Advanced Placement Italian exam to be suspended
The College Board says the test won't be offered after this spring but could be revived if sufficient money is found. A fund-raising effort by Italian Americans fell short.
It's arrivederci after all for Advanced Placement Italian.
Despite a spirited fundraising campaign by Italian Americans in Southern California and across the country, the effort to save the AP exam in Italian has failed, at least for now.
The language exam for high school students trying to win college credit will be suspended after this spring's testing because not enough money was pledged to subsidize it, College Board officials in New York said Wednesday. The exam was launched four years ago and is expected to attract only 2,200 test-takers this year, less than a quarter of the number needed to make it viable, they added.
The news disappointed Southern California teachers of Italian. They said many students will be discouraged from studying the language without the prestigious AP Italian class and the incentive for students to earn college credit by passing the exam.
"I'm very sad to hear that. We worked so hard to save it," said Ida Lanza, who teaches an AP Italian course at San Pedro High School, which serves a substantial Italian American community.
The nonprofit College Board, which offers 37 AP tests in various subjects, as well as the SAT, announced last spring that it would drop the Italian exam after 2009. Following protests by Italian Americans, the testing agency said it would reverse the decision if $1.5 million in outside money could be raised.
As a result, the Italian Language Foundation was formed and rounded up $650,000 in pledges from individuals, companies and philanthropies. However, much of that was contingent on the Italian government funding most of the rest, according to foundation president Margaret Cuomo, a radiologist and the daughter of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.
Italian government officials said they wanted to help but apparently did not grasp the situation's urgency and importance, said Cuomo, who personally lobbied Italian government officials in Rome. Cuomo said she was "deeply disappointed" in the Italian government, "as are many teachers and many students and parents."
However, Cuomo and Trevor Packer, the College Board's vice president for AP tests, held out the possibility that the test could be revived in 2011 if enough money were found. "It's not over yet," Cuomo said. "We will try to get it back."
