Rich, you are far too polite. This is your website, you could have just hijacked the other thread. Not a big deal.. But I’ll try to answer both of your questions in my opinion of course.
1. What is the fascination with good school district?
You know I can really only answer this from my own background. But it’s probably true for a lot of asians….chinese(from china and taiwan),korean,japanese,Indian in particular.
The aforementioned asians view education as an extremely important thing. Historically and culturally, education systems overseas are quite different from here in the States. the best schools overseas are state sponsored public schools. Typically these schools are free or nominal cost, but it is generally not available to everyone. You have to pass entrance exams to get into these good schools, and probably 1-2% of the applicants make it into a public school. In the united states, if you don’t get into the “best” schools, it’s not really the end of the world. Overseas it’s really different. It’s ultra competitive. Historically, if you don’t get into a good public school, then pretty much a good portion of the white-collar opportunities aren’t available to you and you can pretty much either (1) go into blue-collar type professions (2) stay back and try to do better on the entrance test next year (to a certain point that), (3) go to a shitty private school that your parents end up paying a lot for (excludes U.S. tailor expat schools which are $$$$ more so than the normal locals can afford), or (4) try to make it on your own doing some business of some sort, which although not impossible is probably not as easy as for say folks here in the States. BTW, while blue collar work here is perfectly respectable and you can make a lot of money here doing it (IE plumbers , mechanics,etc), it’s not the case overseas where intellectual contributions typically convey a better lifestyle than blue collar work. Labor is cheap relative to white collar desk job overseas, versus here when often a trip to your mechanic costs more than you could bill out as a software professional, for example.
Culturally, that’s sort of the value system among several asians, which in principle is why, a typical asian couple would rather settle for less sqft, pay $$$ more for a home in the “best public school systems”. Part of this is the old stigma about being in the best school. Part of it is also the concept that if I send my kid to a school in which their parents are also from roughly the same background (lawyer,doctors,enginerds,etc), then there’s a higher probability of the kid succeeding then floundering in life flipping burgers. Part of this is also if Asian Family XYZ sends there kids there, it must be good, so I’ll send my kids there too. On top of that, a lot of these families in addition to sending them to a “top public school” end up hiring private tutors or sending there kids to after school enrichment programs to allow their kids to “get ahead”. This is historically what happens overseas, and ironically though some of the se parents who that emigrate here to the States do so to allow their kids to escape the “one shot at a public school or else” issue overseas, they pretty much bring what I consider all the “vices” here to the States (such as the over-emphasis on enrichement afterschool,etc). In fact, in some cases, I’ve heard things take to such an extreme that, I’ve heard some high schools kids go take college level courses at a local JC under radar during the summertime, and then when school starts, repeat the same subject in high school AP classes just so they breeze through it with an easy A, in addition to whatever other enrichment that happens.
In addition, more “well known” schools supposedly opens the door to the “best” colleges. For example, a 4.25gpa in Carmel Valley, some feel, isn’t looked the same as say a 4.25gpa out of some school in say El Cajon, because some feel admissions to schools like Harvard,Stanford,etc, are not just about your individual scores and extracuricular activities, but some of it also has to do with your school’s reputation (some people think). Don’t know if that true or not, though working as a student memer of an admission board in the past I can sort of see where some of this would play into.
Oh, and we also learned that in some of the fields such as medicine, engineering, etc, there’s quota’s against asians….So…..we realize that we end up competing amongst ourselves for some of those admission spots….Hence, if Asian Family X sends Kid A to “best public school” + enrichment program Z, Asian Family Y better send Kid B to that same school to keep up plus add enrichment programs Z,A,B so that Kid B is one step ahead of Kid A. And once Asian Family X and Asian Family Y talk to Asian Family Z, obviously Asian Family Z will have the same concerns and again try to match or one up things for their kid. Yes, I understand it’s ridiculous. But this sort of just feeds onto itself.
You want to reak havoc on housing prices on a market and create a bubble? Simple, get a high testing district, and have a few asian families move in there….and pretty soon it’s a domino affect…More asian families move there for the school district, raising the education bar, which then attracts even more asian families. And then if you make access to that school exclusive, based on some set geograpical boundary within that city such that there is is a shortage of homes that has access to a particular school, well then you get the asian families start paying ridiculous amounts of money for some crappy piece of home. It’s for this reason why Cupertino in Bay Area will never get cheap….Ditto for the Mission San Jose part of Fremont.
