Since 1965, and especially after 1990, more skilled migrants have come to the United States from Asia than ever before. First, please give at least three examples of public laws that shaped these mig

As well-educated, technically skilled professionals, many Asian Americans parents placed priority on a rigorous education, especially in math and the figu7be 6. Mission San Jose High School has become an internationally renowned public high school, especially popular among Asian American families. Photo by author. This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 55 sciences, that would prepare their children to enter professions like their own. Whereas many established White families claimed to want less com- petitive schools that off ered a more “well-rounded” and “balanced” educa- tion, Asian American families were widely associated with an increasing sense of academic competition, stress, and a culture that placed a premium on high grades and academic rigor. Tensions over these diff erences catalyzed racial and ethnic tensions within the Mission San Jose schools and led a num- ber of White families to leave the neighborhood and the district. Th is was also true for a number of native-born Asian Americans, who perceived the area as becoming too heavily driven by Asian immigrant values. Th e social reshuffl ing sparked by Asian Americans migration to Mission San Jose schools runs counter to the typical narrative of suburban segregation.

Most scholarship has focused on Whites’ eff orts to seal themselves off from racial integration in schools, especially with African Americans, because of racism, fears of property value decline, and reduced educational quality. 4 Th e traditional narrative of White fl ight focuses on the movement of Whites away from inner-city schools and the battles fought to give students of color greater access to White suburban schools through policies such as busing and regional redistricting. Th e dynamics of White fl ig ht explored in this chapter are di ff er- ent. In Mission San Jose, academic competition and the perception of dispa- rate educational values between White and Asian American families have produced and reinforced racial divisions. Th is fragmentation occurred within suburbs as well as among two relatively economically privileged groups oft en thought to exist on the same side of the educational divide. Such divisions contributed to the racialization of Mission San Jose schools as spaces that seemingly marked Asian Americans’ inability or unwillingness to assimilate the dominant culture of American education and instead introduce “foreign” practices that many established families claimed were “inappropriate” and “unhealthy” in American suburban schools. Th e racial undertones of educational debates in Fremont were also evident in the public deliberation over school boundaries. As Whites left Mission San Jose and the schools became increasingly dominated by Asian American students, Asian American families found themselves, somewhat inadvert- ently, competing for spots within increasingly racially “segregated” schools.

When the Fremont School District tried to redraw the Mission San Jose attendance boundaries to address population and achievement imbalances across the district, the uproar that ensued showed that Asian American edu- cational practices and ideas continued to be marginalized as out of place and This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 56 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? foreign. But the case also showed that education has been an important arena in which Asian Americans have defended their right to helping to craft the culture and character of suburban space. f7bom w7fite to asian ame7bican sc7fools and neig7fbo7b7foods Asian Americans’ decisions about education have transformed the social geography of Silicon Valley and the neighborhoods in which they have set- tled. While immigration reform, globalization, and economic restructuring in the latter half of the 20th century forever changed the face of the valley, not all neighborhoods were equally aff ected. Mission San Jose quickly rose to the top as Fremont’s hub of Asian American families. According to the 2014 American Community Survey, Mission San Jose had the highest con- centration of Asian American residents of any neighborhood in Fremont, with Asian Americans comprising 71% of the population. Asian Americans of various ethnic backgrounds consistently reported that schools were their top reason for locating to Mission San Jose and, for many, to Fremont. In the 1980s, Asian Americans employed in high tech tended to move to Cupertino, Sunnyvale, and Menlo Park—more estab- lished communities closer to the valley core that had higher-ranking public schools. But Fremont, and more particularly Mission San Jose, off ered fami- lies an enticing alternative—increasingly good schools and new upper-end housing at a more aff ordable price. Looking for a nice neighborhood with good schools for their young son, Dan and Elaine Chan had been convinced that Mission San Jose schools were worth a try when they purchased their home in the neighborhood in the early 1980s. Th ey quickly realized what a wise decision they had made. Over the next few decades, many other Asian American families followed suit. Th e path that Irene Yang took to Mission San Jose was typical of many Asian Americans who arrived in Fremont in the 1980s and 1990s. As we chatted over tea in her kitchen, she recalled her early days in Fremont. Irene had recently fi nished her graduate degree, gotten married to Henry, and had her fi rst son. Th e Yangs then decided to move from New York to Fremont.

