TAMPA, Florida — College Board said the Florida Department of Education has "effectively banned" the teaching of Advanced Placement Psychology in high schools across the state, the organization said in a statement Thursday.
This comes a few weeks after the College Board said it's not going to modify its curriculum to accommodate Florida's new law that further limits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.
"We are sad to have learned that today the Florida Department of Education has effectively banned AP Psychology in the state by instructing Florida superintendents that teaching foundational content on sexual orientation and gender identity is illegal under state law," the statement from College Board read, in part.
Florida education leaders have instructed superintendents that teaching foundational content on sexual orientation and gender identity is illegal under state law.
That content has been part of the AP Psychology course for 30 years, with the course asking students to “describe how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development.”
While the state said districts are free to teach the course if it excludes the topics, the College Board, which oversees AP courses and exams across the nation, says any course that censors required content cannot be labeled, "AP."
"As we shared in June, we cannot modify AP Psychology in response to regulations that would censor college-level standards for credit, placement, and career readiness. Our policy remains unchanged," the statement continued. "To be clear, any AP Psychology course taught in Florida will violate either Florida law or college requirements.
"Therefore, we advise Florida districts not to offer AP Psychology until Florida reverses their decision and allows parents and students to choose to take the full course.
10 Tampa Bay reached out to the FDOE for a response, to which they replied the College Board "is attempting to force school districts to prevent students from taking the AP Psychology Course."
"The Department didn’t 'ban' the course," the response from the FDOE read, in part. "The course remains listed in Florida’s Course Code Directory for the 2023-24 school year.
"We encourage the College Board to stop playing games with Florida students and continue to offer the course and allow teachers to operate accordingly."
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this year expanded the state's Parental Rights in Education law — controversial legislation that has been dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics — that further limits public school classroom discussions on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Those discussions now are restructured through 8th grade and marking the topics as acceptable in grades 9-12 if it’s cleared as "age-appropriate."
The law also prohibits school staffers or students from being required to refer to people by pronouns that don’t correspond to the person’s sex.
10 Tampa Bay's BriShon Mitchell contributed to this report.