Thursday,
July 03, 2008
Saving ITALIAN AP (Advanced Placement)
Language Test Becomes Priority to Italian American Groups
The
ANNOTICO Report
The
AP program measures high school students against the standards of college. The
program has emerged alongside International Baccalaureate and
Advanced
Placement courses are crucial to foreign-language departments, and has become
so entrenched in the nation's schools that the elimination of a test can
imperil an entire field of study.
Prominent
Italian American groups and Matilda Cuomo, wife of former
Italian American Groups Speak Up to Save AP
Language Test
By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 3, 2008; A01
For those who
teach Italian in
The prospect that
AP Italian might be eliminated has set off a reaction that might seem
surprising, considering that 2,000 students took the Italian AP exam this year.
Prominent Italian American groups and Matilda Cuomo, wife of former
"We cannot
have the Italian program eliminated. It is too important to us," said
Maria Wilmeth, co-director of the Italian Cultural
Society of Washington.
The episode
illustrates the sway of the AP program, which measures high school students
against the standards of college. The program has emerged alongside
International Baccalaureate and
Leaders of the
College Board decided in late March to eliminate four of the program's 37
courses, including AP Italian, saying the four were under-enrolled and losing
money. The last tests for French literature, Latin
literature and computer science are scheduled for May. The AP Italian course
might be saved if sufficient funds could be raised, said officials with the
College Board, which is based in
The announcement
has reverberated beyond the 12,000 students involved in annual AP testing in
the four courses, tiny numbers compared with the hundreds of thousands of
students tested each year in English literature, calculus and
High school
teachers, college professors and other proponents of the targeted courses fear
nothing less than the extinction of their academic pursuits. Advanced Placement
has become so entrenched in the nation's schools that the elimination of a test
can imperil an entire field of study.
"I have kids
that love Italian and would love to take it to that level, and it is an
intellectual level of work that they deserve," said Paola Scazzoli, a teacher at Wheaton
High School in Montgomery
County who wrote parts of the AP Italian exam. "Look, if you take away
the Italian AP now, you are breaking the program."
Advanced
Placement courses are crucial to foreign-language departments, which compete
for students with other subjects and with each other. For students, choosing a
language often boils down to what is available and looks good on a transcript.
Increasingly, many look for AP classes.
Latin teachers
fear the loss of the Latin literature course will extinguish interest in the
likes of Horace and Ovid, whose works are taught largely to prepare students
for the test. Latin and French teachers fear losing competitive footing to
Spanish, a discipline that boasts two popular AP courses.
The loudest
protests have come from the Italian-language teachers, who stand to be cut from
the AP program altogether. The other three courses -- French, Latin and
computer science -- will remain in the AP program, but with one test instead of
two. In each case, the course being eliminated is not as popular as the class
that is to remain.
Italian has never
commanded more than a fraction of the foreign-language market, though interest
in the language is rising. Italian consistently ranks with French as a foreign
tongue that appeals to many students. In
The Italian
government and prominent Italian American groups lobbied to create the Italian
AP exam and put up $500,000 to subsidize it. The governments of
"It is
something that is prestigious for us, but also for them," said Marco
Mancini, first counselor for consular, justice and home affairs at the Italian
Embassy.
The first AP
Italian tests were given in 2006. Participation topped 2,000 this year, but
proponents have struggled to build a pipeline of students sufficiently prepared
for the exam, which requires the equivalent of about five years' high school
study.
As they announced
cuts in April, College Board officials made clear their concern with the
Italian course was purely financial. In May, Ambassador Castellaneta
met with the College Board's president, Gaston Caperton.
In June, the two parties announced that a task force had been formed to raise
funds in hope to save the course.
Embassy officials
say they have not yet been told how much money will be needed; they expect to
find out later this month. The funds must be collected by October to save the
test beyond 2009.
"They made
very clear that they wished to sustain AP Italian," Mancini said.
"But they made very clear that they would need money to do this."
Protest has risen
in all four academic fields that stand to lose tests. Teachers say they were
left out of the decision-making process. They say the exams are being
eliminated too quickly for thousands of students across the country who had planned to take them in two to three years.
"There is more
anger than you can possibly imagine among secondary teachers," said Ronnie
Ancona, a professor of classics at
College Board
officials said they hope to save the AP Italian test. The board plans to
eliminate the other three but said it plans to refine and improve remaining
tests in those subjects.
"Very few
students were preparing to take the discontinued AP courses and exams, and in
each case those students still have one capstone AP exam in that discipline
available to them," Jen Topiel, College Board
spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail.
The retrenchment
affects a small but significant number of students at some of the region's most
prestigious high schools.
At Thomas
Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax
County, a selective
No one in either
school system took AP Italian this year, although embassy officials say a few
dozen students took the exam privately. But teachers say that an increase in
participation is just a matter of time.
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