Opening the conversation on achievement gap

Carlos Garcia, second from right, is president of the Asia Club at Lincoln High School. He is with his Cabinet members during a lunch-hour meeting.

Writing about anything dealing with race, ethnicity or cultural differences is like a big Rorshach test. Everyone sees something different. I got a lot of e-mails about the story about ethnic achievement gaps, and most said they thought it was good that it ran in The Times.

Some e-mailers said the story should have delved into genetics and IQ. A few questioned why I would write such a story, saying it reinforced stereotypes.

But most e-mailers were thoughtful, even if they wondered why I didn’t delve into other issues. One wrote that Asians “outperform the rest of us” not just because of expectations, but because of their “willingness and ability to delay gratification.”

That issue came up during my reporting, but I had limited space for the story. Most of the time, it was Latino parents who brought it up.

Antonia Hernandez, 46, said that from when her children were very young, she noticed that the Asian children seemed to wear less expensive clothing than the Latino children.

“I see the Chinese children with cheap tennis shoes, even Payless, and our kids, they want the best sneakers,” Hernandez said. “They say, ‘How am I going to wear those cheap shoes?’ It’s different priorities.”

I met Hernandez at a meeting at Lincoln High for the parents of students failing algebra, a graduation requirement. She listened nervously as math teachers spoke, worried about her 14-year-old son, Gabriel. She told me she tried to stress to him the importance of education, but that he just wanted to be done with school so he could work.

But Hernandez said it wasn’t easy. Her own father had pulled her from school back in her central Mexican town just after the second grade. She had dreamed of becoming a chef and owning a restaurant. Her father wanted her to work.

“I missed a lot. If he let me go to school, I wouldn’t have married so young,” she said sadly. “When I was little, I imagined so many things. I’d have a nice job, a big house for my parents. I would have liked to have gone to school longer, but I didn’t get that opportunity.”

One Chinese American Lincoln High alumna said she liked the story, but felt I did not give enough credit to the Asian students’ “personal drive/pride.”

“My parents expected me to do well, but much of that ‘push’ to succeed wasn’t parent-directed, it was personally-directed,” she said.

I figured it went without saying that many Asian students — as well as Latino students or any other student — had great personal drive to excel.

A couple of e-mailers and one caller asked how I could ignore blacks. I explained that Lincoln High had an extremely small number of black students. I heard from a good number of educators, or retired teachers. Few disputed what students at Lincoln High said. But some said more blame should have been placed at the feet of the academic institutions.

“Your article brushed the surface of the school’s role in this perpetuation, while placing most of the blame on family and peer expectations,” wrote one teacher. “I believe the school is more influential than your article suggests.”

But the story wasn’t really about laying blame. It wasn’t an analysis or a survey. It was, in the end, really just a snapshot. It was certainly not a definitive piece on such a complex issue. I basically chose to take an angle I thought was not often broached.

Lincoln High Principal James Molina and Assistant Principal Howard Yao were receptive from the get-go. I can’t imagine they saw a personal upside in tackling such a sensitive issue, but they didn’t shy away from it. Molina, who just retired, could relate to many of his Latino students.

His parents did not push him to go to college. As long as he worked, that was fine by them, he said. After he graduated from high school — Lincoln High no less — he joined the Marines and was shipped off to Vietnam.

Yao said his parents pressured him hard. One day, he told me that it was something he came to resent in his early 20s. Maybe he would have had a happier youth had his parents laid off of him a bit, he said with a wry smile.

The two administrators said the achievement gap between Latino and Asian students defied easy solutions. They acknowledged there were a lot of reasons for it, but differing expectations was clearly a major one, they agreed. The school even had classes which had in effect become regarded as either “Asian” or “Latino” classes.

There were many exceptions. There were mediocre Asian students as well as elite Latino students. But students and teachers agreed that there was a more cohesive, academically driven culture among Asians than Latinos.

Patricia Garcia, 18, said Asian students were more competitive over grades — most often with one another. “It’s like a competition we don’t have,” she said. “We don’t compete like that.”

