Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Niche is not a legitimate ranking system.

+1. Niche's rankings are about 75% subjective self reports. And include things like your opinions on cafeteria food and the sports teams. They are a satisfaction ranking. Not a ranking of academic excellence. This is not a survey that relies heavily on AP scores, SATs, college readiness, etc. Given what Niche measures, TJ could be ranked 1st or 100th. Look at the Niche methodology.

If a school or school system touts its Niche rating, it's a guarantee that it can't point to a legitimate ranking. As other posters have noted, it's like a third-tier Yelp for schools.

PP is talking about Asian academic achievement in general in response to obnoxious post about Asians being "overrepresented" at TJ. The point is that other groups should up their game to keep up.

The Sunday program, er, overrepresents Asians, annoying people who just try to damn hard to ensure that their children achieve academically and value their families' immigrant culture. Not sporting in America.

Why would it annoy people that your children are learning Cantonese? I see the connection to culture, but what is the connection between learning Cantonese and general academic achievement?

Simple, Hope teaches Mandarin, Rockville program teaches Cantonese. If kids build a solid foundation in the family's "home language" first, they generally do much better with Mandarin later on than if they never learned the former. We're taking a page from the Hong Kongese, Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, Singaporeans etc. who don't start with Mandarin at school if the extended family doesn't speak it as first dialect. More than two-thirds of Chinese immigrant families in the US speak Cantonese as their first dialect, and use traditional characters, not Mandarin/simplified characters.