Speaker: Question appeared in online practice quiz, never in “actual AP exam”
The College Board has removed a practice exam question that was recently criticized online for equating female empowerment with low birth rates, a spokesperson said. The College Fix.
The question was highlighted in a recent X-Post by Jeremy Tate, a faculty member at Belmont Abbey College. Students were asked to examine a graph of birth and death rates in five countries and select which data best represented “high levels of female empowerment.”
The answer was France, the country with the lowest birth rate, Tate said. The question came from an online Advanced Placement Human Geography practice test.
This is a screenshot from the College Board’s AP platform showing AP Human Geography questions.
The correct answer is France because it has the lowest birth rate.
The College Board teaches your children a sign of female empowerment: fewer babies.
Gloves off! 👊 pic.twitter.com/wASt2HuQCK
— Jeremy Wayne Tate (@JeremyTate41) July 26, 2024
College Board spokeswoman Sara Sympson said The solution in a recent email, the question was “inaccurate” and has been removed. The nonprofit creates the SAT and Advanced Placement tests.
“In November 2023, we removed this inaccurate AP Human Geography practice question on the Gender Inequality Index from our website and then reviewed our processes to determine why we were unable to prevent it from being published as a practice question,” Sympson said.
Sympson said The solution The organization also “formally apologized for the procedural error that caused this inaccurate question to appear on our website. It never appeared on an actual AP exam.”
However, this issue, which stems from earlier concerns raised by academics about the influence of ideological aspects on the College Board’s tests, continues to be criticized.
“Education can never be ‘value-neutral,’” said Tate The solution in an email last week.
Tate directs the Classic Learning Test, an alternative standardized test that focuses on knowledge and virtue. He is also a trustee of the Catholic Institute of Technology in Italy.
The recently removed question shows that “the College Board has embraced an impoverished version of feminism that is deeply hostile to women and children. It’s no surprise that they use their assessments to push this extreme ideology on young people,” he said.
It is also another example of the anti-family messages coming from higher education, Tate said The solution.
“Mainstream science has lost its vision for human flourishing, which must always include an openness to life and a sacred respect for the most vulnerable among us, children,” said Tate, who is Catholic.
“This message is the result of a comprehensive acceptance of a modern understanding of freedom, defined as personal autonomy to do what our impulses tell us, rather than the classical understanding of human freedom, understood as freedom from vice to do good,” he said. The solution.
He added, “Absolutely nothing is being gained from this antinatalist propaganda. The only serious benefit I see is that this madness is accelerating the timeline until the CLT completely replaces the College Board.”
The College Board has faced similar criticism in the past. Academics accused the organization of “undermining” American history, introducing and later removing an “adversity score” for the SAT, and refusing to bring courses into line with state law.
MORE: Education scholars criticize College Board for revising history
IMAGE: Alena Ozerova/Shutterstock
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