DeSANTIS CAN DO A LONG MARCH THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS IF THE INSTITUTIONS DON'T FIGHT BACK

The College Board surrenders to Ron DeSantis without a fight:

After heavy criticism from Gov. Ron DeSantis, the College Board released on Wednesday an official curriculum for its new Advanced Placement course in African American Studies — stripped of much of the subject matter that had angered the governor and other conservatives.

The College Board purged the names of many Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience and Black feminism. It ushered out some politically fraught topics, like Black Lives Matter, from the formal curriculum.

And it added something new: “Black conservatism” is now offered as an idea for a research project.

I wonder why this happened....

Acceptance for the new curriculum is important to the College Board, a nonprofit, because A.P. courses are a major source of revenue. The Board took in more than $1 billion in program service revenue in 2019, of which more than $490 million came from “AP and Instruction,” according to its tax-exempt filing.

Erik Loomis puts this a bit more bluntly:

The Advanced Placement system is corrupt to the core. It’s part of the privatization of public education, a “non-profit” that exists to create huge profits for itself by getting parents or school districts to pony up for expensive tests that many students are not prepared to take. Then, the AP grading system ensures that a certain percentage of these students will get college credit for these exams no matter how unprepared, based on the important principle of making sure next year’s parents will see it worth their while to pony up even more cash for a largely valueless educational experience.

Whether you agree with this or not, there's revenue in these tests. DeSantis posed a threat to the College Board's cashflow, just as he threatened the profits of Disney last year. And so the College Board folded just the way Disney folded after expressing mild disapproval of DeSantis's anti-LGBTQ jihad.

DeSantis's ally and ideological soul mate Chris Rufo tosses around the leftist phrase "the long march through the institutions" as if he's talking about an extended process of conquest. But some of the institutions give up without firing a shot. DeSantis surely knows that. This is one reason he's likely to run up a fairly high body count before he's stopped.