Why are we doing all this?

With the numerous challenges, opportunities and tasks that populate our days and weeks it can become hard to remember our mission. Often at my speeches to policy and education leaders I give out a slew of compelling facts on the need for many, many more students to learn a world language. Most of you probably know these stats, but:

*Only 44 percent of US High School students study any foreign language
*Less than 25% of US elementary schools offer world language courses

YET:

*Numerous studies suggest that learning a second language improves other cognitive and learning outcomes
*Businesses report significant challenges and loss of revenue due to the shortage of workers with language and cultural competency skills
*The federal government spends billions of dollars each year to teach adults, particularly in the military and foreign services, a second language

Clearly, our economic vitality and the quality of our public education system are dependent on our ability to cost-effectively teach more students world languages and cultural awareness. And all of us believe that the pedagogy and instructional design of our products -- with the critical input and oversight of our academic colleagues at Middlebury College -- represents the best quality available in the on-line learning market.

It is important to keep this in mind and to put our challenges, in particular, in to this context. Why do we need to work so hard to insure that our products are easy for teachers, students and parents to use? Because the biggest challenge we face is to get students who are currently not getting ANY world language learning to be able to access our courses. The reasons that students aren't currently getting this learning opportunity are numerous: resource constraints, lack of confidence (their own or the adults surrounding them) in their ability to be successful, reduced state and local education budgets, reticence or fear of utilizing complicated technology.

I try to make sure that every business decision I make is framed in the context of "How will this result in more US students accessing high quality world language instruction?" and I hope that is a constant motivator for all of us.

Course portability? How our blended tools work? Where our summer programs are offered? Pricing to districts? The decisions we make on these and many other issues are so critical to achieving our mission. We have extraordinary resources and courses -- and I know that staying focused on our mission will result in great success.