Important Change for the 2009-10 Academic Year
The AP Italian Language and Culture course and exam represent a level of rigor and quality in curriculum and assessment design of which educators and the College Board are tremendously proud. Students participating in the AP Italian course enter college with impressive levels of proficiency in Italian and generate strong positive feedback from professors at institutions across the country, from Harvard to UCLA. The Board of Trustees of the College Board approved a significant initial investment to support AP Italian's first three years. Unfortunately, the overall low levels of interest and participation among schools, teachers and students have made it necessary for the College Board to significantly exceed that investment just to sustain AP Italian up to now.

The College Board's investment of resources, 400 percent higher than originally committed, demonstrates our passion for this program, but only allows us to offer AP Italian through the 2008-09 academic year. Therefore, the May 2009 AP Italian Language and Culture Exam will be the final offering of this program unless additional funding is secured.

Between now and May 2009, our hope is that external partners will come forward to supplement the College Board's investment. If this happens, we will be happy to announce a three-year extension of AP Italian through May 2012. In that time, we hope that advocates of AP Italian will be able to raise awareness and participation among students to the level of other programs, such as AP German. External support, similar to that provided for AP Chinese and AP Japanese, would enable the College Board to fund the conversion of the AP Italian exam administration and scoring model to the Web-based model employed by those subject areas, and would also enable the College Board to perform the necessary maintenance and support of the program.

We will notify educators no later than May 1, 2009, if external support is forthcoming so that we can extend the AP Italian program into the three subsequent academic years (2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12), after which an assessment of teacher and student participation would need to occur.

Note: The College Board has announced that AP Computer Science AB, AP French Literature, and AP Latin Literature will be discontinued after the May 2009 exam administration, and partnerships will not be sought for extending those courses beyond that date.