When it comes to math and science, the West Windsor-Plainsboro school district has earned the well-deserved reputation as “the big gun” in student competition on the regional, state, and national levels. In addition to the blue ribbons and first place trophies, another pattern has clearly emerged in recent years. On the teams representing the district in math and science competition, Asian students clearly dominate the rosters. Some examples:
This year’s Science Olympiad Team from the Community Middle School includes Victoria Chang, Isaac Cheng, Moya Chin, Katherine Fu, Tiffany Jin, Jamie Joseph, Kathy Li, Peter Maa, Priya Marathe, Monkia Mostowy, Lekha Racharla, Anish Sarma, Greg Solak, Tomo Tamura, Aileen Yan, Roger Zhang, and Meiyi Zheng.
Of the 21 CMS student who competed at the National Science Olympiad two years ago, 17 had Asian surnames: Chou, Fun, Jin, Wang, Yan, Zhang, Liang (2), Lin, Pan, Ren (2), Tian, Wong, Yang, Yu, and Zhao.
The 2004 MATHCOUNTS team from the Grover Middle School, which took first place in the Regional Competition, included Jeffrey Fan, Ian Frankel, Hugh Le, and Catherine Wei. Other individual competitors were Kevin Gu, Kimberly Li, Weiye “William” Zhang, and William Zhuang.
While some have noted the trend as part of the continuing history of immigrant success stories, similar to the Jewish intellectual migration of the 20th century, the emerging dominance of Asian students in the math and science classes and competitions in the WW-P school district has also raised some concerns. There are fears about fairness and equity, especially among some parents who feel their own children might be edged out of special classes with limited enrollment.
There are also troubling questions about racial stereotyping and a loss of childhood to the intense competition. There are the Asian children who feel painted by a broad brush, pressured to excel at all costs. We often hear about the success stories, but we don’t hear as much about the children who struggle and don’t succeed. There are questions about what happens in the next generation of Asian children, when the effects of assimilation take hold and the drive to excel merges with the drive to belong.
There is also the issue of racism, according to Emmanuel Ahia, associate professor of counseling at the Rider University Graduate School of Education, that might rear up in the workplace later on. “There can be resentment. People feel that when they see people who get there and are more successful than they are. If they’re in a position of power, maybe they won’t want to hire you. They may discriminate against you.”
Ahia himself comes from a family of high achievers in Africa. Born in Nigeria, he earned one bachelors degree there, then came to the United States to earn another bachelors degree, followed by a masters, PhD, and JD, from Wheaton College in Illinois. He understands all about the pressure to excel academically coming from within the family. His father was an elementary school principal, his mother was a schoolteacher, and he had several uncles who were high school principals. He said he was always told “you have to go to university and be educated.” His parents warned him “if you don’t work hard, you will end up on the streets doing odd jobs, and we’re not going to support you.”
“There was pressure. There was no doubt about that. It made all my family members utilize all of their potential. The pressure was positive for me and other family members. There are very few people in my extended family who don’t have college educations. Family pressure is a big deal, often the deciding factor between success and failure.”
And yet, Ahia points out, there is often a downside to that kind of pressure. He says that many Asians feel stereotyped to become engineers, when they should be encouraged to be artists, musicians, writers, or politicians, areas where Asian Americans are historically under-represented.
The high profile successes of Asian-American students in the West Windsor Plainsboro school district can be explained in part by the rapidly changing demographics of the community. There’s been a population boom in the last few years, fueled in large part by an influx of Asian Americans. While the term covers a number of different religions, cultures, and countries, the biggest surge includes immigrants from the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, India, and Korea.
For the 2001-’02 school, state numbers show that Asians made up 30.7 percent of the population in the combined communities of West Windsor and Plainsboro. That was compared to 59 percent Caucasian, 5.5 percent African-American, and 4.6 percent Hispanic. The state report for the current school year, issued in the fall of 2003, shows a jump in the Asian population to 36 percent. There was a five percent drop in the Caucasian community to 54 percent, a slight drop to 5 percent in the African American population and a fractional increase to 5 percent in the Hispanic community.
