What are the benefits and/or risks of receiving high school credit for Spanish?

Spanish will count towards the elective credits required to graduate from West Des Moines. It will also allow colleges to see that students have taken the course during high school, along with the grade received. Although West Des Moines does NOT require world language for high school graduation, many colleges require world language as part of their acceptance criteria. The grade received for Spanish will factor into the high school GPA, which may be used when students apply for college scholarships and/or acceptance into college. A poor grade in 8th grade Spanish would mean that a student is beginning high school with a lower GPA than students who did not take Spanish unless the student chooses the pass/no pass option from above.