Two years after my mother and I arrived in this country from China, she was newly divorced, jobless, unable to speak English, and on the verge of eviction. Her focus, however, was firmly fixed on my education. I had completed the third and fourth grades at a public school, in New Haven, with which she had been distinctly dissatisfied. Give yourself a break. The story of an education-obsessed immigrant Chinese mother browbeating her bewildered child into compliance is, at this point, the stuff of YouTube parody.
In seventh grade, when she found out about the entrance exam—a single three-hour test known as the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT—she enrolled in a local prep school on the weekends. During the summer before eighth grade, Sanchez upped that commitment to five days a week, spending four hours each day being taught to the test. How can I get used to these questions? But unlike the vast majority of them, Sanchez is Latina.
Why Asian-Americans Feel Powerless in the Battle over New York’s Élite High Schools
New York City alone, according to the Census, has now become home to more than one million Asian Americans, greater than the combined totals of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Filipino and Filipino Americans were the largest southeast Asian ethnic group at 0. Indian and Indian Americans comprise the largest South Asian group, comprising 2.
Asian-Americans are often thought of as doctors. Success stories. While those examples exist, Asian-Americans are by no means monolithic. And there are many others who have yet to see their American dreams come true. Their stories, however, are rarely told.