The College Board and the Educational Testing Service is apologizing for engaging engaged in culturally insensitive and racist behavior toward Asians, particularly Chinese people, at an Advanced Placement grading event, Hyphen Magazine reported.

The organization is apologizing for a T-shirt that was made and sold by high school and college teachers who gathered in June to grade AP World History exams in Salt Lake City.

The T-shirts sold at the event plays off of the Chinese Communist revolution "in ways that struck critics as offensive," Inside Higher Ed reported. The images on the T-shirts allude to one of the essay questions on this year's exam, a question about the Chinese Communist Party.

Hyphen Magazine published images of the T-shirt.

"It is unacceptable that one of the AP Exam Readers created a T-shirt that mocked historical events that were the cause of great pain and suffering, and promulgated racist stereotypes that further marginalize a racial minority," College Board officials said in a statement on behalf of itself and the Educational Testing Service.

College Board officials said it is an annual tradition for teachers and professors who attend the AP Reading to create and sell themed T-shirts to their peers.

The director of Educational Testing Service's Human Resources department reportedly agreed that the shirt should be altered after Asian Americans and others pointed out that the shirt design was offensive. But she later deemed it "not offensive" and approved it for printing and distribution.

"It is entirely inappropriate that references to the AP Program were combined with language and images that make light of a deeply tumultuous period in Chinese history. When some teachers expressed their concerns, others hastily dismissed such perspectives, and proceeded to distribute the T-shirts regardless," College Board officials said.

College Board officials said the incident was a clear violation of the "high standards for respect and dignity that we require and [they] are deeply apologetic for the distribution of the T-shirt and for the toxic environment it created."