Asian kindergarten students more likely to display advanced math, science skills, new study finds
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
Asians are often highly represented in magnet schools and academic competitions. There are people who want representation, and Asians make it harder to achieve it. Hence the hostility. It's in-group/out-group behavior. Some of it's also cultural. For whatever reason, there's a disdain for nerds and strivers in this country, and many Asians fit that description. Sports is okay. Not academics. But you're right. It's not really a problem Asians created. |
Oh you guys! Always cutting your nose to spite your face, no? Make everything and everyone dumber. It will not prevent Asian-American parents from teaching their kids at home. Asian-Americans are educated parents. They will at least pass on their own skills and knowledge to their children.
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
Many immigrants were highly educated in their home countries; they just start from scratch here and hence poor. Or their wealth is under the table: they get money from home country assets and/or relatives and being low income on paper helps them get preferential treatment. Not saying everyone is like that but there’s pretend poverty too. |
Anonymous
Shhhhhh. DCUM doesn’t want to hear that. It’s far easier to blame all their kids’ problems on schools and those evil, evil teachers. |
Anonymous
Another reason why their focus on the gap is a fools errand and won't serve to help anyone. They need to meet kids where they are and ensure that every child gets attention. In early ES because my child was not below grade level, I was responsible for teaching them reading in math and at school they were ignored. |
Anonymous
|
I m Asian and read to my kid at home.
Mostly reading are in our mother tongue . If it’s English book, I even explain to DS in my native language. He really start English when he s in kindergarten. He s now in grade 4 with advanced score in English. ( and math, of course) Not sure what actually helps. We didn’t t try to have him read English books, but we did a lot of multi language lessens ( learn Chinese , learn My native language) |
Anonymous
No one is ignoring NYC. As another poster pointed out, the number of kids in poverty attending the magnet schools is over exaggerated in the publics mind, those schools are still majority MC/UMC class kids. There is a higher percentage of kids who live in poverty then at TJ but it is not as if those schools are filled with kids who live in Poverty. It is laudable and I am thrilled to see it but it is not the massive number people want you to believe. Should it be ignored? No but it does not cause the high level of correlation between academic success and SES to drop significantly. Nor does the number of poor kids who are bright and ahead and sent to the great private schools in NYC on scholarships. It is not hard to point to those success stories, we highlight them as examples and, in the case of the private schools, to give the appearance that we are doing something positive. But they are still the exception to the rule. The education gap starts at home and falls on the shoulders of the examples that the parents provide. Families who have the extra time and money are in a better place and, are more likely, to read tot heir kids, take their kids to museums, play games that use math with their kids, and find ways to start teaching their kids as babies. They are in a better place to enrich and supplement as their kids get older. The kids eat better food and get more exercise, which helps with brain functioning and learning. None of this is new information. |
Anonymous
Many Asian parents cannot read to their kids in English and most are MC (not high SES) or small business owners working 80 hours per week so not really able to take their children to museums etc. |
Anonymous
This is a big factor. (Also the general anti-intellectualism in this country.) For example, my child has been taking classes for the past few years at AOPS. At pick-up time, the students who stream out of the building are 95% of East Asian and South Asian heritage. It’s a priority extracurricular for those families. |
Anonymous
| The answer is universal pre-k, late school closing and year round school. Any gap in the school schedule is an opportunity for parents to widen the socio - economic and racial gap for their own kids by supplementing privately. There shouldn’t be that gap in the system: |
Anonymous
It's not what you read to your kid, but just that you are interacting with them at a level beyond feeding and clothing. Studies have shown that the more verbal interaction you have with your child (not the yelling kind), the better they do in school. We read to our kids (in English because my mother's native language is more foreign to me) from a young age, since they were babies. Obviously, they had no clue what we were reading, but it was the verbal interaction, pointing to the pictures, that increased their vocabulary. My kids were reading well above grade level by the time they hit Ker. One was reading chapter books by aged 4. DC loved books. The library was one of their favorite places. We have spent a lot of time at libraries and used book stores. I believe it is a combination of nurture and nature. I am Asian American; my parents never read to me. They were poor immigrants from a family of farmers with very little education. I do recall that I was an advanced reader, though. |
Anonymous
Asians are not highly represented in magnet schools and academic competitions. Academically high achieving kids are highly represented in magnet schools. A number of these kids happen to be Asian-Americans No school is taking in a low achieving Asian-American. Heck, these schools are not even taking in many, many, many extremely intelligent high achieving Asian-Americans because of their "quota" systems. No one worries about Asian-American talent being wasted. The people who want representation in such programs need to simply become academically competitive. If they believe that their kids were also born with the same level of intelligence and talent, then what the hell did they do to their kids that they lost these gifts as they became older? Asian American success is the success of a hard working community that prioritizes education and where the family unit puts the future of the child above all else. There is no easy formula for it. These parents and children work their butts off with a lot of discipline. No secret sauce to it. You cannot have a culture of disdain for academic achievement (calling them "nerds" as you did) and then wonder why the other kids do not want to study and why they are at the bottom of the heap. These failing children are the responsibility of their parents. It is not as if Asian-Americans are fostering these children. OMG, you all cannot have it both ways. |
Anonymous
+1 In lower performing schools, this is what is needed. You need more time with those kids. I believe there are two MCPS ES with high FARMS rate where they are experimenting with a lengthened school calendar. Not sure how long this has been happening. Will be interesting to see the outcome. |
Anonymous
they tried the longer schedule in DC and it didn’t work. I think until we realize the point is to make kids grind, longer days/years will not help. classroom discipline is also a huge issue. we need to have a much shorter fuse for sending disruptive kids to alternative placements. or if not, more “gifted” programs to airlift the kids on/above grade level out of the bad schools. |
Anonymous
I challenge you to take a kid who does not have the brain power and interest in Math to sit and do AOPS. My Asian-American STEM magnet kid has been a straight A student who scored a 1600 in SAT. 5 in AP Calc BC in 10th grade etc. He was never able to sit and do Kumon or AOPS etc because it was not his cup of tea. He is capable in Math but he does not like Math more than anything else. For the 95% of Asians doing AOPS, it is something to do with the fact that it is a self-selecting crowd. A whole lot more Asian-Americans do not do AOPS. However, the fact that they are swimmers, tennis player, musicians, golfers, painters, debaters, martial artists ...all of these things are deliberately disregarded. The problem for most people is mainly that Asian-Americans take each challenge and overcome it. A decade ago, Asian-Americans were good in Math but lagging behind in English. Now they excel in ELA and FL as well. By having a civil war against Asian-Americans in academics, USA is harming itself. It is not as if other countries will also start NOT educating their children in solidarity with underperformers in USA. |