Florida high schools can teach Advanced Placement Psychology -- including the unit on gender and sexuality -- says the state education department.
The state “effectively banned“ the course because of it includes discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity, said College Board, which administers AP and the SAT. Florida limits teaching of LGBTQ topics that are not age appropriate.
There's no ban, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. wrote in a letter to superintendents. "AP Psychology can be taught in its entirety in a manner that is age and developmentally appropriate and the course remains listed in our course catalog."
Some Florida districts will not offer AP Psych this year, reports Matt Lavietes for NBC News. Some already have substituted other college-level psychology courses developed by International Baccalaureate or Advanced International Certificate of Education. Others are nervous about violating Florida law.
The AP Psychology course and exam description describes lessons on “how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development,” writes Lavietes. These topics have been included in course content for decades, said College Board.
I found a video made last year on AP Psych's Gender and Sexuality Unit. It's very old school. No pink hair.
By the way, students don't need to take AP Psych to get college credit. They have to pass the exam. Homeschoolers do it all the time. If Florida schools teach a LGBTQ-lite version of AP Psych, students can study sex/gender independently -- watch a video, read the chapter in an old textbook -- and take the exam.
Educated parents want (whether they realize it or not, in the tradition of Steve Jobs) Oxbridge assessment of baccalaureate student exams of advanced placement level mathematics, which shows that subject to be of significantly more value than psychology, which suggests that all of this LGBTQ kerfuffle is, academically speaking, mostly a waste of time & energy.
When it comes down to the bottom line, the middle and upper-middle class parents will get what they want and what they wanted was to maintain college prep.
All of the Reublicans pushing religious charter schools and low value vouchers for school choice should remember that.