Irene’s brother and mother were already living in the city, and Irene and Henry felt that as Asian Americans, they would have better job prospects on the West Coast than in the East. In the mid-1990s the Yangs rented a home This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 57 in Ardenwood, a neighborhood in northern Fremont with smaller and more aff ordable homes than those in Mission San Jose. Th e neighborhood, how- ever, had highly ranked elementary schools, which was the major draw for Irene, just as it had been for her brother who lived nearby. Irene enrolled her son in the Mandarin bilingual program at Forest Park Elementary, which in 1993 was one of the fi rst of its kind in the state. Many credited the program with helping to make the neighborhood attractive to Chinese American families such as the Yangs. Aft er several years Irene’s husband’s real estate business was booming, and they had saved enough to purchase a house in Mission San Jose—a neighborhood where, Irene explained, most Asian Americans in Fremont aspired to live. Th e Yangs made the move right aft er their son graduated from elementary school so as to avoid sending him to a lesser-ranked middle school in Ardenwood and place him on track to attend Mission High. Asian Americans’ migration into Mission San Jose schools compounded year aft er year. As more families moved into the neighborhood for the schools, test scores rose—and as test scores rose, more Asian A merican fami- lies located within the neighborhood (Map 4). In a few short decades, Mission High became one of the highest ranking schools in California, with an internationally recognized reputation. In 2008, 2009, and 2010, Mission High was ranked the number one compre- hensive high school in the state, based on its standardized test scores. In 2009, US News and World Report rated Mission High as the 36th best aca- demic school (among both public and private schools) and 4th best public open-enrollment high school in the nation. William Hopkins Junior High, its feeder school, had the highest standardized test scores among public jun- ior high schools in California in 2005 and 2007. Mission San Jose’s four elementary schools have also been consistently ranked among the highest in the state. Mission High’s academic ascent happened as quickly as its demographic transformation. When the California Board of Education fi rst began record- ing racial demographics in 1981, Mission High was 84% White. Mexican Americans and Japanese Americans who had lived on and worked the land for generations made up the majority of its non-White students. Having grown up in the area, Paula Jones, who now teaches at Mission High, recalled that wel l into the 1980s, the school was referred to as “Little Scandinavia” for its predominance of blond-haired, blue-eyed students. But as Maria Lewis, a longtime Mission San Jose resident and now a teacher at Mission High, This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 58 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? observed, “Th e 1990s marked the end of the dominance of the White, blond- haired group at Mission High.” Between 1981 and 2009, Mission High’s White population declined from 84% to 14%, while its Asian American population soared from 7% to 83%.