Realtor Harveen Bhatla, with Prudential Fox and Roche in Princeton Junction, works with many Asian clients who want to relocate, especially from northern New Jersey and New York. Bhatla says the schools are absolutely the driving force behind the huge real estate boom in West Windsor and Plainsboro.
People know they can buy a much bigger house in Washington Township or Lawrenceville for $150,000 to $200,000 less, but “when they’re choosing between a house and the schools, the quality of their children’s education is the top priority,” says Bhatla. While everybody looks for an easy commute and good schools, Bhatla says her Asian clients in particular are attracted to the high caliber math and science programs in the WW-P school district.
Bhatla, who is of Indian heritage, says that “in India real education is considered to be math and science. In high school there is a definite split, where you choose between science and the arts. All the superbright students choose science because they want to go to the engineering and medical schools, which are considered the tickets to success and a better future.”
Bhatla’s observation dovetails with the widely held notion that there is something in the Asian culture that helps drive Asian American students to excel. It helps explain the phenomenal success of Asian American students in a district that is already making the rest of the state take notice.
The Confucian ethic drives immigrants from such countries as China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Confucianism stresses a strong work ethic and the desire to bring honor to the family. An individual is indebted to his parents for the hard work that has given him the ideal climate in which to learn and flourish, and his success or failure is a direct reflection on them. This can result in tremendous pressure on students starting from an early age.
There are other reasons that help explain the inclination that many Asian American students display toward math and science. Many of their parents come to America with little or no English, but they are doctors, engineers, or scientists in their native countries. The universal language of numbers gives them a more level playing field when it comes to finding employment in their new country, and it gives their children an opportunity to excel.
Freddie Huang of Plainsboro was in the first grade at Dutch Neck School when he was identified for the Enriched Math program. Now a third grader at Town Center School, his parents have had him tested for the Gifted and Talented Math program, also known as A&E Mathematics, Accelerated and Enriched. The program is offered to WW-P students starting in the fourth grade, though there are other points of entry given to students who are new to the district or who decide to take the qualifying test at a later date.
The test is offered every year to every third grade student in the district. This year, the school district reports there are 677 third graders in the overall district population of roughly 9,000 K-12 students. Of those, the district reports that 159 third grade students opted to take the test for G and T Mathematics. Only 40 students, 25 percent of those who chose to take the test, qualified for the G and T Mathematics Program.
The test is composed of five separate standardized tests, given over three days, that measure a child’s ability to think and reason mathematically, according to Barbara Braverman, the math curriculum supervisor at both Grover Middle School and Community Middle School. “There are clear guidelines and criteria for selection. Our policy is to meet the needs of the truly tip-top kids. No one who is qualified is turned away.”
The district does not record the ethnic background for the students who actually enroll in the program, but in the G and T math class in the fifth grade at Millstone River School, only two out of about 10 students are non-Asian. May Chang is one of the Asian students, and her mother, Helen Chang, sees an explanation for the preponderance of Asian students.
“The majority of Asian parents in this community do technical work, in computers or research for places like AT&T. They see programs like G and T math as prestigious, and they encourage their kids to participate. You see fewer Asian children in such activities as the football club and cheerleading. One hour to play soccer is one less hour to do math. Many have this attitude.”
Chang says her daughter loves the program, and it’s been good for her self-esteem, but she sees the negative side of the often intense pressure that Asian parents place on their children. Chang’s sister, Julie Chiang, who lives in West Windsor, has two children who graduated from High School South. One daughter, Kuang Chiang, graduated from Brown, the other, May Chiang, is still an undergraduate at Stanford.
“My brother, who lives in California, has two kids, 14 and 6, and he’s already telling them ‘oh come on, your cousins went to the Ivy League, you better do well and go too.’” Chang says it’s common for Asian parents to push their children to go to what they consider a name brand school. “Asian parents tell their kids, ‘We work so hard, we want you to go to the best schools. If you underachieve, it reflects badly on your whole family.’”
Robert Burns understands all about peer pressure. He feels it helps explain, in part, the success of the Kumon Learning Centers he and his wife have run in the community for the last 16 years, in West Windsor, Plainsboro, Princeton, and one recently opened in Lawrenceville.
“Many people who enroll their children in Kumon often come to us and say, ‘My child’s friend is coming here. He’s doing well and we’d like our child to do well too.’”
