Asian kindergarten students more likely to display advanced math, science skills, new study finds

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why would anyone undertake such a study?

More evidence that the achievement gap starts in the home, not the school system.

This is probably the bigger issue if Asian's (and some others like us) supplement at home and put our kids in more academically geared preschools. Maybe we should start looking at the play based preschools that are not preparing kids for K.

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.

Achievement gap is a symptom of a huge problem. The problem is that the home life of an underperforming student is typically not conducive to academic achievement. Achievement gap has nothing to with Asian-Americans. That is not the problem of Asian-Americans. It is a problem that Asians did not create, did not contribute, and can not solve. I don't understand why Asian-Americans are targeted because others are failing? Can you explain to me the logic of that?

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.

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.

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.

DP who also had the only white kid in AOPS. Agree, it is a stereotype that all Asians grind at Math. But at the same time it is true that most math enrichment programs are heavily Asian around here! That said the point of AOPS is not that the kids there love math and eat it up like candy. It’s simply to give your kid extra math so they are better at it. And that absolutely works, whatever the level or interest of the kid.

[Anonymous]

Some of the low income immigrant communities have children involved in helping with family work/business from a young age, which actually helps develop math skills — even if it’s just pretending to help mom make change or helping dad measure something out. My own father, who was an engineer, was the child of immigrants and helped in his parents work basically as soon as he could speak and walk. There’s lots of fun ways to learn math as a child if you build it into their daily life (dividing up cookies, figuring out how long until dinner, how many eggs in the recipe, etc.).

My kid loved math and there was a really fun after school program that she did after K. Sadly, we couldn’t find enough interested families-even if our UMC neighborhood—to support even one group, so they didn’t offer it in future years and the whole program (a non profit founded by Stanford grads) collapsed a few years later. Music, dance, sports (which are all great) all filled up. There is definitely a social prejudice against math for most Americans.

I’d actually be curious in seeing how many generations it takes before Asian-Americans are just as bad as the rest of us.

[Anonymous]

The Chinese- and Indian-ancestry kids who are in America predominately come from families who could, for cultural, biological, and genetic reasons, study hard and perform well on tests. In many cases these traits were selected for over millennia. America is fortunate to have these smart and hard-working families and kids. Hopefully their smarts and grit doesn’t get beat out of them by the system.

It’s insane that we can’t say these Asian kids perform better in part because they are just biologically smarter than the average non-Asian American kid. Academic achievement is at least 50% genetic in early childhood, and even more so as kids get older.

[Anonymous]

Studies keep looking earlier and earlier as an attempt to find out which teachers are responsible for the achievement gap, because we are uncomfortable with the truth: some people, some families, some cultures have more successful ways of raising their children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think everyone knows that achievement starts in the home. Is this even up for debate?

Some of this is cultural. One of the other moms (a recent immigrant) in my kid's K classroom looked aghast when I said I'd taught my kid to read. She said no way- isn't that what school is for? She didn't want to mess up the instruction her kid would receive in K.

All of it is cultural.

[Anonymous]

I sent my son to Kumon at 4. He was in a play based preschool which we loved but I also wanted him to be prepared for K. So I taught him reading with 100 Easy Lessons and for math he did Kumon starting one year before K so he was 4 years and 8 months old.

I laughed when the Kumon director told me he was behind since a lot if families start at 3. We were the only Latino preschool aged family. Almost all of the other preschool aged students were Asian and a couple seemed Eastern European. The director handed us 5 pages of homework but when I saw she gave the Asian families 10 pages per day I said I wanted the same amount (you pay the same price regardless of how many pages you get). A year later my son was doing great in math and was good in word problems I think from all the creative play at his preschool. Yet when he started K he wasn’t put into the highest math group and wasn’t given the extra math enrichment challenge homework.. An Asian parent asked me why my son wasn’t with all the other Kumon kids in that group because she knew he was on the same level as her kid (Kumon letters go by letters so you can easily tell what level kids are at). I went to speak to the teacher and she said he met the k math standards but didn’t think to keep testing him. She just assumed he wasn’t advanced. So she worked with him one in one the next day for a few minutes then called and said she had been mistaken and of course he should be in the highest group. And wasn’t it so great he was so high in math. And what a surprise it was. It was so infuriating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Chinese- and Indian-ancestry kids who are in America predominately come from families who could, for cultural, biological, and genetic reasons, study hard and perform well on tests. In many cases these traits were selected for over millennia. America is fortunate to have these smart and hard-working families and kids. Hopefully their smarts and grit doesn’t get beat out of them by the system.

It’s insane that we can’t say these Asian kids perform better in part because they are just biologically smarter than the average non-Asian American kid. Academic achievement is at least 50% genetic in early childhood, and even more so as kids get older.

It may be cultural but it’s not genetic. Academics are largely about inputs and dose-dependent. Any kid send to AOPS for a year will outperform peers and see big personal increases in scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Studies keep looking earlier and earlier as an attempt to find out which teachers are responsible for the achievement gap, because we are uncomfortable with the truth: some people, some families, some cultures have more successful ways of raising their children.

depends on the definition of “success.” I know tiger kids of different races and there can be significant emotional/mental health issues involved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I sent my son to Kumon at 4. He was in a play based preschool which we loved but I also wanted him to be prepared for K. So I taught him reading with 100 Easy Lessons and for math he did Kumon starting one year before K so he was 4 years and 8 months old.

