This column is written by High School English teacher Jerry Heverly.
Why are San Leandro Asian kids more successful students than other ethnic groups?
By Asian kids I mean, specifically, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Indian and Pakistani children, male and female.
By “more successful students” I mean they are more cooperative, more polite, more respectful, more likely to be readers (the main route to success in English classes), more mature, far less likely to be discipline problems.
Obviously not all Asian kids meet this description.
And I’m aware that many kids from other ethnic groups do meet these criteria.
But with other groups the percentage of more successful students is much lower.
Yet even in my classrooms the relatively small number of Asian students in my lower track classes almost invariably get A’s or B’s. Of my seven Asian students only one is below a B average for all classes collectively.
I’ve heard, as I’m sure you have, the standard answer to this question.
“It’s the parents,” I’m told. “In the Asian culture children are expected to be diligent and respectful.” Confucius did it.
It makes sense; since I have often heard Asian kids relate the pressure they get from their parents to do well in school.
The problem is that I hear the same thing from parents of other ethnic groups.
Often I’m asked to attend meetings meant to help struggling students. I’ve written in a previous column about these (generally fruitless) endeavors.
Those meetings have convinced me of one thing. The parents of those failing students care deeply about their kids. And they expend extraordinary energy trying to guide their children towards school success.
The difference is in the results, not in the methods.
I’ve done web searches and read several books on this topic and invariably they turn into discussions of parenting styles. I read the famous Wall Street Journal review of Tiger Mom.
I don’t buy the assumption that Asian parenting is fundamentally different from that of Latino, African-American, Pacific Island, White, or any other group at SLHS.
I called a parent of an African American student last night. Her daughter had misbehaved in class, earning a referral to the office. Her GPA is very low. I dreaded the call.
Yet, like 98% of these calls, her mom was 100% supportive and a thousand percent committed to changing her child’s behavior.
My experience tells me, though, that it is unlikely that things will substantially and (most importantly) enduringly improve.
As a ninth grade teacher I see very few epiphanies among my students of all racial groups. (I will say, though, that many of my fifteen year old’s mature remarkably during their junior and senior years.)
I’ve read that Asian parents have stricter rules for their children. From what information I get from my students there are lots of folks out there with stringent curfews and draconian punishments for slip-up’s. And I mean parents of every ethnicity.
Fewer divorces and broken homes? I can’t cite statistics on this but my sense is that a higher percentage of my Asian kids have both parents at home. But I’ve also noticed that many have parents who work so many hours that the children virtually raise themselves.
Biased teachers? Maybe we expect Asian kids to be smarter and thus our grades only reflect our prejudices? Maybe, but I strongly doubt it.
Work ethic? I have parents of every variety who slog through two or three jobs.
My point is that we tend to reason backwards. We see that Johnny with the pushy parents went to Harvard. We forget that Juan’s parents said the same things and wanted the same things for him, but somehow Juan didn’t get the memo.
I just don’t get it.
Read other columns from the Entirely Secondary archive. The tag line is inspired by education blogger Joe Bower who says that when his students do an experiment, learning is the priority. Getting the correct answer is entirely secondary.
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The community has a long tradition of White's only and being a less than welcoming home to others. You are right that you will be unsuccessful trying to talk to the teachers or to reason with the school board. They are the problem. It will not change until the folks who run the schools and teach in them speak the languages and live the cultures of their students. That is not likely to change any time soon. The best thing that can happen right now in Jerry's classroom is for Jerry to leave it and let the opportunity to teach English fall to someone who is representative of the majority of students, not some White Guy who is out of touch with what is wanted and needed. Fire Jerry Today!
And Michael, do you live in SL? Why? Do you hate yourself? You seem to have a serious problem or three.
I often say public education is the greatest social invention in history. I think Asian especially immigrant Asian parents realize this. China when it first began trade with the U.S. asked for payment in college text books. Also Asians in lower income levels are also able to avoid "food deficiency" while non Asians of similar incomes often go to bed hungry.
The study on socioeconomic status & achievement is a meta study I found here: http://rer.sagepub.com/content/75/3/417.short The one on Latinos (and it just studied Latino two and single parent households) is here: http://hjb.sagepub.com/content/24/4/430.short Here is a comparison of dual vs. single parent households & student achievement in 11 countries: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00681.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
Asian families foster this practice. Apparently the black students tend to work more solitarily. And of course, since this study was done on college students, one would have to extrapolate to draw the conclusion that it holds true for high school students. But I pose that it would.
Teachers are human too, they want to teach to students that want to learn unfortunately this isn't the case for the majority of students and lots if not most teacher long gave up.
