The legality of teaching Advanced Placement courses in Oklahoma public schools was raised last week during a House Common Education Committee hearing on a bill aimed at AP U.S. history guidelines.
Representative Dan Fisher’s proposed House Bill 1380 would direct the state Board of Education to review the guidelines and bar the use of state funds for AP U.S. history courses in Oklahoma.
Although it was not immediately clear whether the requirement applies to all courses or only to required courses, the legislation gives sole control of curriculum and assessment to the state. While HB 1380 specifically targets U.S. history, a ruling that it violates state law related to curriculum, as presented by Representative Sally Kern, could apply to all AP courses.
“For good or for bad right now in Oklahoma, teachers are not seen as a valid voice in these educational conversations,” Kevin McDonald, AP English teacher at Edmond Memorial High School, said. “Whether it’s because it’s anticipated that we’ll be self-serving and try and fight with the status quo or whatever sort of contention there is, it’s going to require parent and student contact to keep these courses in play.”
Patti Harrold, an AP teacher at Edmond Memorial High School, has been teaching AP courses for 27 years and said she would have liked to been talked to about the matter before it was proposed. Harrold is also the President of Oklahoma Council for History Education, a College Board consultant and an AP exam reader.
“I truly believe that the people that have put forward these bills want the best for Oklahoma students,” Harrold said. “But, so do we. … What I would hope is that legislators, before they move forward with any bill, would talk to us.”
The bill suggests that Oklahoma creates its own version of an accreditation course for U.S. History in lieu of the current AP program.
“The exams are created by teachers, the courses are created by teachers, there’s no overarching authority, person or group out there that has any sort of ulterior motive,” Harrold said. “To simply create a new Oklahoma version of AP and their exam … would be millions of dollars.”
The bill wants a curriculum that is focused more on American exceptionalism, rather than the negative aspects of American history that is currently taught, according to Fisher.
“You have to look at the bad in your life if it’s going to get better,” Harrold said. “I think it makes American exceptionalism even better when you look at what we’ve done.”
The proposed curriculum emphasizes founding documents and principles from the beginning of the nation, highlighting key advances and leadership in American history.
“One of the things about history is that we’re trying to learn from history, so we can apply it to our future and make it a better future,” sophomore Cody Milner, a history and political science major, said. “It depends on how you want to learn and define that – do you want to pattern yourself after the good, or learn from the bad or do a combination of both?”
AP has over 50 years of longitudinal data that shows that students who take AP courses graduate from college with higher GPAs, are more likely to double major and are more likely to continue on to post graduate degrees, according to McDonald.
“That longitudinal data says that that exposure by itself, if all things are equal, leads to collegiate success at a higher rate,” McDonald said. “So, not offering that to students creates a potential disadvantage, not only in transcript comparisons when they’re competing for admissions or scholarships, but you could argue that statistically they would not be as likely to succeed as their peers who have had access to AP.”
Another criticism with the proposed bill is that, in Oklahoma, students learn extensively about the founding of America through the Civil War in their 8th grade curriculum.
“It suggests a lack of understanding about what those descriptions and frameworks mean in an actual instructional context,” McDonald said. “In almost all AP courses, what the course actually outlines are a set of skills that students need to be able to demonstrate with suggestions about how they might go about presenting that information and soliciting those skills from students. But they’re also designed to have a reasonable amount of flexibility because College Board knows that AP teachers are not teaching just the AP content, that they also have state requirements and often have vertical team requirements and in many cases they also have district requirements.”
During the discussion and debate last week, Representative Kern also suggested that AP courses are similar to Common Core – as both programs could be seen as an attempt to impose a national curriculum on American schools – and therefore violate the legislation approved last year that repealed Common Core.
“We’re fairly confident about what college work means to us, what AP means to us and what we think it means to students,” McDonald said. “This has to be about a curriculum that provides opportunities that other students in other states will receive. Our students in Oklahoma can’t lose that.”
Ultimately, in response to the heavy criticism received on the proposed bill, Fisher said his bill, which was widely interpreted as seeking to do away with the courses, was poorly worded and is being rewritten.
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