RESOLUTION CONCERNING ADVANCED PLACEMENT U. S. HISTORY (APUSH)
WHEREAS, almost 500,000 U. S. students take the College Board’s Advanced Placement U. S.
History (APUSH) course each year which has traditionally been designed to present a balanced
view of American history and to prepare students for college-level history courses; and

WHEREAS, the College Board (a private organization unaccountable to the public) has recently
released a new Framework for the APUSH course that reflects a radically revisionist view of
American history that emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history while omitting or
minimizing positive aspects; and

WHEREAS, the Framework includes little or no discussion of the Founding Fathers, the
principles of the Declaration of Independence, the religious influences on our nation’s history,
and many other critical topics that have always been part of the APUSH course; and

WHEREAS, the Framework excludes discussion of the U. S. military (no battles, commanders,
or heroes) and omits many other individuals and events that greatly shaped our nation’s history
(for example, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, George Washington Carver, Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin
Luther King, Tuskegee Airmen, the Holocaust); and

WHEREAS, the Framework presents a biased and inaccurate view of many important events in
American history, including the motivations and actions of 17th
-19th
-century settlers, American
involvement in World War II, and the development of and victory in the Cold War; and

WHEREAS, the Framework describes its detailed requirements as “required knowledge” for
APUSH students, and the College Board admits that the APUSH examination will not test
information outside this “required knowledge;” and

WHEREAS, because the Framework differs radically from almost all state history standards, so
that APUSH teachers will have to ignore their state standards to prepare students for the AP
examination, the Framework will essentially usurp almost all state history standards for the best
and brightest history students; and

WHEREAS, the College Board is not making its sample examination available for public
review, thus maintaining secrecy about what U. S. students are actually being tested on; therefore
be it

RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee recommends that the College Board delay the
implementation of the new APUSH Framework for at least a year, and that during that time a
committee be convened to draft an APUSH Framework that is consistent both with the APUSH
course’s traditional mission, with state history standards, and with the desires of U. S. parents
and other citizens for their students to learn the true history of their country; and be it further

RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee requests that state legislatures and the U. S.
Congress investigate this matter; and be it further

RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee request that Congress withhold any federal
funding to the College Board (a private non-governmental organization) until the APUSH course
and examination have been rewritten in a transparent manner to accurately reflect U. S. history
without a political bias and to respect the sovereignty of state standards, and until sample
examinations are made available to educators, state and local officials, and the public, as has
long been the established practice; and be it finally

RESOLVED, that upon the approval of this resolution the Republican National Committee shall
promptly deliver a copy of this resolution to every Republican member of Congress, all
Republican candidates for Congress, and to each Republican state and territorial party office.

What I found interesting is the emphasis on H.S. History as the study of the founding fathers. My son is taking regular US History in California. Clearly our requirements for the class are different with Texas requirements. Regular US History in CA if officially from Reformation (post Civil War) to present time. They are doing a unit of "review" to start but don't even taken much time on the Civil War. The assumption is that students learned about Colonial times through Civil War in 8th grade and 5th grade. Do kid in Texas not learn about U.S. History before H.S?

I've been doing a little more reading about our board's position. The board's charge to the curriculum review committee includes the following: "Materials should promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free enterprise system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights," as well as "positive aspects of the United States and its heritage." Our local paper cited this passage as the justification for the review of APUSH. I find the use of "promote" instead of "teach" the the focus on "positive aspects" to be telling. This sounds more like propaganda than teaching.

Hey, I've got an idea. How about teaching critical thinking.

That said, the [APUSH] framework has a full measure of shortcomings, starting with its inattention to America’s motivating ideals. The only acknowledgment that the American Revolution had any historical significance is a clause mentioning that it had “reverberations in France, Haiti, and Latin America.” There is no discussion of the intermediary institutions or civic organizations so central to our culture, society, and government.

While identity is declared a major “theme,” and the framework brims with references to ethnic and gender identity, there’s no specific attention to the emergence of a distinct American “identity.” Discussion of race routinely refers to “whites,” washing away real historical complexities in favor of conventional 21st-century racial tropes. The import of anti-Catholic sentiment is absent. Special attention is paid to Mexican immigrants in the 1930s and 1940s (a relatively tiny population), yet the crucial Irish-Italian tensions of the early 20th century are absent.

There’s little about economics that doesn’t feel caricatured or framed in terms of government efforts to combat injustice. Students are introduced to decade after decade of American racism and depravity, with little positive context for the nation’s foreign engagements or its success creating shared prosperity for tens of millions. Little is said of “Manifest Destiny” other than that it was justified by beliefs in “white racial superiority” and “American cultural superiority.” The old framework paid attention to World War II–era “fascism and militarism in Japan, Italy, and Germany.” Featured instead in the new one is the suggestion that sundry U.S. actions during World War II, such as the internment of Japanese Americans, debates over segregation, and dropping the atomic bomb, “raised questions about American values.”

Let’s be clear that a number of the oft-heard criticisms are over the top and ill-informed. The new framework does not remove historic personages like Benjamin Franklin or Martin Luther King; they were not in the old five-page framework and are not in the new 50-page one (both of which focus more on overarching topics than on naming individuals). And the new standards do not ignore the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence.

The critics make a legitimate case that the framework is ideologically slanted and infused with 21st-century progressivist bias.

While identity is declared a major “theme,” and the framework brims with references to ethnic and gender identity, there’s no specific attention to the emergence of a distinct American “identity.” Discussion of race routinely refers to “whites,” washing away real historical complexities in favor of conventional 21st-century racial tropes. The import of anti-Catholic sentiment is absent. Special attention is paid to Mexican immigrants in the 1930s and 1940s (a relatively tiny population), yet the crucial Irish-Italian tensions of the early 20th century are absent.

“You may have students draw the image for 5 minutes before describing what they see, or they could keep a running list of everything they see as the observation time progress, and others ask students to describe the image as they would to a person who cannot see it.

Although you may have extensive background information on the image(s) being shared, they should resist the urge to share that information at this stage as it may hinders students’ ability to form their own observations.

ARVADA, Colo. — A new conservative school board majority here in the Denver suburbs recently proposed a curriculum-review committee to promote patriotism, respect for authority and free enterprise and to guard against educational materials that “encourage or condone civil disorder.” In response, hundreds of students, teachers and parents gave the board their own lesson in civil disobedience.

...

The student walkout came after a bitter school board election last year and months of acrimony over charter schools, teacher pay, kindergarten expansion and, now, the proposed review committee, which would evaluate Advanced Placement United States history and elementary school health classes.