Growth among students of Chinese and Indian descent far outpaced those of other Asian American groups. In 2009, Chinese Americans made up 49% of Mission High’s Asian American student body, and Indian Americans made up another 17%. Roughly a quarter identifi ed as “other,” a category that likely includes a large number of students of mixed Asian and Caucasian ancestry, which Mission High students commonly refer to as “Wasians” and “Hybrids.” Although neither the school nor the district record parental country of origin, most Chinese American families are reportedly from Taiwan, a trend consist- ent with the larger neighborhood. 5 Most students are native-born, second- generation Asian Americans, and a number are among the so-called nm nm nm nmnm nm nmnm nm nm nm nm nm nmnm nm nm nmn nm nm nm nmnm nm nm nm nm nm nm Legend Fremont Top Rated Schools Mission High Attendance Boundary % Asian by Block Group Less than 32%32.01%–41%41.01%–52%52.01%–67% 67.01% or more 0 1.25 2.5 5 Miles ± map 4. Asian Americans have clustered near Fremont’s top performing schools, all of which rank 10 out of 10 on California’s Academic Performance Index, the state’s standard measure of academic achievement. Th e Mission High attendance area also has the city’s largest con- centration of Asian American residents. Image by author. This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 59 1.5-generation, who were born overseas but raised in the United States. In 2010, 76% of Mission High’s Asian American students were born in the United States, but over two-thirds spoke a non-English language at home, an indication of their parents’ immigrant status. Latinos and African Americans made up only 2% and 0.5% of the student body, respectively (Table 2).A s evidence of Mission Hig h ’s chang ing student body, at g raduation time administrators oft en ask students to line up by C’s and W’s because of the large number of graduating students with common Chinese last names such as Chen and Wong. With many parents employed as Silicon Valley engineers and researchers, Asian Americans have also raised the class status of the school and the neighbor- hood. In 2014, 70% of Mission San Jose residents age 25 and over held a bache- lor’s degree or higher, and among these nearly 40% held a graduate degree or higher. Among employed adults, 73% worked in management, business, science, and arts-related occupations, with over half of these related to computer tech- nolog y, engineering, or science. 6 In 2005, the neighborhood appeared on Forbes magazine’s list of the 500 most affl uent communities in the United States with a median income of over $114,000. By 2014, this had risen to $144,000. 7 Th at same year, less than 4% of Mission High students qualifi ed for free and reduced lunch, compared to 17% across the district and 58% in the state. David Li reminded me of just how much had changed in Mission San Jose since he had grown up there in the late 1960s and 1970s. We gathered at Mission Coff ee, a trendy and upbeat café just steps from the original 1981* * 1985 1990 19 9 5 2000 2005 2010 Race White* 84% 81% 71% 53% 39% 19% 12% Asian 7% 10% 25% 41% 57% 58% 84% Hispanic 7% 6% 3% 4% 3% 2% 2% Black 1% 1% 1% 2% 1% 1% 1% Other 1% 1% 1% 0% 0% 20% 1% API Scores*** ——— —882935951 *A l l non-Hispanic categories exclude Hispanic populations. **1981 is the first year that the State of California recorded school racial demographics. ***Califo7bnia’s current Academic Performance Index standardized testing system began in 1999. table 2. Mission San Jose High’s student population went from predominantly White to Asian American in only a few decades. During the same period, the standardized tests scores for the school rose sharply. This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 60 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? mission—an ideal place to think about old and new. Here, Mission High teens crowded around overstuff ed couches and rustic tables piled high with laptops, textbooks, and lattes, while old-timers discussed the local land- scape paintings that lined the walls, read, and visited with neighbors and members of the various local civic and social clubs that regularly met there.

