Education

After Common Core, Are AP Tests The Next Domino?

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Blake Neff Reporter
Font Size:

Lawmakers in Oklahoma have ignited a storm of controversy by advancing a bill that would cut off funding for Advanced Placement U.S. History classes, and instead replace them with an alternative college-level course.

Should the bill pass, Oklahoma may do far more than alter its high school course line-up: It could fragment college-level high school classes much in the way that conservatives are trying to break apart the shared national standards of Common Core.

Conservatives are upset by what they see as an effort by the College Board (the non-profit company that writes AP tests) to make APUSH more centrally controlled and more ideological. Old APUSH tests included a lengthy multiple choice section focused on making sure test-takers know the factual nuts and bolts of American history, with questions asking why the Battle of Antietam was important or what powers the U.S. government held under the Articles of Confederation.

The new APUSH test rolling out this spring is another matter. Sample practice questions signal a very different approach, with less focus on specific knowledge and more on the broader trends of American history. These broader trends frequently involve matters such as racism, feminism, immigration and environmentalism, to an extent that critics say could turn APUSH into a progressive morality play.

The College Board is also exerting more control over what topics APUSH teachers are expected to cover. For years, the College Board’s course outline for APUSH teachers was a scant five pages long, containing a list of core concepts (from the Emancipation Proclamation to the Treaty of Versailles) that should be taught to be ready for the end-of-year exam.

For 2015, however, the outline has ballooned to several dozen pages long, listing virtually everything teachers could be expected to teach. This far longer outline fuels opponents’ arguments that the College Board is trying to micromanage how history is taught, while trampling over the standards of individual states.

The College Board has defended its changes, saying its approach is unbiased, allows for studying key concepts in greater depth and requires students to read more primary sources. However, Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and one of the most vocal critics of the new APUSH test, says it’s imposing a political slant on American history.

“The emphasis is on the oppression of various minority groups, the emphasis is on identity in terms of race, gender, ethnicity,” Kurtz told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “The common thread of democratic principles or constitutional principals, those things are being deemphasized.”

Kurtz said that seeking an alternative test, as Oklahoma may do, is hardly whitewashing America’s history.

“An alternative would absolutely have to give substantial treatment to slavery, to the treatment of American Indians, to the civil rights movement,” Kurtz said. However, it would also invite a greater treatment of America’s democratic traditions and concepts such as American exceptionalism.

Kurtz also argued that, regardless of APUSH’s content, the country should have more than one option when it comes to college-level history tests.

“[Currently] the government is propping up a single testing company that feels it is no longer accountable,” he said. “My hope is, the movement will spread across the country.”

Jamie Gass, the director of the Pioneer Institute’s Center for School Reform, told TheDCNF that Oklahoma’s possible shift should be seen as the first step towards a major decentralization of college-level exams.

“This has opened up a conversation of what it is testing should look like in this country,” Gass said. “For decades, we had the SAT, the ACT, AP testing, and the reality is, these tests have not improved student achievement in this country.”

Instead, Gass said, states should embrace the opportunity to create their own college-level tests, rather than outsourcing it to a national third party he describes as utterly unaccountable.

“In some states…something like 90 percent of students go to college within the state,” he said. “If they decide they want to develop their own unique college entrance exam, more power to them. From a policy standpoint I think it would be healthy.”

That just might happen. In addition to Oklahoma, lawmakers in Georgia are also considering a resolution that calls for APUSH to be changed by next year, with the threat of Georgia creating its own APUSH alternative if the demand isn’t met.

Gass and Kurtz’s opposition to a single national history test shows the close ties between APUSH criticism and the broader movement against Common Core, which Oklahoma has already repealed. Gass noted that David Coleman, the current College Board president, also played a big role with the creation of the Core. Coleman’s more centralized APUSH, he said, shows the same centralizing impulses he sees in Common Core, and that shared impulse is why both need to be weakened.

“The architects of the Common Core have always envisioned a much more unified national testing regimen, whether its the two testing consortia funded by the federal government, or whether its the ACT, SAT, and AP,” said Gass. “I don’t think it’s an accident Coleman ended up head of the College Board.”

Follow Blake on Twitter

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel