College Board AP U.S. History: Deletes Pilgrims, John Winthrop, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexis de Tocqueville

High-school history teachers nationwide will give their top students a dark retelling of U.S. history this fall, courtesy of the College Board, a nonprofit college readiness firm led by Common Core architect David Coleman.

The College Board – which administers AP (advanced placement) courses and tests – is rolling out a revised curriculum framework for AP U.S. history, offering the 450,000 students who take AP U.S. history classes a hero-free account of America’s deeply stained past.

Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, calls the new AP U.S. history framework “a briefing document on progressive and leftist views of the American past,” one which “weaves together a vaguely Marxist or at least materialist reading of the key events with the whole litany of identity group grievances.”

Conservative author Stanley Kurtz asserts the College Board is “pushing U.S. history as far to the left as it can get away with at the high-school level.”

The new 124-page history curriculum is a dramatic departure from the five-page outline previously supplied by the College Board to guide AP U.S. history instructors. A much more detailed “history from below,” it focuses on how native Indians and Africans suffered at the hands of Europeans in the New World.