Over the hum of these many voices, David recounted tales of his early school life and refl ected on how much had changed. He recalled that when he graduated from Mission High in the early 1980s, “everyone just drove a car to get around.” But during his most recent visit to the school, students were sporting fancier cars than his. Many arrived in Lexuses, Audis, and BMWs, the latter of which is commonly known to students as “Basic Mission Wheels.” Th e popularity of Mission San Jose schools has also driven up the neigh- borhood’s home prices. In June 2016, the neighborhood’s median home sales value was over $1.4 million, compared to around $905,000 for the city as a whole. Houses in Mission San Jose regularly sell for upwards of $400,000 above those of other Fremont neighborhoods. While the neighborhood has long maintained a reputation for large expensive homes, the gap in home values has become more extreme over time. In September 1996, for example, Mission San Jose homes sold, on average, for just over $100,000 more than other homes in Fremont—$326,800 compared to $212,000. 8 Because of its highly ranked schools, real estate agents now commonly describe Mission San Jose as a “diamond area,” a neighborhood where prices simply will not drop. 9 While median home prices actually did decline during the Great Recession, they lost less value than homes in the rest of the city, only 11% compared to 16%, respectively. 10 Schools have come to defi ne so much of the culture and identity of the area that residents will oft en simply refer to their neighborhood by their local elementary school—Gomes, Mission Valley, Chadbourne, or Weibel. In Mission San Jose, even the subtle diff erences among these schools carry real social cachet. global and local education st7bategies Th e concentration of Asian American families within Mission San Jose is no accident. Various scholars have shown that the education of young chil- dren is a major driver of Asian emigration, especially to the United States or Canada. 11 Taiwanese families oft en plot out decisions regarding their This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 61 children’s education from a very young age based on their desires for dual citizenship, bilingual education, Chinese cultural education, and American university degrees. 12 Formal channels for information sharing and social networks play a criti- cal role in informing these decisions. Ads for Mission San Jose homes and schools regularly appear in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and India (Figure 7). Many residents reported that news about Mission San Jose schools’ Academic Performance Index (API) scores, California standardized measure of academic performance, was widely circulated abroad and among Asian immigrants in the United States. For instance, John and Tina Cho, who both emigrated from Taiwan, had heard about the “good schools” in Fremont from friends while they were living in Texas. In the late 1980s when John’s company, a geotechnical engineering fi rm, transferred his position to San Jose, they immediately began house hunting in Fremont. Th e Chinese New Home Buyers Guide, a free bimonthly newsletter that is circulated widely throughout Silicon Valley, undoubtedly infl uences the decision of home buy- ers with ads for homes in the neighborhood commonly displaying the tagline “Mission San Jose schools.” figu7b e 7. Mission San Jose homes oft en appear on television and in print ads in Taiwan, India, and China. Th is listing for a single-family home on a Taiwanese real estate website emphasizes its location within the Mission San Jose school district (Yibada, 2010). This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 62 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? Within Fremont, news about test scores and school quality are common- place. Diana Li, who emigrated from Taiwan, suggested that for Asian immi- grants in Fremont, “If you ask them ‘What’s the score of this and that for this school?,’ they all know.” While overstating the case for all Asian immigrants, Diana also emphasized that the city has attracted a large number of Asian American families who place a premium on high-performing schools, oft en as measured by test scores. 13 Parents sometimes go to great lengths to enroll their children in Fremont schools. A number of Mission High parents regularly shuttle back and forth between multiple countries, while their children remain in the neighborhood to attend school. Th ough the number is diffi cult to estimate, Principal Sandy Prairie explained that it was not at all uncommon for her to receive phone calls from Taiwan or China in response to parents’ concerns about poor grades or test scores. 14 School administrators also expressed concerns about Mission High’s increasing number of “parachute kids,” youths left in the United States with relatives, friends, or caretakers to pursue their education while their par- ents remained abroad. In other popular Asian immigrant destinations such as Vancouver and Los Angeles, this has been found to be a common educational strateg y but one that has serious potential consequences. 15 Children are some- times targets of crime and become unruly, and marital aff airs and divorce are more frequent than in other Asian immigrant families. 16 To enroll their children in Mission San Jose schools, families have been known to rent or buy much smaller homes than they can aff ord or shuttle several related or unrelated families through a single house in order to stay within the attendance boundaries. For fami lies from India , doubling or tripling up fami lies into homes or converting rooms into garages in order to aff ord homes in prized neighborhoods with good schools has been found to be common in Silicon Va l l e y a n d e l s e w h e r e . 