After being suspended last year, the AP Italian Language and Culture course and exam are returning next fall, the College Board announced yesterday. The program’s reinstatement came as a result of an intensive fundraising campaign led by the Italian Embassy in Washington, according to a press release from the College Board.
The first exam will be administered in May 2012.
The suspension of the Italian Advanced Placement course and exam was instituted because student participation failed to meet projections and the costs to maintain the program became “unmanageable,” the College Board said. But the Italian Embassy rallied to reverse the situation, raising money from the Italian government, Italian-American organizations, individual donors, and Italian companies,
“Promoting Italian language is a high priority for our foreign policy,” Vincenzo Scotti, Italy’s undersecretary of state for foreign affairs, said at a ceremony yesterday announcing the news, according to the release. “The Italian government has strongly supported the reinstatement of Italian in the AP program, and I am here tonight to show our great appreciation and gratitude to those whose contributions made it possible.”
The College Board only began offering the AP Italian program in September 2005. I came across a Wall Street Journal blog that noted that one of the advocates working to restore Italian AP was the sister of Gov.-elect Andrew Cuomo of New York. Margaret Cuomo heads up the Italian Language Foundation. That organization’s primary mission since launching has been to reinstate the AP program in Italian.