Kumon, a system of learning originally developed in Japan, emphasizes self-paced learning and sustained practice day after day to help the child achieve mastery of a subject, in this case, reading and math. Burns says that of roughly 400 students enrolled in his four centers, about 60 percent are Asian. He says the degree of commitment and the follow-through he sees from Asian students, especially those who are immigrants or who have parents who are immigrants, is very different.
“The average Asian student will enroll in the program for a year and a half, compared to an average of six to eight months for others,” says Burns.
“When people come to this country from elsewhere they recognize that education is the key to economic success, and they want their children to succeed at a greater level than they do. They know the world is competitive, and they want their children to have an edge in the academic race.”
Burns’ wife, Mariko, was born in Japan and runs the business with him. They have raised three children, the youngest at High School North, all of whom have participated in the district’s enriched math programs. She explains that at their Plainsboro Kumon location in the Princeton Meadows Shopping Center parents are charged $87.50 per month. That covers two sessions a week, each roughly 30 minutes, as well as all materials. It boils down to about $20 per hour. Compare that to the average going rate of $20 to $25 for a half hour piano lesson in the West Windsor Plainsboro area, and $40 to $70 for one hour of private tutoring. No matter what the cost, many parents feel it’s money well spent, because it’s an investment in their child and his future.
Mariko Burns says “parents believe in the philosophy of Kumon, that by practice and repeated effort, students get better. It’s not just critical thinking, but building a firm foundation and good test-taking skills. They gain confidence.”
Both Robert and Mariko Burns see the competition as positive. “The tide coming in raises all boats. The attitude toward education raises the bar for everyone.”
Miriam Robin, who supervises the science curriculum for both middle schools, puts it another way. “These kids are so proficient, and the teachers bring in so much, enrichment happens every day in the regular classroom. Our district has been a leader in science education, and we are constantly evaluating our curriculum and upgrading it to make sure we stay that way.”
Many feel it’s the strong partnership among teachers, parents, and the students that elevates the bar for everyone. “It means that there are many parents watching carefully for the quality of education. I feel like I have many allies out there who are insisting on performance from their kids,” says Mark Schlawin, who teaches math and science in the middle school at the Princeton Charter School, and is the parent of a G and T high school student in the WW-P district.
Schlawin says that the competition can sometimes get too intense, and he acknowledges that there are some parents who feel disgruntled because they feel their children can’t or don’t want to compete in that kind of cut-throat environment. “But ultimately,” he says, “I think most recognize the system is a meritocracy. If your child is not willing to outwork the other kids they will be taking a backseat to those who are more prepared.”
Diane Kosar of Plainsboro, who has four children, ranging from a fifth grader at Millstone River School to a sophomore at High School North, says she sees a lot of competition, sometimes too much. It can often be stressful and frustrating to the students, she says, because it’s in everything they do: academics, music, and sports, and sometimes they feel that they just can’t get away from it.
“One day you think the competition is getting in the way so it’s a bad thing. Then the next day you think it’s raising the bar for everyone, so it’s good.” She says everyone notices the competition more on the high school level because there the students are competing in the AP classes and honors classes. They’re competing for the best colleges, to win scholarships and awards. “Is the kid motivated by what he wants to do, or is he doing what he feels he has to do to in order to compete, to get into a good college?”
Kosar’s son, Nick, is a member of this year’s winning Mathcounts team and is somewhat of an oddity in his seventh grade G and T math class at the Community Middle School. With his blond hair and blue eyes, he is a minority in a class which is predominantly Asian. His Asian friends have nicknamed him Yao Ming, the seven-foot-plus Chinese basketball star who also stands out.
Kosar says for Nick, the issue i s not getting into a good college or competing for competition’s sake. He simply loves math. When he was in preschool, she says, “we were leaving McDonald’s and out of the blue, he asked ‘Mom, what’s 499 minus 7572?’ I didn’t know what he was talking about until I saw that there was a phone number in the window. He saw a math problem in a phone number.” Another time, she relates, she realized she only had three Pop Tarts for four children at breakfast. Kosar says she told each of her sons to give their baby sister a third of theirs. “But mom,” Nick complained. “That wouldn’t be fair because she’d end up with a whole pop tart if the three of us each gave her a third. What you mean is we should each give her a quarter.” Says Kosar: “He understood the concept of fractions and he wasn’t even in kindergarten.”
