College Board Refuses To Design AP Class Around Ron DeSantis' Wants And Needs

His wants and needs are very homophobic.

Florida Grand Wizard Ron DeSantis has been on a real power trip lately. He cares so little about Florida tourism that he denied a zoo $2 million in funding because, after people protested the fact that they allowed a transphobic Republican candidate to hold an event there, they said they wouldn't host any campaign events there at all. He also slashed funds for a Black History celebration in Orlando, along with a variety of projects supported even by people in his own party who are not supporting him as a Presidential candidate.

He also thinks he and his administration should be able to tell College Board, the nonprofit that administers the SATs and develops the curriculum for Advanced Placement classes for students across America. This week, the Florida Department of Education had the gall to send a letter to the College Board informing them that they would have to design every AP class around Florida's laws barring any discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools.

At issue in particular is the AP Psychology course, which obviously addresses those topics and has for years.

Via Washington Post:  

The department told the College Board on May 19 that it is developing an “assurance document” for the College Board to indicate that its courses comply with Florida’s new rules. It also said state officials “implore” the organization to review its courses and identify those that might need to be modified.

“Some courses might contain content or topics prohibited by State Board of Education rule and Florida law,” the department’s letter said.

“[The] College Board is responsible for ensuring that their submitted materials comply with Florida law,” said Cassie Palelis, press secretary for the Florida Department of Education.

Actually, they don't, and they're not going to.

The College Board sent its own letter to the department, informing it and the DeSantis administration that it is their job to create college-level courses for students and an AP Psychology course that doesn't mention sexual orientation or gender identity would not fulfill that criteria.

[College Board] will not modify our courses to accommodate restrictions on teaching essential, college-level topics. Doing so would break the fundamental promise of AP: colleges wouldn’t broadly accept that course for credit and that course wouldn’t prepare students for careers in the discipline.

The learning objective within AP Psychology that covers gender and sexual orientation has specifically been raised by some Florida districts relative to these recent regulations. That learning objective must remain a required topic, just as it has been in Florida for many years. As with all AP courses, required topics must be included for a course to be designated as AP.

The College Board previously messed up when it removed lesson plans about prison abolition, Angela Davis, Kimberlé Crenshaw and Black Lives Matter from it's AP African American History course in order to cater to Desantis' ridiculous demands — and they acknowledge this as a mistake in their press release about the dispute. They also said that they will be "heartbroken by the possibility of Florida students being denied the opportunity to participate in this or any AP course," but if that's what happens, that's what happens. And it's not their fault, it's the fault of Ron DeSantis and those who voted for him.

I don't know how well this is going to turn out for DeSantis. Parents feel pretty importantly about their kids' educational opportunities and may not react well to having those opportunities yanked away because he thinks teenagers are too young to find out what gay people are.

OPEN THREAD!

 Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons .

Wonkette is independent and fully funded by readers like you. Click below to tip us!