The Oklahoma state superintendent plans on meeting with state Rep. Dan Fisher (R), the lawmaker who sponsored a bill that would eliminate funding for AP U.S. History.
Superintendent Joy Hofmeister did not take a stance on the bill, but her spokesman, Phil Bacharach, told Oklahoma Watch that she wants to discuss Fisher’s concerns about the bill.
“I know she is withholding her judgment until she meets with him,” Bacharach said. “Obviously, it’s gotten some attention.”
The bill sponsored by Fisher would keep the state from funding AP U.S. History classes unless the College Board changes the course framework. The legislation also calls for the state’s Department of Education to develop a U.S. History curriculum that would replace the AP course.
Fisher believes that the new course framework released by the College Board in 2012 presents a negative view of American history.
“In essence, we have a new emphasis on what is bad about America,” Fisher said about the AP framework on Tuesday. “(The new framework) trades an emphasis on America’s founding principles of Constitutional government in favor of robust analyses of gender and racial oppression and class ethnicity and the lives of marginalized people, where the emphasis on instruction is of America as a nation of oppressors and exploiters.”
Since the College Board released the new framework, conservatives have decried the course as negative and unpatriotic. The Republican National Committee, as well as numerous states, have condemned the revised course.