The idea of a natural gift for math or science appears as a common denominator quite often when talking about students who are taking the classes, winning the prizes, and making a reputation for themselves and the school district.
Like Diane Kosar, Freddie Huang’s mother, Huei Lan Luo, says Freddie exhibited a natural curiosity toward math from a very early age. “When we gave Freddie M and M’s, he liked to count them, and classify them by color. He did groupings, two red, two yellow, two green, and from this he learned the foundation of multiplication. He was maybe three years old. We gave him Legos, and he liked to build by color. From this, he learned the concepts of symmetry and balance. He also loved other building toys like K’Nex. He was just playing but he was learning math and didn’t even realize it.”
His parents encouraged his love of numbers and helped him with learning opportunities whenever they could, especially his father, You Ping Huang, who was a math major in China, earned a PhD in statistics at Columbia University, and now works as a statistician in South Brunswick. “We try to make it silly or fun,” says Luo. “For example, we were eating pizza. His father said, ‘Freddie, if you eat one piece of pizza and Alex eats one, then you eat half of what’s left, how much of the whole pizza will you end up eating?’ And Freddie answers almost immediately, ‘That’s easy, dad, it would be half.’ So we learn fractions while eating dinner.
“We feel that if you’re good at math, you will be good at most things. Language, of course, is important, but our first language is not English. It’s difficult for us to teach our kids English, so they need to figure that out for themselves. We can help them with math.”
The Huangs are sensitive to the potential racial stereotyping that could be applied to their son because of his gift with numbers. They don’t want Freddie to be seen as one-sided, a math nerd, or a grind, so they’re rounding out his education with music and lots of sports camps, especially soccer which he loves.
On the flip side there is the Asian child who doesn’t have a natural affinity to the math and science areas but feels pressured to do well in school and compete anyway. “I never felt like I could live up to the achievements of my brother and sister, or to the expectations of my parents,” says Ronald Kwon, a 32-year-old Korean-American who is looking for work as a photographer after recent stints working in a hotel in Hawaii and completing a web design certificate in San Francisco. “Everything I did wasn’t good enough. Where I graduated college wasn’t Yale or M.I.T., where my brother and sister went. I wasn’t picked to be in the Double-A program (Able and Ambitious) at my school. It’s hard to grow up feeling like you’re a disappointment.” (For more on the Kwon family, see the author’s column, beginning on page 15.)
Professor Ahia says while you hear about the Asian students who do succeed, a majority of them do not. “They’re just like everybody else, but there is a stereotype and that’s absolutely dangerous because it puts pressure on the kids. Nobody really wants to help them because there’s a presumption that they can do it and they’re just being lazy. ‘You can do this, what’s wrong with you?’ they hear, and clearly, those kids get frustrated. That leads to psychological frustration because they are not able to live up to expectations. They drop out of school, they can join gangs, they just give up.”
For others not on the fast track to academic success, there is often frustration and a feeling of being left behind.
The WW-P school district is sensitive to criticism that some students may be shut out of certain programs or become discouraged because of the fiercely competitive climate created by Asian American students. The school district did not respond to requests to observe classes at the high schools. But the numbers tell the story. In a recent year at High School South, there were 26 total students in the more advanced AP Calculus BC class. Of those students, 23, or 88 percent, were Asian.
In AP Biology and AP Chemistry, which each had a total of 68 students, 45, or 66 percent, were Asian. In Honors Physics, 14 out of 33 students, or 42 percent, were Asian. Asian students also were well represented in the AP humanities courses, with 73 Asian students out of 135 total students in AP English, or 54 percent, and 10 Asian students out of 26 total students in AP European History, or 38 percent. The total number of Asian students at South for that year was 534 out of a total population of 1544, or 35 percent, very close to reflecting the West Windsor-Plainsboro community demographic of 36 percent.
“I have no data to support your anecdotal reports about Asian families,” responded Gerri Hutner, district spokesperson, when asked to comment on the high numbers of Asian representation in the advanced level and AP courses. “ We work very hard to ensure the success of all students. We do not highlight the achievements of one ethnic group over another. We highlight the achievements of all our students.”