17 Likewise, several interviewees reported that it was com- mon for immigrant families to pool their resources to buy homes in Mission San Jose in order to enroll their children in the local schools. Th e schools in Mission San Jose are in such high demand that they have also become the focus of citywide debates about unscrupulous attendance practices. In 2004, an exposé in Mission High’s student newspaper, the Smoke Signal, found that 34% of Mission High students surveyed knew someone who attended Mission High illegally. 18 Some described such prac- tices as commonplace. Among them was Sally Park, a second-generation Korean American who admitted that she attended Mission San Jose schools for years by using her aunt’s address. Her mother was a single parent with two This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 63 children who could not aff ord to purchase a home in the neighborhood when they fi rst relocated from Los Angeles to Fremont. Even aft er she saved up and was able to purchase a home in Mission San Jose, Sally’s mother continued to work two to three jobs to pay the mortgage. Some I spoke to charged that A sian A mericans were more li kely than other g roups to engage in these prac- tices, though this could not be substantiated. Because so many families have come to the Mission San Jose neighbor- hood for its schools, some say that the schools have contributed to unusually high neighborhood turnover. Mary Walker, an Indian American with two sons enrolled at Mission High, could not attest to whether this was true for the neighborhood as a whole but suggested that her own experiences seemed to fi t the stereotype. Her youngest son was a freshman at Mission High when we met, and thus Mary explained that she and her husband “only need Mission for another four years.” Aft er that they will likely move to a neigh- borhood with less expensive homes, she projected. “I think that the majority of the families will just move out when their kids are done with their school unless they want to keep the homes for their kids, to send their grandkids [to Mission High],” she explained. Stories oft en circulate throughout the neighborhood about immigrants arriving in Mission San Jose with suitcases of cash to purchase homes for exorbitant prices in order to enroll their kids in its schools. Most families I met, however, worked hard to make ends meet. Mary was one of the few stay-at-home moms with whom I spoke. Her husband, who sat poring over a mound of paperwork at the dining room table on the weekend we met, was able to support her decision to remain at home thanks to the six-fi gure income he earned working for the high-tech giant Google. Mary pointed out, however, that in most Asian American families she knew in the neighbor- hood, both parents worked long hours in stressful jobs and relied on their salaries as their “sole means of survival.” Some even hired drivers to shuttle their children around to various aft er-school programs. Th eir detailed plan- ning underscored the importance many Asian American parents in Mission San Jose placed on their children’s education and how hard they worked to support it. While many Mission San Jose families agreed on the trends that were reshaping the neighborhood, they held diff erent interpretations of the forces that drove them and their impacts. Many White families with whom I spoke set their stories of neighborhood change against a backdrop of the tight-knit and stable middle-class community they remembered. Th ey oft en saw This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 64 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? skyrocketing housing prices amid what they perceive as a decreasing quality of life in the neighborhood. Th ey read the overcrowded houses that now pack the hillsides, unscrupulous school attendance practices, and a lack of neigh- borhood cohesion brought on by rapid neighborhood turnover as a cost being borne on the backs of themselves and their children for the benefi t of mon- eyed immigrants with a laser-like focus on the schools. Many questioned whether the neighborhood still held the values and character that drew them to it in the fi rst place. In contrast, Asian American parents tended to empha- size the many sacrifi ces they had made for their children’s education and the value for their children of receiving a quality American education. t7fe value of an ame7bican education Why do so many Asian Americans in Fremont seem to place such weight on high-performing schools? Both cultural and structural forces play formative roles. Th at is, the beliefs, customs, habits, and practices of Asian Americans matter, as do the social, economic, and political forces that have helped to shape these ideas over time. Yet, the former have oft en been the focus of eff orts to explain Asian Americans’ high levels of education and economic success in the United States relative to other groups, propelling Asian Americans’ status as a model minority. 19 Since the term “model minority” was fi rst coined in the 1960s, it has been applied to various ethnic and religious groups to highlight their “success,” as typically measured by income, education, occupation, and other socioeco- nomic indicators, relative to other racial minority groups. Asian Americans, especially East Asians, have been its prime targets. While superfi cially casting Asian Americans in a positive light, scholars have long recognized the fallacies behind the myth and the harm it causes for both those to whom it is applied and those to whom it is not. For nonmodel groups, the model minority myth tends to collectively fault them for failing to achieve in the same ways and to the same degree as the model group, erasing the unequal barriers to and indi- cators of achievement. For model groups, the myth tends to hold all to the high standards achieved by a few, downplaying wide intragroup variation as well as individual and institutional hurdles, including those based on race and class.

