More historians and commentators are speaking out against the College Board’s long, constraining, and egregiously left-biased Framework for the study of AP U.S. History (APUSH).
Ron Radosh, a historian of modern America, offers a powerful critique of the new AP U.S. History Framework from 1890 to the present. In an important addendum to that post, University of Maryland historian Jeffrey Herf expands on Radosh’s criticism of the Framework’s treatment of Ronald Reagan.
Over at Powerline, Paul Mirengoff has been reading the Framework’s presentation of early American history and is appalled at what he finds.
Why not try reading the College Board’s new U.S. History Framework for yourself? If you don’t have time to take in the whole thing, you can easily concentrate on a few key periods, skipping the long conceptual introduction and the lengthy concluding sections about the exam.
One option is to read Radosh’s post on modern American history and then look over pages 60–80 of the Framework to see if you agree. You might pay special attention to the Framework’s contrasting treatment of liberalism and conservatism.
Another option is to read Mirengoff’s take on the Framework’s treatment of early American history and then look over pages 31–47 of the Framework. This is where some of the strongest reactions will come, I suspect.
The more people who read the new AP U.S. History Framework, the more trouble the College Board will be in.
— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and can be reached at comments.kurtz@nationalreview.com