Little kid upholds the Asian stereotype

March 4, 2008

I don’t really do enough volunteer work, so I agreed to help out with this local school that my employer has “adopted”. Starting last Thursday and running for the next several Thursdays, they’re running an evening practice session where the kids can try sample standardized tests. In preparation for a statewide test that will be administered later this year.

Many of the students really struggled with the test. Some took upwards of an hour, even with their parents helping them along. But the one Vietnamese boy in the class upheld the Asian stereotype — he finished in fifteen minutes, without his father’s help, and managed to score 21 out of 22. I’m so proud to see the Asian stereotype of academic success alive and well.

Let me say though that I’m not thrilled by this standardized testing at such an early age. These are third and fourth graders for heaven’s sake, do we really need to traumatize them for life by putting the pressures of this testing on their little shoulders?

On the other hand, after watching many of these kids struggle with the test I can see how some kind of assessment is in order. Because many of them are clearly way behind where they should be. For example, even though they were allowed to use calculators many of them struggled with basic arithmetic questions. Third and fourth graders should be able to do simple addition and subtraction without the aid of the calculators, many of these kids couldn’t do it even with the calculators.

What will be interesting over the next few weeks is seeing whether the practice tests actually help any of these kids improve. The idea is that their teachers will be able to look at the scores and help focus the students’ curriculum over the next few weeks.

Of course the test doesn’t actually help fix the problem. Yes it will identify kids with problems, and the overall statistics will help identify schools with endemic problems. But there’s no clear fixes that get applied to students and schools with problems. So the testing will identify the issues but does not include any mandates or funding for solutions that can get the kids back on track.