20 Th e high academic performance of Asian American students is a com- monly cited feature of the myth. Looking at the emphasis that many Asian American families place on education through a more multifaceted lens This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 65 creates a more complex picture and underscores the vulnerability they face within the American social and economic order.In Mission San Jose, many residents related Asian Americans parents’ focus on high-performing schools to educational practices in Asia. In much of Asia, one’s level of education oft en serves as the primary indicator of one’s social status, and one’s test scores oft en serve as the primary signifi er of aca- demic achievement. 21 Excelling academically is the major vehicle for gaining social status and socioeconomic privilege. Randy Zeng, an immigrant from Taiwan, explained that many Asian countries have extremely competitive testing cultures in which “you take the one test and that decides your life.” He described the rigorous exam system that he went through in Taiwan that allowed him to attend graduate school in the United States: You have only one chance to take the high school exam nationwide and rank it. Number one high school, number two high school, all based on your score. It [has] nothing to do with your activity, nothing else, talent, nothing.

Strictly that. When you apply to college, it’s the same. One exam decide[s] everything. In both Taiwan and China, exams at the elementary level oft en determine what hig h school students wi l l attend and if they wi l l be able to go to col lege.

Exam time is treated as seriously as many national holidays. 22 In India, only students scoring the highest on college entrance exams are able to study medicine and engineering. Th e next best can study business, and those at the bottom have far fewer options. Further, such degrees oft en carry real social weight. “For Indians, it’s more like, if you’re not a doctor or an engineer then you’re nothing,” one Mission High student told National Public Radio reporter Claudio Sanchez. 23 In Vietnamese, one of the biggest insults you can give someone is “Do mat day,” which means that one has lost his or her education. 24 Education is also oft en a critical part of the success stories of Asian American parents in Mission San Jose and one of the only ways that they know of to help their children succeed. Irene Yang brought this point home.

While contemplating why parents at Mission High seemed to hold such high expectations for their children, she refl ected on how powerfully her experi- ences as an Asian immigrant had shaped her views:

I’m fi rst generation. Th e way I see it is I did well. I did fi ne so far in life, you know? I progressed, did well, because I have a pretty good education from school. So I don’t really know any other way of achieving. This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 66 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? Both Irene and her husband were graduates of Columbia University in New York. To her, their large home, stable jobs, and comfortable middle-class life- style seemed a testament of the value of a “good” American education in achieving wealth and success in the United States.Other Asian American parents said that education was an important legacy they wanted to pass on to their children. “[For the] majority of immigrants, there is no family wealth, there is no inheritance,” Mary Walker explained.

“Th e only thing that you can give [your kids] is the skill to make it on their own.” Even though many Asian Americans in Silicon Valley are highly edu- cated professionals, they are oft en also the fi rst in their families to “succeed,” and their class status is still precarious. Anthropologist Sarah Heiman docu- mented a high degree of anxiety among newly minted middle-class suburban- ites who oft en fear “falling back” into the lower classes from which they came.

Th is group, she argued, feels a constant need to fi ght to maintain their privi- lege. 25 Having children who thrive educationally is one way of securing that status. Indeed, it is common for all U.S. immigrant groups, not only Asians, to emphasize education among the second generation. 26 American degrees can also translate to high social status and economic mobility. Degrees from American colleges are important forms of social capi- tal that demand monetary returns and job security in Asian countries. 27 Aiwah Ong argues that among Asian immigrants, good schools “ethnicize and index their cosmopolitan citizenship.” 28 A family’s ability to place its children in good American schools shows that they have “made it” within the global economic system. Education also serves as a means by which some Asian American parents seek to protect their children from the eff ects of racial discrimination. 29 If their children can excel in education, many believe that they will stand a much better chance of being accepted into American society and withstand- ing the inevitable blows of racism. Education can even help Asian immigrants gain American citizenship or temporary residency in the United States, as most now enter on educational or professional work visas. Natalie Tindo’s experience is indicative of the chain migrations that oft en accompany educational visas. Like many Indonesians of Chinese descent, Natalie was sent to the United States for college in the 1970s, both to get an American education and to avoid social unrest in her home country. Aft er she became a citizen, she was able to use the family reunifi cation provision of the immigration law to get visas for the rest of her fami ly to come to the United States. Hong Kong immig rants oft en This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 67 strategically use their children as a kind of “health insurance” by selecting diff erent sites for their education that will help them obtain Green Cards and expand their real estate holdings. 30 For the parents of children who are not able to gain entry into competitive secondary schools in Asia, placing their kids in U.S. schools can help to ensure that their kids can still attend college. 31 For students from Taiwan, an American education can even serve as a means of avoiding compulsory military service. 32 Th us, for many Asian American families in Mission San Jose, education is not considered among the many credentials upon which they can rely; it is the primary vehicle to raise their social and class status and ensure their fami- lies’ economic and political security. For many families, education is key to the ways in which they conceive of their own success and that of their chil- dren.

