Asian Americans SAT Stars?
September 17, 2008
Model Minority alert! The Hong Kong Standard proclaimed that Asian Americans are “stars” in math. The Wall Street Journal stated “Asian-Americans continue to post stellar results. … 66 points better than the [math] average. Asian-Americans also outperformed in critical-reading and writing, though by less.” Asians were the only group to improve their writing scores.
The College Board, which runs the SAT admissions test, recently announced that that minority participation was up to 40 percent from 33 percent a decade ago. Asian Americans increased to 61 percent, mostly due to waves of immigration. But it’s been overlooked that African Americans also grew by 52 percent, and they’ve about reached population parity with about 12 percent of test takers, though Hispanics remain underrepresented. That’s real academic progress, which happened during the G.W. Bush years, compared to the days when most blacks didn’t even start high school.
The College Board’s Total Group Report 2008 shows Asian men are tops in math with an average score of 596. But at 567, do Asian women need math affirmative action when they outscored white men at 555? Native Americans led various Hispanic groups, with African Americans scoring lowest at 426 as a group. If you lag behind more educated whites, it’s a crisis. Yet it’s Asians who get kudos instead of scolding non-overachievers; whites lag behind Asian kids by one-third of the black-Asian gap.
Though Asians lag in reading, combined verbal and math scores for Asians passed whites sometime in the 1990s. On the new writing test, Asians do just fine, nearly equal to whites, while women overall get a 13 point advantage. But the total for African Americans is dragged down by another 94 points. Averages, however, hide Asian failure. In 1995, a detailed breakdown showed that Asians were not just six times more likely to get the highest scores, they were just as likely to be bunched up at the bottom with miserable verbal and math scores as well.
Taking language courses or a subject test (notably in Chinese, Korean, Latin or Hebrew) also helps math scores. Spanish, less so. Taking four years of music had an even better effect than computer programming courses. Some of the lowest math scores were from students who intended to major in agriculture, construction, public administration and social services.
An analysis I did in 1995 showed that children of African American parents earning over $70,000 scored lower than whites earning less than $10,000. Children of Asians earning $40,000 matched the most affluent whites. This explains why even the poorest urban Asians generally score as well as whites, while even the most affluent black suburbs complain about low test scores. The truth is between economics and culture, you’re better off with Asian parents who get crazy at a B+ than being rich.
Sadly, continuing education policies based on creating task forces to erase “unexplained” gaps and enforce political correctness instead of mastering academic content will only keep Asians even farther in the lead.
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5 Responses to “Asian Americans SAT Stars?”
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Talk about the “normal” curve in stats.
The abnormal stats in curvatures of the “mind.”
Two plus two equals minus-squat.
Oy vey! abd Aiyah!
And a Bronx cheer along with that always handy fickle finger.
So, I’m crazy. Join me and Art.Or go ahead and live in your real world of dreams too.
Could be my obtuseness, but I have no idea what point this op-ed is trying to make. Sounds as if the last paragraph is thrown in b/c Mr. Hu realizes that he should actually come to some conclusion but his earlier tosses are so all over the dartboard that his conclusion is plucked out of thin air. Just an obnoxious suggestion, but in the future maybe it would be helpful to have an idea what you want to write in advance and then figure out how your supporting evidence will help you get there.
Dear Patrick Mattimore:
I’m afraid you have arrived on this scene a tad late and an argument beside the point.
ANY point.
When it comes to “awarthurhu.”
As for his “conclusion,” it would appear that Mr. Hu confuses his personal predilections for prudent politics, and/or possible advancement.
Sequential logic and organized argumentation are NOT involved here. Only the mad mutterings of a refugee from the wastelands of Academia, whose SATs are high but whose smarts are low.
Not to mention the hilarious graspings at cant and contumely he so ineptly aspires to, forgive the dangling participle. Or is that an adverb?
Maybe Hu can tell us “first.”
Frank Eng
P.S.: He claims to be “Chinese,” but I think he’s one of those pseudo-”Asians.”
If you missed the major points
- Asians still do score well on SAT tests
- Asians score as well as whites on the writing test, even if it’s in english
- Averages hide that just as many Asians stink on the SAT as do well
- Actually everybody knows full well WHY Asians do better than whites
- Nobody is willing to admit there is ANY valid reason Whites do better than African Americans
- That’s precisely the reason education suffers from race-based education policies that will keep the racial test gap going for a long, long time.
In China, children get off to a very literate start through the emphasis of teaching young children to WRITE fluently. Copying this successful model could be the match that starts a conflagration of education reform in the anglophone world. The following describes our efforts to proMay 25, 2008
Maria Montessori wrote, almost a century ago, that three- and four-year-old preschoolers will learn to read spontaneously if they get “sufficient” practice forming alphabet letters. Although boldly claimed in her “The Montessori Method” this possibility has strangely never before been subjected to a scientific test.
In 2002-2004 I found five kindergarten teachers on the Internet who provided experimental data on 106 experimental kindergarten students as they practiced printing fluency and we monitored their reading ability (and also five other first-grade teachers who did NOT make the effort of inducing printing practice, but who only measured how much of the serial alphabet students could print in a timed, twenty-second period of time, and the correlation with reading skill. These 94 students formed a control group).
The correlation was very obvious in all ten classrooms. We found that all but a very small percentage of students read well, and with good comprehension, shortly after the point in time when they were able to print at least the first thirteen letters within 20 seconds. Multiplied by three, this equates with a fluency rate of 39 letters per minute.
The children enjoyed the practice sessions, and observing their gradual increase in fluency as the weeks passed. No apparent stress was noted, and it was found that the median kindergartner, after spending five minutes daily of each school day practice printing, was “printing fluent” after a mere three months. But printing fluency didn’t correlate with reading skill among older students, according to our results with a group of fifty fourth-graders.
The kindergartners wrote and read with about the same skill as the first graders at the end of the winter of school. The fact that kindergartners were reading and writing at a level of children a full grade ahead shows that the early acquisition of literacy in the kindergarten (experimental) group was caused by the dedicated attempt to induce practiced fluency in printing, and not just a coincidental marker of some third, and unknown, causative factor.
At the present time (May, 2008) I have collected another group of kindergarten and first-grade teachers on the Internet. Fourteen K-1 teachers have already submitted correlations of the printing fluency and reading skills of their pupils. In each case the correlation has been obvious and strong. Anyone wishing to join and monitor (or participate on) this free list need only send any email to k1writing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Returning the automated “confirmation message” to the computer will result in automatic list membership.
Printing practice and fluency training in the early grades has completely gone out of style during the twentieth century, though it is still practiced (though not specifically tested) in India and China. This rediscovery of this important principle offers an inexpensive and effective means toward ensuring reading and academic success from the earliest grades for children of all races and ethnic backgrounds.
It has also been found that second-graders able to give correct answers to simple addition facts more fluently than 40 answers per minute rarely have problems with math or science thereafter.
Bob Rose, MD (retired), rovarose@aol.com
Jasper, Georgiave this scientifically. (And Hi, Arthur!)