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Why Asian Americans Excel At Academics
Business Insider ^ | 05/06/2014 | TOM JACOBS, PACIFIC STANDARD

Posted on 05/06/2014 9:33:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Why do Asian Americans, as a group, tend to excel at academics? Newly published research arrives at a simple answer: They work harder than their non-Asian peers.

The study also attempts to answer the less-simple question of why these kids tend to put more effort into their studies, and comes up with two likely answers: The culturally based belief that effort leads to achievement, and the fact that recent immigrants are highly motivated to succeed.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sociologists Amy Hsin of Queens College and Yu Xie of the University of Michigan analyze data from two nationally representative studies: The Kindergarten Cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, which tracks children who entered kindergarten in 1998; and the Educational Longitudinal Study, which looked at the habits and achievements of high school students who were sophomores in 2004.

The first group of kids was tracked through eighth grade; their scores were based on their teachers’ assessment of their proficiency in reading, math, and general knowledge, as well as their “attentiveness, task persistence, and eagerness to learn.”

The high school students’ scores were based on their grade point averages and performance on standardized tests. In addition, their teachers reported their level of attentiveness in class, and noted whether they felt “the student works hard for his/her grades.”

The researchers report that the achievement gap between Asian American and white American kids starts off as small to non-existent, but gradually grows, peaking in 10th grade. This suggests the difference reflects “academic effort rather than differences in cognitive ability,” they write.

(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...


TOPICS: Education; Society
KEYWORDS: academics; asianamericans; asians
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To: Gay State Conservative

- and so Harvard should be all Asian or Jewish. Take the very best students you can get. Lowering standards based on what a student body looks like is crazy.

Want to see a liberals head explode - ask them if they would be willing to give up their child’s well earned placement at a university in the name of ‘ diversity ‘.

Ask them in the name of ‘ fairness ‘ if its okay for their child to attend Skunksville University rather than Harvard because a lesser qualified student took their place.


41 posted on 05/06/2014 11:06:49 AM PDT by warsaw44
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To: Altura Ct.

“But what make them, as in Asians, ‘work harder’?”

A neighborhood (Chinese) woman once told me that Asians have to be better because schools discriminate against them.


42 posted on 05/06/2014 12:13:15 PM PDT by Owl558 (Those who remember George Santayana are doomed to repeat him)
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To: ottbmare

>> immigrant black families from Africa do extremely well <<

Ditto for blacks from the West Indies. In NYC, for example, they are only about 10% of the total black population, but they comprise the majority of professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.) in Harlem.

Also, a friend from Miami once told me whites would fear for their safety if they spent time in Liberty City. But in Little Haiti? No problem.


43 posted on 05/06/2014 2:53:11 PM PDT by Hawthorn
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To: Sherman Logan
>> any country with several private property billionaires <<

I agree fully with your general point that basically speaking, China is no longer communist except in name. So I don't mean to quibble. But it's not just several billionaires in China, to wit:

According to an article I saw the other day, China now has several hundred billionaires -- already something like 1/5th of the world total, with the number likely to continue rising.

44 posted on 05/06/2014 3:07:39 PM PDT by Hawthorn
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To: Hawthorn

Thanks, I wasn’t aware of that.

China has millennia of history of government officials getting involved in truly astonishing corruption, as in entire armies, 100,000 men or more, dying of starvation because somebody embezzled the money that was supposed to pay for their food.

Since the Party seems to have gotten rid of its equivalent of the Emperor, who would occasionally prune back the most spectacular exampled of corruption, there does not now seem to be any check at all on Party members’ stealing.

Historically, the Mandate of Heaven deserts a dynasty (or a Party) when it gets to this point.


45 posted on 05/06/2014 3:28:00 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: Roman_War_Criminal
I have nothing but admiration for cultures that excel and thrive in an academic environment—and I loathe the cultures that don’t.

What does that make me?

Do I have to say it? All together now! RACIST!

46 posted on 05/07/2014 9:24:36 AM PDT by 17th Miss Regt
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