For those who teach Italian in U.S. schools, the advent of an Advanced Placement course in Italian language and culture three years ago was an epochal event, securing a future for the subject alongside Spanish and French and staving off competition from fast-growing programs in Japanese and Chinese.

So the prospect that A.P. Italian might be eliminated has set off a reaction that might seem surprising, considering that 2,000 students took the Italian A.P. exam this year. Prominent Italian American groups and Matilda Cuomo, wife of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, have mobilized to save the course. Italian Ambassador Giovanni Castellaneta has also weighed in with the nonprofit organization that oversees the A.P. program.

“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 A.P. program, which measures high school students against the standards of college.

The program has emerged alongside International Baccalaureate and Cambridge as the top tier for college-bound juniors and seniors. Good scores on end-of-course exams can yield credit and advanced standing in college.

Leaders of the College Board decided in late March to eliminate four of the program’s 37 courses, including A.P. Italian, saying the four were underenrolled and losing money. The last tests for French literature, Latin literature and computer science are scheduled for May. The A.P. Italian course might be saved if sufficient funds could be raised, said officials with the College Board, which is based in New York.

‘Breaking the program’

The announcement has reverberated beyond the 12,000 students involved in annual A.P. testing in the four courses, tiny numbers compared with the hundreds of thousands of students tested each year in English literature, calculus and U.S. history.

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, Md., who wrote parts of the A.P. Italian exam. “Look, if you take away the Italian A.P. 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 A.P. 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 A.P. courses.

The loudest protests have come from the Italian-language teachers, who stand to be cut from the A.P. program altogether. The other three courses — French, Latin and computer science — will remain in the A.P. 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 U.S. schools, Italian is seen to lack the practicality of Spanish, the scholarly pedigree of Latin and the established tradition of French.

The Italian government and prominent Italian American groups lobbied to create the Italian A.P. exam and put up $500,000 to subsidize it. The governments of China and Japan, too, subsidized the recent creation of A.P. tests in those languages. Too few students take the $84 tests to yield a profit, but each of the new exams has raised the currency of the college preparatory organization while serving the interests of the foreign governments in promoting their language and culture.

“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.

Now what?

The first A.P. 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 A.P. Italian,” Mancini said. “But they made very clear that they would need money to do this.”

College Board officials said they hope to save the A.P. Italian test. The board plans to eliminate the other three but said it plans to refine and improve remaining tests in those subjects.