33 It is not something to be taken lightly or for granted. Th e value that many Asian American families place on education has reshaped the culture at Mission San Jose schools and raised tough questions about what a quality education means at Mission High. a c7fanged sc7fool cultu7be In its early years, Mission Hig h was widely viewed as an average neig hborhood high school, roughly equal to two of the other fi ve high schools in the Fremont Uni fi ed School District. 34 In 1974 it was well regarded locally, but students’ level of academic achievement was still poor by today’s standards, with grade point averages (GPAs) ranging between 2.0 and 3.0. 35 Shane Taylor, a 35-year Fremont resident, recalled that when his kids were going to school at Mission High in the early 1980s, a time that he describes as before its “transition,” there were many students who performed quite poorly, especially compared to today. In 1987, 65% of students went to college, 40% went to four-year institu- tions, and 25% went to community colleges. 36 But since 2000, Mission High has maintained a near 100% graduation rate and in 2010 had 31 valedictorians (out of 512 total graduates), all with GPAs above a 4.0; 81% of students were on the honor roll, and 94% of the graduating class enrolled in college. Sixty- four students went on to study at the University of California, Berkeley, and several others went to prestigious institutions such as Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, Cornell, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technolog y (MIT). “All the Ivy Leagues know about Mission,” explained Annie Tan, a Chinese American parent of two Mission High students. This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 68 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? Mission High’s curriculum is one indication of change. Once-popular classes in woodworking, auto, electrical, and metalworking skills are no longer taught at Mission High. Instead, Mission High now off ers a vast array of honors and advanced placement (AP) courses, particularly in math and sciences. In the 2009–2010 academic year, 77% of juniors and seniors com- pleted one of Mission High’s 52 AP sections, 85% of which were math- and science-related. In 2011, Mission High was rated as number one among US News and World Report’s “Best High Schools for Math and Science.” Th e school administers around 1,800 AP exams per year (for a student body of 2,150 students). 37 And in 2005, Mission High had the highest AP statistics exam pass rate of any school of its size in the world. 38 Principal Sandy Prairie attributed their success in part to the school ’s polic y of insisting that students take basic prerequisites before enrolling in APs but admitted that the policy has faced heavy parental criticism. “It’s been a huge fi ght and struggle with our parents group because they don’t understand why their kid can’t take [AP biolog y or chemistry] in the 10th grade,” she explained. 39 As students have advanced academically, so too have the credentials of Mission High faculty. Jan Frydendahl, who grew up in the area and gradu- ated from Mission High in the 1980s, is among 4 math teachers at Mission with a doctorate. Sitting in his classroom with various mathematical equa- tions pinned to the wall that I could not even begin to decipher, Frydendahl explained that he pursued his PhD while teaching at Mission High because he realized that he needed to “evolve” to better meet the needs of his stu- dents. 40 Now he teaches only AP math classes. And in 2010, 8 out of the 31 students in his AP fi nite mathematics class went on to study at MIT. In response to heightened demand, the neighborhood has developed a robust network of supplementary education. Ohlone Community College is popularly known as “Mission on the Hill” because of the large number of Mission High students who attend classes there on weekends and over the summer. Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) prep classes, professional tutors, and other academic services are scattered among the neighborhoods’ many strip malls. Students oft en attend aft er-school and weekend Chinese classes and academic summer camps and are even known to study their textbooks and be tutored on coursework the summer before classes begin. 41 A popular Mission High cheer reaffi rms the school’s reputation: “Cosine, sine—cosine, sine—3.14159—2400s on SATs—and yes, we all take fi ve A Ps.” Th e social life at Mission High has also been transformed. In the 1970s, Mission High held a reputation as a somewhat wild school with regular This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 69 reports about girls’ locker room break-ins and wild homecoming parties.

One Smoke Signal reporter described it as a place where “profanity bounces off the walls in the hallways and during lunchtime [and] students are ambushed with food in daily lunchroom free-for-alls.” 42 Administrators also regularly complained about the lack of student involvement in clubs.

One student joked that the most popular clubs were those with “no consti- tution, no offi cers, no dues, and no meetings.” 43 To d a y, a d m i n i s t r a t o r s debate whether students start too many clubs to pad their college resumes.