5 year-old boys tend to do badly if forced to sit still for a long time. Recent research shows that Latinos tend to excel when the right dynamics are brought to bear that engage their family support networks. Women are poised to start taking over the sciences now that they are getting better mentorship. Here is a prayer for our society that we start funding the education of our children like the treasure they are rather than lamenting why static approaches fail many of our students.
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/12/11/study-shows-mexican-american-toddlers-lag-in-literacy-skills-excel-in-social-skills/ I submit that all of our students want to excel, they are just often blocked by obstacles that need wise approaches to get around them. Complaining that a static-common approach is not working for all our students is not that useful.
And one of the facts that Asian or Russian kids who came here with one English word and 100 dollars in pocket are more successful in school than some students who were born here and are way more rich
Whereas a voucher system could allow for parents to choose the right school for their (individual, unique) children.
Secular private schools in the East Bay cost anywhere from 15K to 30K a year (plus the obligatory fundraising, extra-curricular activities, etc.). The only schools that cost less are those supported by some religious organization. So yes, having vouchers would help /you/, David, to send your children to Assumption, where you want them to go (only that it wouldn't really help you as Assumption already can't accept all kids that apply). But it wouldn't help absolutely anyone else in the district.
And your assertion flies in the face of actual, real-life evidence as practiced in the rest of the country, and heck, in other countries.
With the increased availability of vouchers, you would see more schools. At $9,000/head, use your imagination. With 30 kids, parents could rent some of the vacant office space downtown and hire 3 university professors (at a higher wage than they get at UC-Berkeley) to teach kids in a "grade school"* aka "home school," or "only" hire 2 equivalently qualified people and have plenty of money left over for other activities/computers/etc. There is no reason a private, non-religious school "has to" charge $15k/year, even here. You would rapidly see "middle class" options if vouchers were available. Leah, so-called progressives like you (in conjunction with the taxpayer funded teachers' unions) have destroyed any hope for "change" that you claim to so dearly love, by clinging bitterly (to use your favorite president's phrase) to an outmoded, 19th century method of schooling, and the funding of it (for other kids, not your own).
Maybe the cost differential between private and public schools are not as significant in other states or countries, great for them, but it doesn't help us any.
Sure, for $8K per student you could set up the type of "school" you suggest. But would /you/ want to send your kid to that school? I know I wouldn't. Why would that be a better educational model than the one we have now? And Leah, the reason why nobody but David is talking about voucher is exactly because the economics don't work. What people are talking about, and are doing, is setting up charter schools right and left. Personally I think that's a much better model than the voucher system, as it's more intrinsically equalitarian - but there are problems with it, as we have seen by the too frequent revocations of charters.
No one sets up a school for $9k/year because: 1) the target audience are parents who can pay $9k/year. These parents can't afford $9k/year *ON TOP* of the $5, 6, 7k they're paying in property taxes. Therefore, their "choice" is the local public school. Which leads to: 2) schools targeting the "rich" parents and charging $15k/year. Why? Because they can. As for charter schools, that's what would end up happening. The equivalent of charter schools getting voucher money, except it would be a system with more freedom. As for "no facilities" whatsoever, have you *seen* many of the local Catholic grade schools that are pretty full? I have. They are typically a 1950's era box stuck on a parking lot. And yet, they're full, and also providing a better education than many of their "competing" public schools.
Now, I agree with you that it's possible for someone to open a for-profit private school offering something for $9K a year, but if that something is not a quality education, then why would it be a social good to have vouchers that pay for it?
Let's review: "One group still largely resists the trend: college graduates, who overwhelmingly marry before having children. That is turning family structure into a new class divide, with the economic and social rewards of marriage increasingly reserved for people with the most education. “Marriage has become a luxury good,” said Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania. The shift is affecting children’s lives. Researchers have consistently found that children born outside marriage face elevated risks of falling into poverty, failing in school or suffering emotional and behavioral problems. The forces rearranging the family are as diverse as globalization and the pill. Liberal analysts argue that shrinking paychecks have thinned the ranks of marriageable men, while conservatives often say that the sexual revolution reduced the incentive to wed and that safety net programs discourage marriage." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/us/for-women-under-30-most-births-occur-outside-marriage.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
the second article argues that it's important also to Hispanics. the third article argues that socioeconomic status is important. Perhaps 1 vs 2 parent households is less important than SES. As I wrote, if you believe SES matters, and all your articles do, single-parent led households in the USA have an astronomical poverty rate.
probably it is success ,nobody will say better