Switching from Spanish to Mandarin for sophomore year of high school

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This NYT piece by Nicholas Kristoff nicely sums up the issue. Kristoff is married to a Chinese-American woman.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/opinion/30kristof.html

Moreover, Spanish is easy enough that kids really can emerge from high school with a very useful command of the language that they will retain for life, while Mandarin takes about four times as long to make the same progress.