Caperton visited two schools in Delhi, India.

In late March, Gaston Caperton was a featured speaker and participant at the Asia Society's conference, New Skills for a Global Innovation Society: Asia Pacific Leaders Forum on Secondary Education, in New Delhi, India. The forum brought together leaders and innovators from the United States, South Korea, China, Japan, Singapore and Australia, as well as representatives from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development and World Bank, to share experiences and lessons that could inform secondary school reform and expansion in India. This is a great challenge for India, which holds 22 percent of the world's population and expects, by 2015, to see the number of Indian teenagers reach 550 million.

Caperton spoke about strategies for expanding access to secondary education and drew on the experiences of the College Board and its members. What particularly resonated with his audience was Caperton’s assertion that equity and excellence are equally important and that one without the other is meaningless. This was demonstrated when participants visited two radically different schools in Delhi that exemplify both equity and excellence.

The first, Katha Khazana, serves students from the high-poverty neighborhoods and focuses on providing high-quality education in a setting that is a calm oasis compared to the streets that are these students' homes. Students worked in collaborative groups, creating Web sites, painting and learning skills that will some day help them get jobs. The school is funded through charitable contributions. The second school, Delhi Public School R.K. Puram, is one of the most prestigious private schools in India. It serves nearly 10,000 students on three campuses. Many graduates of this school attend Ivy League universities in the United States and prestigious colleges in the United Kingdom and Singapore. The school admits many students on scholarship and opens its campuses to neighborhood children for after-school programs.

India is faced with many challenges, one of the most crucial being the creation of enough schools to serve this fast-growing population. India does not need schools that are just buildings where students go for several hours a day. It needs places where students see a bright future and are given the tools to fulfill their dreams.

His Excellency Zhou Wenzhong, China’s ambassador to the United States, with Jim Montoya of the College Board

More than 700 teachers, administrators and elected officials gathered at the Washington (D.C.) Renaissance Hotel April 17-19 for the first National Chinese Language Conference in the United States. Participants from 44 U.S. states, China, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong SAR, Singapore, the U.K.
and Israel were there to
plot strategies to promote Chinese language proficiency and literacy development.

More U.S. students than ever before are eager to learn Chinese, but the number of available classes is very limited. Supporters of this effort understand that to sustain this momentum, the availability of classes must increase while maintaining the high quality of the program. This will require a strong and strategically designed national infrastructure to establish new programs with strong roots and to support existing high-quality Chinese language programs, like the College Board’s own AP® Chinese Language and Culture program, which has helped put Chinese on an equal footing with more commonly taught languages, such as French, German and Spanish. “AP Chinese has seen rapid growth and is expected to increase 50 percent by May to approximately 5,000 exams,” said Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board.

A notable report, “Chinese in 2008: An Expanding Field,” was released at the conclusion of the conference and states that “today’s economic competitiveness and national security challenges mandate a larger pool of highly proficient speakers of a wider range of world languages, including Chinese.” It also affirms significant progress since a 2005 report by Asia Society called for efforts to expand the number of programs. Though a comprehensive survey of student enrollment is not available, data collected for the new report indicates that the number of Chinese programs in the United States has grown by almost 200 percent since tallies were last taken in 2004. Additionally, between 2005 and 2006, the number of students at the higher education level who were learning Chinese jumped by 52 percent.

The conference was organized by the College Board and Asia Society, with support from a number of professional language organizations, federal agencies and Hanban, the Chinese agency that promotes international awareness of Chinese language and culture. Plenary sessions included such topics as “Designing and Implementing Study Abroad Language Programs for Teens,” “Enriching Chinese Programs with Educator and School Connections” and “Infusing Chinese Culture into the Curriculum.” Keynote speakers — who  included Rush Holt, U.S. Representative (D-N.J.); Madam Xu Lin, director-general of Hanban; E. Gordon Gee, president, The Ohio State University; and His Excellency Zhou Wenzhong, ambassador of China — offered various perspectives on the importance of promoting a strong understanding and building a shared future among Asians and Americans.

Other highlights included a tour of Washington-area schools that offer Chinese language programs. This tour offered participants the opportunity to observe classes and meet the instructors who have pioneered these programs at their schools. An evening reception, sponsored by the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United States, featured exhibits from Cengage Learning–Asia, IQChinese and Youth for
Understanding USA.

L-R:  Suhayr Al Amri of Yemen, Carol Blythe
of the College Board, and Salim Al Badi of
Oman, tour cultural sites in Cairo, Egypt,
as part of the conference.

A group of EducationUSA advisers in the U.S. Department of State network, as well as representatives of 14 U.S. universities and colleges, participated in the triennial Regional Educational Advising Conference for the Middle East/North Africa and Persian Gulf regions held in Cairo, Egypt, earlier this month. Sessions included presentations from regional governmental officials on country trends, U.S. consular updates and professional development for EducationUSA advisers. Carol Blythe, interim director of the College Board International Education Office in Washington, D.C., offered a program on testing and college readiness. Students in the Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Gulf remain keenly interested in study opportunities in the United States, but they also consider options at some of the newly established U.S. branch campuses in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Institutions in Europe, East Asia and Australia are actively recruiting overseas applicants as well. Saudi Arabia, for example, rose to 12th among countries that send students to the United States, according to “Open Doors 2007,” as the Saudi government has greatly increased the number of official scholarship grants for
American programs.

Mary Ellen Ackerman, College Board consultant, presents a session on English instruction at the EARCOS Teachers’s Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools (EARCOS) and the Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools (NESA) hosted their annual educators’ conferences in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 26–29, and in Bangkok, Thailand, on April 5-7, respectively. The events brought together more than 2,000 teachers, counselors and other school representatives from international schools to discuss and reflect on educational practices. 

The College Board participates in these annual conferences as a resource, delivering presentations and sponsoring exhibits that provide the latest information about College Board programs and their implementation in schools. Through an initiative sponsored by the Office of Overseas Schools of the U.S. Department of State, and in collaboration with EARCOS and NESA, the College Board also offered AP® professional development for teachers at both events. This year workshops included AP Biology, AP English Language and Literature and AP Statistics at the EARCOS Teachers’ Conference and AP Physics and AP World History at the NESA Educators’ Conference. Participants representing schools in 15 countries attended the AP workshops, including schools such as the American International School – Chennai in India; the American School in Japan; the American International School of Guangzhou in China; the International School of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia; the  International School Yangon in Myanmar; Kaohsiung American School in Taiwan; Jakarta International School in Indonesia; Ruamrudee International School in Bangkok, Thailand; and Saudi Aramco's Training and Career Development Organization in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Most members schools of EARCOS and NESA participate in one or more College Board programs.

AP® World
History Workshop
World History
Association Conference
London, England
June 26, 2008
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AP® Summer Institute in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
St. Clement’s School
June 30–July 4, 2008
Scheduled Sessions: Various
Read More


AP®  Summer Institute in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada St. Michaels
University School
July 7–11, 2008
Scheduled Sessions: Various
Read more


AP® International
Summer Institute in
Honolulu, Hawaii
Kamehameha Schools
July 21–25, 2008
Scheduled Sessions: Various
Read more


AP® Summer Institute
in Seoul, South Korea
Yongsan
International School
July 28 – Aug. 1, 2008
Scheduled Sessions: Calculus, Economics, English Language and Literature, Science,
Social Science
Read more

More AP
Summer Institutes


The 9th Annual
Summer Institute for
International Admissions
for international school counselors
Washington, D.C.
June 16-20, 2008
New Counselor Workshop:
June 15-16

College Fair: June 18
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