drunkle, I concur. There was such thing called affirmative action. It was supposed to help other minorities but end up hurting the Asian students. I know people who had great grades, great SAT score and did a lot of extra curricular activities but was rejected from some UC school because there was enough Asian there already. Luckily, it was abolished.

Regarding alternative methods, I concur as well. However, it would help even more if they’re forced to do everything in their head. The more you practice that, the faster you become. That’s how people from overseas can do those calculation so quickly in their head. It’s through years of practice. When you make students show their work, you’re basically slow their thinking down because they have to write it down. Which would then limit their thinking to one calculation at a time.