That wasn’t always true. Carlos Garcia, 17, the lone Latino on last year’s Academic Decathlon team, was extremely competitive. Since the ninth grade, when he really began to focus on school, Carlos’ friends increasingly became Asian. He was even elected president of the Asia Club.

On a few occasions, some of the students I talked to struggled to hide emotions. When I asked Karen Chu, 15, whether her parents ever gave her a proverbial pat on the back for acing her classes, her voice cracked. She explained that they only really noticed if she did not get all A's. Ericka Saracho, 16, one of the few Latinas on the Science Bowl team, patted Karen on the back consolingly.

I tried to put a positive spin on it, telling Karen that maybe it was a great compliment — that her parents had such lofty expectations for her.

“I don’t see it that way,” she said flatly.

In the end, I wrote the story as a kind of primer. It’s far from definitive, as e-mailers have well reminded me. It shouldn’t be the end of the discussion. I don’t see an upside to eschewing issues like these, no matter how uncomfortable. And you never know, maybe we can all learn a little something in the end.

-- Hector Becerra

Photo by Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[roy krausen]

Congratulations. You're breaking new ground. How are we going to reduce the achievement gap between the cultures, without first trying to figure out why there is this gap. I remember in a public meeting in Oakland California someone asking the then Mayor Jerry Brown why don;t we have more programs to stop the drug trade, the murders, the failure. He quoted then the incredibly low numbers of African American students taking academic (college prep.) classes, and the huge percentage of high school drop-outs in that same group, and then he said, what else are they qualified to do in this society but sell drugs and take drugs.

[Carol]

Parents, teachers and students have to have high expectations. At the school where I teach, there is an expectation gap from some in admin, and a counselor and a couple teachers have brought it up, but it's tough to change people. It has to start with the parents, though, when the children are very small.

[Jerry Martinez]

It’s probably true that self-direction is more important then parents pushing children into higher academic achievement. In my own case my sister achieved academically and career wise because of her self inspired personal drive while I did poorly because I got sucked into immediate gratification of drug culture of the ‘70’s.

[Helen Keelan]

I am a Sansei, third generation Japanese American. My father was a lot like Karen Chu's parents. When asked why my father always criticized rather than praised he replied that we know when we do well and that we need to be pushed to do better in the things that we do not excel. Of course anythng less than an A was not doing well.

[Fernando]

Are you comparing Asian Kids and Hispanic kids from the same neighborhood or just Asian and Hispanic kids in general.
Hispanic kids are at a disadvantage due to several reasons:

1) Single parents-
2) Gang Infested areas, some may live with gangs within their families.
3) how does economics play a part in the childs education.
4) Go to Cal Poly Pomona and conduct the same study
at the college of engineering. You will find that when you do a fair comparison Hispanics outnumber and outperform Asian children on a level playfield.

[Schimpff]

It's interesting that some people tried to censor this topic.

[mtlyorel]

Being of Asian origin and of second generation Taiwanese, I can attest to the relentless pressure to succeed from family and also from Asian peers.

When I get asked the same question, I have a very simple response: Asians don't see any choice in life if they fail academically.

There is no Asian role model in popular culture (i.e. in North America), and that is a strong motivator for Asian parents to push their kids towards academic success. The message is subtle but stark: fail in academia, and you end up with no other viable way to succes.

Interestingly, the same kind of Asian stereotype exists in South American societies. There, like North America, the only real path to success is through a college education. Latin America may have produced a Japanese-Peruvian president, but up to today, that is the only public Asian figure and may very well be an anomaly.

[Steve]

What are you talking about? I go to Cal Poly as a Mechanical Enineering major and 80% of the people in there are asian and they are usually the top 5%.

[Confucius]

Confucius. Period.

[gonococci]

Cultural/economic differences and school involvement (participation in sports/clubs/politics, etc.) on the part of the student are some of the biggest factors for determining their success in an academic environment.

The only problem with this idea is that from 14-18 some kids are just not emotionally or intellectually mature enough to cope with what is asked of them in high school, i.e., redirecting their joy in life as a teenager to joy in life as a student. I'll leave it up to everyone else to define "teenager" and "student," as I realize that these are broad terms requiring further exploration.

Ultimately, the complexity of the problem is huge.