Battle For Schools And Grades

I was trying to explain to someone about the schools in Central Jersey area and I said, “it is a little crazy, right? Aren’t you surprised?”

“Oh no,” she said, “I was expecting something like this. I had known about the craziness of schools here before we came.”

It was my turn to become surprised. And things are really a little crazy here. As you know, Middlesex County has 26 school district, but only has 4.5 good public high schools (other than magnet schools, which are not particularly good in this county). I said 4.5 because Metuchen high school is very small and can only be considered 0.5 high school. Needless to say all the immigrants want to move to these five townships, which pushed the housing price artificially high in these places. The craziness doesn’t stop there. I bought a book about Asian Americans’ crazy high school obsession last year, but for some reason haven’t read it yet.

Competitive Schools

In these 4.5 good high schools, competitions are so heated up that a robotic club can be extremely difficult to get in. The STEM courses are so intense that they require science teachers with a doctor’s degree since experimental designs and innovations are essential. Many science projects are at the level of national or international competitions, which is a little too much in my non-expert opinion. Anyway, I know a girl who told me that it was impossible for her to compete with her classmates who were as smart as those students from Indian Institute Of Technology. They are just too brilliant.

On the other hand, the school facilities are strained to an unbearable level due to overcrowding. Dining halls are repurposed for all kinds of other uses; lab spaces are reduced or over-scheduled.

Moms And School Grades

In these 4.5 high schools, Moms have to be as diligent as their children in fighting for better grades. Since teachers cannot give everybody an A and a non-A is unacceptable to Asian psyche, there is a lot of anguish about grades. I’ve witnessed many moms who go out of their way to argue with the school, the counselor, the teacher whenever a “B” shows up.

I have an easy solution to this problem–eliminate B and migrate all the B into A- . That will save a lot of trouble and a lot of heartache.

Education Guerrillas

Since these 4.5 schools are so hard to get in and these 4.5 townships are so expensive to live in for immigrants, education guerillas have emerged. These are families who can’t afford to live in these townships but still wish to get their kids into these schools. They use all kinds of tricks and explore all kinds of loopholes. And they have to stay one step ahead of the townships’ education task forces, which are out to catch them and penalize them.

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Image by Mediamodifier from Pixabay