And those achievements are impressive. A recent report puts High School North fifth in the state in SAT scores, with a 1,200 average, a 36-point increase over last year. High School South was eighth with a 1,177 average per student.
At North 44.3 percent of the 1,151 students took Advanced Placement classes in all areas, not just math and science. And 423 of the 591 students who took those AP courses scored well enough on the AP exam to earn credit at most colleges.
At South 36 percent of the 1,450 students took AP classes and of those 666 students, 64 percent, or 429, scored high enough to receive college credit.
Once a student at either high school exhausts the academic offerings open to them in certain subject areas, they are allowed to take courses at Princeton University. Students who wish to take Princeton courses have to meet requirements at the high school. They have to have completed the highest levels of coursework in those subjects, and they have to get approvals from their guidance counselors.
Princeton has further requirements, including a GPA of B+ or better in academic subjects. Students must achieve a 4 or 5 on the AP exam, or 700 to 750 (depending on the subject) on the SAT II. There are also math placement tests given by Princeton. The university does not charge for these courses.
One student who has taken advantage of the opportunities offered by Princeton University is Dan Le, a junior at High School South. Last term he took advanced multivariable calculus and ordinary differential equations at Princeton. This spring he’s taking an honors linear algebra course as well as AP history, AP language and composition, and French IV honors at the high school. In addition, he is section leader for the second violin section in the orchestra and a varsity swimmer.
The Le family is originally from Vietnam. Dan says his role model is his older brother Ian, now a junior at Harvard and one of South’s top math graduates, who made the United States team for the International Math Olympics two years ago, and won a gold medal.
Math talent definitely runs in the family. Dan and Ian have a younger brother, Hugh, an eighth-grader at Grover Middle School, who is following in their footsteps in the G and T math program. Dan says his fascination with math was nourished in the second grade at Dutch Neck School, when his teacher, Bob Krech, gave his class extra math because he felt they weren’t being challenged enough.
It’s no surprise that Krech would have an eye for spotting talent. Though he was an art education major in college, he has spent 25 years working as a teacher, principal, and supervisor at the elementary level. For the last three years he has been the elementary math specialist for the six elementary schools in the West Windsor Plainsboro school district. Part of his job includes professional development for teachers, running workshops, and teaching best practices in the classroom. Krech remembers Dan as a quiet second grader, but extremely focused. “That was his real strength,” he says.
Krech says he always tried to make math fun but challenging, especially with special projects like “Haunted Mansion,” where students would have to draw a floor plan of a mansion, measure how long, how wide, and figure out how much it weighed. “I tried to teach the kids how to apply math in complex situations. They were enjoying the projects so much they hardly noticed the hard work and skills they were using. They were so focused on the outcome.”
Diane Kosar says her son’s math talent was recognized and nurtured by his first grade teacher at Wicoff School, Susan Coleridge, who also noticed Nick’s interest in sports. “She would bring in the sports pages on Monday morning, and ask the kids by how many points the Steelers beat the Bengals. So at the beginning of first grade, Nick and his friends were doing double digit subtraction,” says Kosar.
There are many stories of inspirational teachers like Bob Krech and Susan Coleridge in the WW-P district who have had a major role in influencing young lives and channeling intellectual talent. But often, the difference between merely surviving in a challenging environment and thriving has to do with natural talent and a love that comes from the heart.
Nick Kosar says “I like the competitions because it gives me a chance to meet other people who also have an interest in math. I like to compete, and I like to win. I probably get more math problems right than I get runs in baseball. I still like to play baseball but being good at math makes me feel good.”
Dan Le, who has just qualified for the United States of America Mathematics Olympiad, articulates perhaps one of the biggest reasons behind not only his success but that of so many other Asian American students in the WW-P school district. Though his parents encourage him to do well, Dan Le says he works hard because he wants to. Ultimately it boils down to something called passion.
“I enjoy math. It’s not just problem solving. It calls for different ways of thinking. There’s logic involved, but it’s also very creative, almost like an art form, because there are so many different angles to a problem, so many different ways to look at it. Different solutions can be elegant in their simplicity, even beautiful. Mathematicians and artists are the same.”
