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What if we treated foreign language in America the way we treat sports. It is not unusual to see kids in high school spending two hours after school, every day, in football or basketball practice.

In Vermont, we have a particular interest in the rural poor. However, many colleges focus on the urban poor.

This month, the European Association for International Education adopted a charter that said: "National student loans and grants should always be portable. Students on grants that cover tuition and expenses while studying abroad should be provided with safeguards against arbitrary withdrawal of their funding."

"...offers a college preparatory program that focuses on a liberal arts program. The curriculum is designed to accelerate students into college courses at the University of Toledo, beginning with the freshman school year. Students take two years of English, up to three years of mathematics and science and two years of social studies at the high school level. All other courses, including electives and foreign language are taken at the University of Toledo. Students can earn up to 60 college credits during the four-year high school experience. College-level courses and required textbooks are provided at no cost to students. College courses qualify for dual credits, allowing them to be counted for high school and college credits."

(Right-click and open links in new tab.) Thinking about the Semester Online program that is just rolling out I wonder what we could do in Vermont with elements of this school in Toledo in combination with an online component. Vermont does have a Dual Enrollment program, but it is no where nearly as comprehensive as this. And, students still have to pay for a vast majority of their classes. It would seem that a high school would actually come out ahead by paying for college courses rather than for high school faculty to teach a less rigorous...and noncredit earning course.

Ranked 17th out of 3500 schools in Ohio... Even more significant given that the district it is in ranked 708th out of 937 districts.

"Ever since Finland, a nation of about 5.5 million that does not start formal education until age 7 and scorns homework and testing until well into the teenage years, scored at the top of a well-respected international test in 2001 in math, science and reading, it has been an object of fascination among American educators and policy makers."

"Critics say that Finland is an irrelevant laboratory for the United States. It has a tiny economy, a low poverty rate, a homogenous population - 5 percent are foreign-born -..." Perhaps irrelevant for the US as a whole, but what about for Vermont?

"Dr. Darling-Hammond said. 'Thirty years ago, Finland's education system was a mess. It was quite mediocre, very inequitable. It had a lot of features our system has: very top-down testing, extensive tracking, highly variable teachers, and they managed to reboot the whole system.' "