Thank you all so much for the continued support in this fight.

The district of South Orange Maplewood is not letting up, claiming that "it is from these experiences that the course content, including information in the text, is contextualized in order to raise issues so that students can critically evaluate different perspectives. Specifically, real-life examples pertaining to the theory of ‘Broken Windows’ were addressed in order to convey that it was unconstitutional, unreasonable, and ineffective. Further, students learned about examples addressing Equal Protection and Risk of Exclusion.”

However, none of this is true, as shown in my response to the Village Green. "This class is currently being taught to the textbook. We would read the textbook, answer the publisher’s own questions about the text we’d just read, and that was it; no other information or analysis was done in or out of class." I took this class during the 2019-2020 school year.

They have said that they will look into changing the textbook, but only if the funds are available. Changing a racist textbook should be the top priority for the school district.

This is my full response to the disappointing response from the district:

I am extremely glad that the district is taking the demands of the community seriously by considering a change in the textbook for AP Government, but I have a couple of corrections to make in regards to the district's statement.

Firstly, in contrast to the statement that “the course is not taught ‘to the text,’” the course was heavily textbook dependent. As someone who took this course, I can say that the class focused expressly on this textbook. As a class, we only referred to other articles a handful of times during the entire course and never on the topics I brought up in my letter and petition.

I know that AP classes don’t have to be textbook dependent; I took AP United States History which used a wide variety of texts. However, this class is currently being taught to the textbook. We would read the textbook, answer the publisher’s own questions about the text we’d just read, and that was it; no other information or analysis was done in or out of class.

Next, the district spokesperson mentions that this textbook is listed among the College Board’s stated options; however their website recommends the 2018 version of this textbook, not the 2011 version, which is what we use. College Board states that older versions of textbooks may be acceptable, but have to be supported by supplemental materials, which was not the case in this class with this textbook. They also cite 24 other textbooks available for this course. The list of College Board’s accepted textbooks is linked here.

Additionally, the statement claims that “the goal in any of our courses is to encourage critical thinking and to help students to grapple with text and topics that can sometimes be controversial.” However, in my experience in this class in the past year, that was never the case. Debates and dialogue were never held in class in relation to the textbook and its contents. 

Finally, the district claims that “real-life examples pertaining to the theory of ‘Broken Windows’ were addressed in order to convey that it was unconstitutional, unreasonable, and ineffective” and that that we learned about “ Equal Protection and Risk of Exclusion.” I can say based upon personal experience that none of this occurred. We never even discussed the policy in class. We never discussed the biases of the authors of the text nor their backgrounds; I did research on my own time after observing clear and blatant biases in the text. And — this is important — students are asked to answer questions that simply parrot the views of the textbook authors.
 

The district has contended that they will explore changing the textbook “until such time that the budget will provide for a new text.” I would argue that there should be no greater priority for a district with a catastrophically large racial equity gap than teaching with educational materials that are nonracist and grounded in science.

Please keep sharing and signing the petition.