AP African American Studies

Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies (also known as APAAS, APAFAM, AP African, or AP Afro) is a college-level course and examination offered to high school students in the United States through the College Board's Advanced Placement program. The course is dedicated solely to learning about and researching the African diaspora and is designed to elevate African-American history and education.

Starting in the 2023–2024 school year, the pilot course expanded to approximately 800 schools. The course launched worldwide beginning in August 2024.^{[citation needed]}

For decades, critics of the College Board and advanced placement programs have argued that curricula have focused too much on Euro-centric history. Between 2017 and 2020, the College Board partnered with the University of Notre Dame and Tuskegee University to pre-pilot AP African American Studies in 11 selected schools. In 2020, the College Board reshaped some curricula among history-based AP courses to further reflect the African diaspora.

In 2021, the College Board announced that it would be officially piloting AP African American Studies course to begin in the 2022–2023 academic year. The course was piloted in approximately 60 schools across the United States in its first year. AP African American Studies was the first ethnic studies course offered by College Board, and was the first pilot course since 1952.

Topics in the pilot course range from Queen Nzinga in northern Angola to the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Panthers. Topics include lesser-known activists like Valerie Thomas, the African American scientist who invented the illusion transmitter at NASA. Brandi Waters, the director of the AP African American Studies course development, stated, "this course will offer students across the country a rigorous and inspiring introduction to African American studies."

Advocates of the launch of AP African American Studies argue the course will help attract more African American students to AP programs and will bolster minority scores. According to 2019 data, 32% of Black students passed their AP exams compared to 44% of White and Asian students. Additionally, the College Board described that AP African American Studies would further "[attract] Black and [Latino] high school teachers".

Brandi Waters is the executive director of AP African American Studies for College Board. Leaders in the field of Black studies, such as Henry Louis Gates, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, and Robert Patterson assisted in the creation of the course.

Dawn Williams, dean of Howard University's School of Education, said that AP African American Studies consists of a "curriculum that's been vetted for years by experts in the field." In 2022, Gates stated, "Nothing is more dramatic than having the College Board launch an AP course in a field—that signifies ultimate acceptance and ultimate academic legitimacy... AP African American Studies is not CRT. It's not the 1619 Project. It is a mainstream, rigorously vetted, academic approach to a vibrant field of study, one half a century old in the American academy, and much older, of course, in historically Black colleges and universities." The ultimate goal of the course is to teach that Black history is not limited to slavery or the Civil Rights movement.