Florida launches a US history course to rival AP. Experts have concerns

ORLANDO, Fla. - Florida is launching its own college-level U.S. history course for high school students, trying to teach "the full scope" of America's story, but some experts say the proposed lesson plans present sanitized views of topics such as slavery, and some college counselors say high-achieving pupils should stay away.

The new course, which also places particular emphasis on Christian faith and American exceptionalism, is meant to rival Advanced Placement U.S. History and will be offered in select school districts as a pilot program starting next school year, the Florida Department of Education said in its May 4 announcement.

Florida high school students who pass the course's standardized exam can get credit at Florida's public colleges and universities. It's not clear yet if private or out-of-state schools will offer such credit, as they do for passing standard AP exams.

The history course, part of Florida Advanced Courses and Tests, or FACT, is the latest attempt by Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration to move Florida away from courses and exams offered by the College Board, the nonprofit that makes the Advanced Placement program and the SAT college admissions exam.

In recent years, the state's Republican leader has argued that the College Board's AP courses - long a popular way for Florida high school students to get a head start on their college course load - tilt to the political left. That fight came to a head in 2023 when DeSantis created a national uproar by prohibiting Florida public high schools from offering the AP African American studies course because it included critical race theory and other topics he found objectionable.

This week the state released a 214-page framework for the new course, outlining its goals and the topics to be covered.

"The FACT U.S. History framework underscores our commitment to instruction grounded in the full scope of our nation's history, while ensuring materials are free from ideological bias or indoctrination," said Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas in a statement.

But several critics said the framework outlined a poor-quality class, with a history professor at Princeton University calling it a "Florida Man Version of AP" on social media.

Almost half a million students take AP U.S. history each year nationwide, including about 200,000 in Florida.

The new history course aims to "teach our young people to become informed, self-aware, and dedicated citizens of the United States of America-of this particular nation," the framework reads.

It differs in several ways from the long-established AP class, perhaps most notably that it leans heavily into Christian faith, using verses from the Bible as primary sources.

FACT U.S. History also only recommends one textbook, "Land of Hope: An Invitation to the American Story," authored by a historian from the conservative Christian Hillsdale College in Michigan. Florida has relied on Hillsdale previously, using it as a model in 2023 for the conservative transformation of New College of Florida in Sarasota and asking Hillsdale professors in 2020 to consult on public school standards and curriculum.

Adam Rothman, a historian at Georgetown University and director of the school's Center for the Study of Slavery and Its Legacies, said Florida and Kamoutsas are "0 for 3" on their promises for the FACT course.

The course does not look to offer a full scope of U.S. history, Rothman said, nor does it seem free from ideological bias or indoctrination. Rothman called the course "shoddy" and "not a college-level U.S. history class." Parents, he added, should think twice before signing their student up for it.

"There's a missed opportunity here to actually create a really interesting imaginative, challenging class for Florida students," he said.

Rothman said the lack of discussion on the racism in early U.S. history, for example, was "striking." The word "racism" never appears in the entire 214-page course framework, while the topic appears in the first unit of AP U.S. history and then in numerous parts of that course.

"You can't really understand the contradiction between freedom and slavery at the founding of the United States in the late 18th century without some grasp of the emergence of racist views about Black people," he said.

The FACT course contains several factual errors, Rothman added, such as saying "indentured servants" were brought to the Americas in 1619 instead of "slaves" and asserting that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington opposed slavery despite owning hundreds themselves, a fundamental misunderstanding of where they stood on the issue.

But Wilfred McClay, the chair of classical history and Western civilization at Hillsdale and author of the recommended textbook for the FACT course, wrote in an email to the Orlando Sentinel that the state's course looked "much better" than AP U.S. History. He called the state's effort to compete with the College Board "entirely commendable."

"American history is a site of contestation, full of lively disagreements. Which is precisely why no one organization should be permitted to have a monopoly on advanced-placement testing. We will all be better off if we have a variety of choices," McClay wrote.

The FACT course framework outlines a nine-unit course with specific primary sources and key facts that students are expected to memorize for the exam.

"It represents an important step toward restoring academic integrity in the classroom after years of uneven and, at times, ideologically driven instruction," said Ryan Petty, chair of the State Board of Education, in a statement.

In contrast, the AP U.S. History course framework is more than twice as long at 560 pages and emphasizes a less "content prescriptive" approach, according to the College Board, meaning teachers have leeway to use different historical examples in their lessons.

Kevin Kruse, a Princeton professor, posted a thread to the social media site Bluesky sharing and criticizing parts of the Florida course outline, from its use of Bible selections to its discussions of slavery, the New Deal and abortion.

"If any historians want to suffer through the Florida Man Version of AP History, here's the document," he wrote.

One person who responded noted Florida's course implies Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who pushed the "Red Scare" communist panic in the 1950s, was justified in his crusade. Florida's social studies standards for teaching communism, approved last year, make a similar point, though McCarthy's biography on the U.S. Senate website notes some of his accusations were deemed "a fraud and a hoax" and that he was censured by the Senate.

Kruse also highlighted that the Florida course criticized Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court case that protected a woman's right to an abortion, as a ruling that "removed a contentious topic from the democratic process." And it seemed to praise the 2022 overturning of Roe as "returning the matter to regulation by the states via the democratic process."

No one should wonder if colleges outside Florida will offer credits based on FACT, he added. "It's not unknown. We won't accept this," he wrote.

Jodi Furman, a Florida-based independent college admissions counselor, said she'd recommend high-achieving students looking at high-ranking schools in other states stick with established advanced classes.

"AP has been around for an extraordinarily long time. It's well respected, it is known. People like, what they know," Furman said.

The FACT course may not give students college credit at out of state schools, and it also may be viewed by some admissions departments as less rigorous than AP or International Baccalaureate courses, which also offer high school students a way to earn college credit.

But for students who plan to attend an in-state college or university, Furman said the course could be an "excellent option" because it's guaranteed to be accepted for credit.

The education department did not respond to an email asking how many of Florida's 67 school districts had signed on to teach the course in the 2026-27 school year. Districts and charter schools have until May 18 to volunteer.

The Orange, Osceola and Lake county school districts said they would not be participating, while a spokesperson for Seminole County Public Schools said the course was under consideration.

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This story was originally published May 9, 2026 at 4:29 PM.