I laughed when the Kumon director told me he was behind since a lot if families start at 3. We were the only Latino preschool aged family. Almost all of the other preschool aged students were Asian and a couple seemed Eastern European. The director handed us 5 pages of homework but when I saw she gave the Asian families 10 pages per day I said I wanted the same amount (you pay the same price regardless of how many pages you get). A year later my son was doing great in math and was good in word problems I think from all the creative play at his preschool. Yet when he started K he wasn’t put into the highest math group and wasn’t given the extra math enrichment challenge homework.. An Asian parent asked me why my son wasn’t with all the other Kumon kids in that group because she knew he was on the same level as her kid (Kumon letters go by letters so you can easily tell what level kids are at). I went to speak to the teacher and she said he met the k math standards but didn’t think to keep testing him. She just assumed he wasn’t advanced. So she worked with him one in one the next day for a few minutes then called and said she had been mistaken and of course he should be in the highest group. And wasn’t it so great he was so high in math. And what a surprise it was. It was so infuriating.

see the moms talking is a big part of it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Studies keep looking earlier and earlier as an attempt to find out which teachers are responsible for the achievement gap, because we are uncomfortable with the truth: some people, some families, some cultures have more successful ways of raising their children.

depends on the definition of “success.” I know tiger kids of different races and there can be significant emotional/mental health issues involved.

They need to toughen up and get over it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Chinese- and Indian-ancestry kids who are in America predominately come from families who could, for cultural, biological, and genetic reasons, study hard and perform well on tests. In many cases these traits were selected for over millennia. America is fortunate to have these smart and hard-working families and kids. Hopefully their smarts and grit doesn’t get beat out of them by the system.

It’s insane that we can’t say these Asian kids perform better in part because they are just biologically smarter than the average non-Asian American kid. Academic achievement is at least 50% genetic in early childhood, and even more so as kids get older.

It may be cultural but it’s not genetic. Academics are largely about inputs and dose-dependent. Any kid send to AOPS for a year will outperform peers and see big personal increases in scores.

This is probably the dumbest and least evidence-based claim I have ever heard. Intelligence is definitely mostly hereditary. Go read some articles. Google scholar is your friend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think everyone knows that achievement starts in the home. Is this even up for debate?

Some of this is cultural. One of the other moms (a recent immigrant) in my kid's K classroom looked aghast when I said I'd taught my kid to read. She said no way- isn't that what school is for? She didn't want to mess up the instruction her kid would receive in K.

I don't know any Asian immigrant who would be aghast at teaching your kids to read at home.

+1. Wth is PP talking about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think everyone knows that achievement starts in the home. Is this even up for debate?

Some of this is cultural. One of the other moms (a recent immigrant) in my kid's K classroom looked aghast when I said I'd taught my kid to read. She said no way- isn't that what school is for? She didn't want to mess up the instruction her kid would receive in K.

I don't know any Asian immigrant who would be aghast at teaching your kids to read at home.

+1. Wth is PP talking about?

PP here. I stated this poorly. The immigrant was a Hispanic immigrant, but I've seen this attitude with both AA and Hispanics. They believe that school should teach them everything they need to know. My point was that Asians don't believe this and actively teach and read to their kids outside of school.

Achievement starts in the home. Schools teach a bare minimum these days and the minimum drops every year. You should see how many 2nd graders still can't read, when this should have been a requirement to start first grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why would anyone undertake such a study?

More evidence that the achievement gap starts in the home, not the school system.

This is probably the bigger issue if Asian's (and some others like us) supplement at home and put our kids in more academically geared preschools. Maybe we should start looking at the play based preschools that are not preparing kids for K.

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.

Achievement gap is a symptom of a huge problem. The problem is that the home life of an underperforming student is typically not conducive to academic achievement. Achievement gap has nothing to with Asian-Americans. That is not the problem of Asian-Americans. It is a problem that Asians did not create, did not contribute, and can not solve. I don't understand why Asian-Americans are targeted because others are failing? Can you explain to me the logic of that?

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.

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.

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.

DP who also had the only white kid in AOPS. Agree, it is a stereotype that all Asians grind at Math. But at the same time it is true that most math enrichment programs are heavily Asian around here! That said the point of AOPS is not that the kids there love math and eat it up like candy. It’s simply to give your kid extra math so they are better at it. And that absolutely works, whatever the level or interest of the kid.

WTH is AOPS?

-Asian American whose kid scored 800 on math and 5 on AP Calc and AP lit

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why would anyone undertake such a study?

More evidence that the achievement gap starts in the home, not the school system.

This is probably the bigger issue if Asian's (and some others like us) supplement at home and put our kids in more academically geared preschools. Maybe we should start looking at the play based preschools that are not preparing kids for K.

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.

Achievement gap is a symptom of a huge problem. The problem is that the home life of an underperforming student is typically not conducive to academic achievement. Achievement gap has nothing to with Asian-Americans. That is not the problem of Asian-Americans. It is a problem that Asians did not create, did not contribute, and can not solve. I don't understand why Asian-Americans are targeted because others are failing? Can you explain to me the logic of that?

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.

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.

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.

DP who also had the only white kid in AOPS. Agree, it is a stereotype that all Asians grind at Math. But at the same time it is true that most math enrichment programs are heavily Asian around here! That said the point of AOPS is not that the kids there love math and eat it up like candy. It’s simply to give your kid extra math so they are better at it. And that absolutely works, whatever the level or interest of the kid.

WTH is AOPS?

-Asian American whose kid scored 800 on math and 5 on AP Calc and AP lit

Art of Problem Solving

-Another Asian American whose kid scored 800 on math, reading and writing and 5 on all AP exams taken.