San Dieguito Union High School District superintendent claims Asian students perform well because they are typically wealthy Chinese immigrants

San Dieguito Union High School District provided mandatory equity training for its Board of Trustees, according to Wenyuan Wu of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation. She posted a clip of the training on Twitter. In the training session clip, a person asked, “Do we know why Asians do so well in school?” Superintendent Cheryl James-Ward then responded:

So here in San Dieguito, we have an influx of Asians from China, and the people who are able to make that journey are wealthy. You cannot come to America and buy a house for $2 million unless you have money. You cannot send kids and send them with a guardian unless you have money. So you’re going to be getting kids who are most affluent and have the four capitals, which I call the emotional capital, the financial capital, the educational capital, and the social capital coming here to the United States and coming specifically to our area.

When one person questioned her narrative by explaining that Asian students perform well because they have their parents and grandparents living with them, the superintendent responded that “socio-economics” plays a role in why Asian students do so well. She explained:

We look at where our kids live. In my community in Carmel Valley, I have – not so much today but up until a couple of years ago – we had a large influx of Chinese families moving in – sight unseen into our homes, into the community. And that requires money. The whole family comes – grandparents, parents. And the grandparents were there to support the kids at home. Whereas in some of our Latinx communities, they don’t have that type of money. Parents are working two jobs. They’re working from sun up until sun down.