The Invisible Barrier

Cheng moved to the United States with her family 10 years ago, when her daughter was just about to enter primary school. Cheng works at the China Press, a government-sponsored Chinese newspaper. Though a working parent, as an editor in a Chinese newsroom, she doesn’t need to speak English.

More than 8.4 million U.S. residences speak Chinese as their primary or only language, second largest non-English speaking group, according to the American Community Survey Reports. The language barrier is a burning pain in their education and communication, especially with their family.

“Parents who do not speak English well may feel uncomfortable or unwelcome getting involved with their children’s schools,” says Maki Park, a researcher at Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy.

Teacher-parent conference is essential for student’s success at school. Teachers can provide private information, not written on official transcript, like test scores and class rankings to the parents during the conference. Parents and teachers can exchange concerns frankly on the student’s academic performance as students don’t have access to the discussion.

However, the conference with each teacher is strictly timed as 3-minute session. And the conference only takes place twice a year. There is no enough time for the teacher to understand how each student learns and performs at home, and parents strive every minutes to better understand their children at school.

“When teachers lack understanding of families’ cultural contexts, it can hinder children’s development,” says Fred Ramirez, assistant professor at California State University, Fullerton.

The English interpreter volunteer program which recruits Chinese and Korean speaking students from New York University and Columbia to help Stuyvesant high school students’ parents, who don’t understand or speak English, to talk to the teachers.

The conferences last two days, one in the evening and another in the afternoon. “There would not be as many parents who need interpreter tonight,” explains Andrew Wong, a school staff member. “As it is an evening session, most parents who come are working parents, which means most of them would need to speak English at work.”

In the corridor, looking for the room, Cheng accidentally meets her daughter, Jiahui Liu, 16, a sophomore, still here after school as a helper. Liu is sitting outside a classroom helping parents sign up on the appointment sheet and serving as a timekeeper for the visiting sessions.

“How many teachers have you visited?” asks her daughter Liu, in Mandarin, sitting behind a blue table, together with another Chinese girl.

“I just came and am looking for the room,” answered Cheng, with a smile. She always smiles at her daughter.

“It’s right here. You can directly get in,” said the flighty young girl, sounding annoyed. “There’s no parent waiting right now.”

In the drawing lab, Dr. Ray Wheeler, a long-haired Englishman in black suit, is sitting behind the work station, his laptop open. As Cheng walks in, he stands up and greets her with a quick handshake.

“She is doing well,” says Dr Wheeler, looking up Liu’s record in his computer. “She scored 86 in her first test and 94 in her homework.”

After the interpreter translates the conversation, the teacher continues, “She participates in class actively and is working towards a great performance. You don’t need to worry about her in this class at all.”

“So she didn’t do well in her first test, did she?” Cheng is still concerned about her daughter’s performance, even after the teacher’s praise.

“Well, she is getter better and she has a great idea for her second project,” said the Englishman. “She should be able to score 90 or 91 on average in her final grade.”

Ninety is high enough for an “excellent” grade. In a competitive, specialized high school like Stuyvesant, which requires prospective students to score highly on the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, an “excellent” grade is even harder to achieve.

“The competition here is severe,” says Cheng. “Most students who manage to get into the school went to extra training sessions in their spare time. It is almost an open secret.”

Stuyvesant admits nearly 1000 students each year, of which 77 percent are minorities. However, of all the minorities, 70 percent are Asian, while Chinese take half of the total admitted population. On contrary, the number of Latino and African-American students remains single digit for years.

“Many minorities complain that it’s unfair to admit so many Chinese students into the school and, thus, propose admission reform with racial quotas proportional to their population,” says Cheng. “However, such reform is unfair for us. We, Chinese parents, have the tradition to value education a lot. We prepared our children for the accelerated specialized high schools. We send our children to learning centers in spite of the high cost.”

According to some high school test preparation advertisements listed online, the classes may cost as much as $3000 for a 5-week session, with 2-hour classes each week. “Many complain that they can’t afford such expensive learning centers given their living conditions. However, we, Chinese parents, are not much better off anyway,” defends Chen. “The only difference is, we do want our children to enjoy the best education. So we save every penny as we can and invest them into our children’s education.”

Cheng makes merely $30,000 a year as a newspaper editor. With her husband working in an environmental testing lab and her parents living in a nursing home, the household strives to support their only daughter with the best they can achieve.

Besides the eight classes in school, Liu, like 87% of the other students in Stuyvesant, also takes AP classes. The 3 classes she enrolls in are European history, statistics and chemistry. “The workload for her is so heavy that I don’t bare to push her for any extra tutorials after school anymore,” said Cheng sympathetically. “She has almost no time for any leisure activity.”