You might ask…Well, gee.. Why not just send your kid to a private school and live in another neighborhood? I don’t know. I guess the truth is that there’s the sort of “I want my kid to grow up in an environment there families are doctors,lawyers,enginerds,etc”. And like i said, some end up living in areas like Carmel Valley AND send their kids to private schools anyway.
Now one might conclude that “gee you talk as asians are rich and have all this money to throw around”. Um, no..That usually isn’t the case.
The ones I know have a normal job(s). BUT, they don’t spend a lot. They penny pinch on everything. And I mean everything…Yet, within economic reasons, they will spend money on their kid’s education…and buying an overpriced home in a good school district is one example.That’s why you’ll see a lot of asians drive a beat 14year old car, live in CV with particle board furniture from Ikea, and still send their kids to a private school.
That’s why I have always said that often times it’s much hard to try to make a buck off an Asian than to make a few thousand bucks off of the Asian’s kid…Because asians are more likely to cut a check for the benefit of their kid’s education than themselves.
Of course, there are a bunch of obnoxious asians that are really rich too that spend money on their kids too as well as themselves…Let me explain…
See, there are those asians that came here via an education visa.These were the folks that were from the best schools overseas, and were able to get a scholarship to come here to the states for a graduate school. These are your normal worker bees who probably do alright, but aren’t “rich” by rich standards. They are thrifty, and have assimilated into the U.S. because they work with everyone here. I’ll call these type I asians… My parents were examples of this.
Then you have the second wave of asians that made a shit load of money doing business in korea,japan,taiwan,china,etc and normally wouldn’t have made it to the U.S. under an educational vias….They essentially bought there way into the U.S., bringing their kids with them because they didn’t want their kids to have to go through the grueling education system over there. These are the asian rich brats that zoom around in bimmers and porsches and carry Prada bags when 16… I’ll call them Type 2…Generally, we, type 1 descendants, hate those type 2 descendants…. not that because we are jealous, but because (1) they lack taste (2) they lack tack (3) they feel like the own the world (4) they flaunt their wealth (5) they give asians a bad name…. But the feeling is mutual because the Type 2 families tend to look down on Type 1 families for numerous reasons the “you got into the best schools, and I didn’t but you came to the States and ended up a workerbee while I make a shit load of money and look at me now…” attitude. Anyway, sort of I’ve started to diverge here. But you get the point that for these folks, money isn’t an issue.
I can’t comment on any other ethnicities..I’d assume folks from the same social/economic background probably would have somewhat similiar concerns and viewpoints on education.
2. Is the school system gamed?
I’m not an expert at this, since I’m still way off from sending my kid to elementary. BUT…From what I’ve heard from other parents and such, ever since the “No Kid Left Behind” was instituted, it had an interesting effect. The intentions were to improve school quality across the board via measurable attributes of test schools,etc. Well, since schools quickly became penalized for not improving or not scoring well, schools started become more concerned about scoring well than really teaching what was need for students. Let me explain. Suppose you had a class of students with 1 student that was brilliant, one that was so so, and one that was below average. When I went to school, a schoool would tailor curiculum so that the gifted student would be challenged, the average student would be challenged without being overwelmed, and the below average scoring child would be put into a special program for additional help. Three different types of students, three tracks and three paces. Well, with this “no child left behind”, schools started to be more interested in scoring well. So often this means spending all the majority of your resources bringing the below average kid up to par with the average and gifted student, and often the average and gifted student were left as is with nothing else challenging to do. It’s not the teacher’s fault per se, but how the system sort of starts to work. Ironically is why even Carmel Valley school district, which arguably is supposedly the top public schools here in SD, some of my friends and colleagues have actually pulled their kids out of public schools and put them in private schools anyway…Because simply some of these kids are indeed gifted and weren’t really being challenged to do anything more.
3)Why do some asians like CV so much? Oh, hell i don’t know. Because I guess it’s the most affordable area to access the best public schools, irrespective if we end up using them… LJ and RSF are too expensive and frankly too inconvenient for most of us worker bees that do have this thing called “a job”.
Anyway, Realtors take note. Brush up on your Mandarin. Because the only thing preventing a Chinese business families (type 2) from emigrating to the U.S. (like what happened with Taiwanese folks in the 90ies) are the visa restrictions the state government imposes on China. If that ever changes, start your house selling engines.
