Press Releases

AP® Chinese Program to Receive $300,000 from Taiwan Ministry of Education

05/25/05

NEW YORK—The Taiwan Ministry of Education will contribute $300,000 to the College Board's Advanced Placement Program® (AP®) to assist the expansion of Chinese language studies in U.S. secondary schools. This investment will support the creation of Pre-AP® and AP professional development workshops, providing middle school and high school teachers with access to materials and resources that will enable them to prepare more students for the challenges of the college-level AP Chinese Language and Culture course, which will launch in U.S. schools in fall 2006.

"American teachers across the country will benefit from the generous financial support given by the Taiwan Ministry of Education," said Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board. "We're grateful for this donation and their commitment to fostering the development of this program which, in turn, will better prepare our students for this interconnected global economy."

Chinese is spoken by the nearly 23 million inhabitants of Taiwan, the 1.4 billion people of China, and is the predominant language of 31 million Chinese people living overseas.

The Taiwan Ministry of Education joins the Freeman Foundation and the Starr Foundation in their support of the AP Chinese Program. The College Board's primary partner in the development of the AP Chinese course and exam, China's National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, partnered with the College Board in December of 2003, and since that time the AP Chinese course outline and exam specifications have been developed by the AP Chinese Task Force, composed of outstanding educators in the field as identified by the College Board, with input from professional associations from throughout the Chinese language teaching communities. AP Chinese classes will be offered beginning in the fall of 2006.

The College Board's Advanced Placement Program allows students to pursue college-level studies while they are still in high school. Students of different interests and backgrounds can choose from among 34 courses and exams in 19 subject areas to demonstrate their knowledge of rigorous academic curricula. Based on their performance on AP Examinations, students can earn college credit, advanced placement, or both. For more on the College Board's AP Program, please visit www.collegeboard.com/appress.

For further press inquiries, contact the College Board Public Affairs Department at (212) 713-8052.