The College Board just announced that it’s going to stop offering AP Italian (as well as Latin literature, French literature and computer science AB). Via the Washington Post:
Washington area school officials said that a relatively small number of teachers in the region would be affected by the cuts; in Montomery last year, only five students took the AP Italian test. Students can earn college credits through AP tests.
Paola Scazzoli, an AP Italian teacher at Wheaton High School, helped to create the test. She expressed hope yesterday that someone would step forward to offer financial support to save the course. College Board officials said that of the four eliminated courses, only Italian might be offered beyond 2009 if a backer is found.
The officials “do not want to close it. It is just a question of funding,” she said.
At least there’s an off-chance it’ll be saved and, as far as I can tell, they’ll still be offering the SAT II Italian Subject Test. Another weird quirk is that they’re doing away with AP Latin Literature but keeping AP Latin: Vergil – somehow Vergil’s popularity eclipses that of all other Latin writers combined, I guess.
As much as I dislike the College Board for monopolizing the high school testing system, the AP courses do give ambitious students something to strive for. Unfortunately, eliminating the Italian AP will discourage bright, college-bound students from pursuing the language. Hopefully this won’t have too much of an adverse an effect on the number of schools that offer it
I always wondered about how schools decided which languages to teach. At my (very small) high school the only options were Spanish and French, so I figured it was directly related to how successful the country was at colonization.
