woke" platform.
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