Press Releases

AP Italian Update

06/12/08

The following was sent in an email to teachers of AP Italian Language and Culture on June 12, 2008.

Subject:  AP Italian Update

On May 21, the Italian Ambassador to the United States, Giovanni Castellaneta, met in New York with College Board President Gaston Caperton to discuss possible solutions to the challenges faced by the Advanced Placement Program® (AP®) course and exam in Italian Language and Culture. The meeting concluded with a call for the creation of a task force dedicated to raising the funds needed to sustain the AP course and exam in Italian beyond the 2008-09 academic year. This fundraising effort is recognized by Gaston Caperton as an important undertaking, one that the College Board hopes will be successful so that AP Italian can continue for decades and generations to come. The College Board greatly values the AP Italian program, as demonstrated through the significant financial investments the not-for-profit organization has already made in the program during the past five years, and believes that providing an AP program in Italian is one of the most important means of expanding studies of Italian language and culture. 

As context: In April, the College Board announced it had exceeded the financial resources originally committed to develop and operate the AP Italian Language and Culture program. As a result, AP Italian will have to be discontinued after 2008-09 unless external funding can be secured to supplement the original investment. Following the April 2008 announcement, representatives of the College Board have had meetings and conversations with several highly regarded and committed proponents of Italian language education. Such meetings illustrate the ongoing effort by several educational and philanthropic organizations, the Italian government, as well as the College Board itself, to preserve and reinforce the AP Italian Language and Culture program.

Among the individuals and bodies that have expressed a serious commitment to the program are Matilda Raffa Cuomo, former First Lady of New York State and chair of the Committee to Establish the AP Program in Italian; Margaret I. Cuomo, M.D., a member of the Committee to Establish the AP Program in Italian and chair of Lago del Bosco, the Italian Language Village; the Columbus Citizens Foundation of New York; the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) of Washington, D.C.; the Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA) of Washington, D.C.; UNICO of Fairfield, New Jersey; and the American Association of Teachers of Italian (AATI). These entities have supported Italian language education for many years and advocated for the establishment of the AP Italian Language and Culture program. In fact, the initial development of AP Italian was supported by grants from the Italian government and Italian-American organizations.

In fall 2008, schools will begin to prepare course registration materials for the 2009-10 academic year. If the initial stage of fundraising has proven successful by that point, the College Board will be able to inform schools that they can include AP Italian as a course option within the 2009-10 course registration materials they are preparing. The task force will then seek to raise the remaining funds by May 1, 2009, so that the AP Italian program can be sustained without further possibility of discontinuation.

In summary: Educators can expect an update from the College Board by October 2008 announcing whether sufficient funds have been raised to enable AP Italian to be offered during the 2009-10 academic year. We hope that there will be good news to share this fall, and, in light of that hope, encourage teachers and students of AP Italian Language and Culture to begin the 2008-09 academic year with renewed vigor and determination.

The College Board