Mission High’s long list of clubs includes a range of social, cultural, and philanthropic activities that include bangra dance, Bollywood cinema, Chinese yo-yo, Japanese animae, Asian pop music, and raising money for Chinese orphans. Sports serve as another indicator of change. Up until the 1980s, Mission High was largely known as a football school and was ranked among California’s top teams for several years running. But for the past couple of years the school has struggled to even fi eld a varsity team, and in 2002 coaches canceled the season for lack of interest among upper classmen. According to Coach Kevin Lydon, tr ying to muster enthusiasm for footba l l on the Mission High campus was “like trying to sell electricity to the Amish.” 44 Students commonly joke with one another that the only reason to go to a football game is to get physics extra credit (as the physics teacher is also the football coach). Meanwhi le, the badminton team is larger than the footba l l team and, like Mission High’s chess and debate teams, is highly competitive regionally and nationally. In only a few short decades, Mission High transformed from a typical White suburban American high school into an internationally renowned academic institution made up of predominantly Asian American students from middle- and upper-middle-class immigrant families, many of whom placed great weight on their academic success in a competitive and rigorous environment. Th e Pressure to Succeed Swelling Asian American student populations at Mission High corresponded with rising academic expectations and an increasing pressure to succeed.

While stress in top-performing high schools is not unusual, the particularly high levels of stress and stressors facing many Asian American students are one of the downsides of “success stories” such as Mission High. This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 70 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? Mission High has been recognized as one of the fi rst schools in the nation to participate in Stressed Out Students (SOS), a program started by a former Mission High teacher that instructs students and parents on managing stress.

Noting troubling trends in the numbers of students seeking permission to study at home because of stress and severe mental health problems, SOS was brought to Mission High in 2007 by then vice principal Sandy Prairie. 45 By 2010, it was one of the school’s most active student clubs. According to an SOS survey of 1,175 Mission High students, more than half showed signs of depression or burnout. 46 Another Mission High study found that students average about fi ve hours of sleep per night. 47 And some say that stress has led to rampant problems with cheating. In one extreme case in 2003, six Mission High students broke into the district’s server and altered their grades and offi cial transcripts to improve their chances of getting into the colleges of their choice. 48 Th e Smoke Signal now regularly dishes out advice on manag- ing academic stress and getting enough sleep while also keeping up grades and selecting the right college. High levels of stress are common to many Mission High students, but many with whom I spoke reported that Asian Americans face more stress, or at least a diff erent set of stressors, than many of their White peers. I met up with Paula Jones, a seasoned Mission High teacher, in a break between her classes. Pau la , who is W hite, was surprising ly candid when it came to matters of race on campus. She argued that SOS was particularly helpful for Asian American students and parents “because it addresses stress and Asian ethnic- ity and the pressure that these Asian students are under.” Further, she noted that levels of attempted suicides and other self-destructive behaviors in her classroom were more prevalent among her Asian American students, particu- larly Taiwanese Americans. She recalled one Taiwanese American student who passed out in her class over a B grade and another who tried to hang herself in the bathroom over stress and grades. Such extreme cases under- scored for Paula and other administrators the need for outreach to Asian American students and parents, an area where Paula believes that SOS has been particularly eff ective.

One source of stress for many Asian American students is their parents.

Asian American parents are oft en stereotyped as overbearing and strict—the prototypical tiger moms. Made popular by the controversial book by Amy Chua, Th e Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, the term “tiger moms” refers to the stereotypically rigid style of Asian parenting as opposed to the more relaxed styles of Western parents. 49 Having been raised by strict Chinese immigrant This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 71 parents who coupled high expectations with unconditional love, Chua describes how her experiences infl uenced the high bar she set for her own children. Her kids were expected to earn straight A’s, speak fl uent Chinese, and compete internationally in violin and piano and were not allowed to have sleepovers or play dates, participate in school plays, watch television, or play computer games, li ke many of their W hite friends. Simi larly, students at Mission High oft en share stories of Asian American parents who go to extremes to ensure their children’s academic success. Th ey talk about those who coach their kids to be valedictorians, scrutinize every grade, quiz and test, call or e-mail their teachers on a weekly basis, and request extra-credit homework and will even do homework assignments for them. Th ey joke about gray-haired, stressed-out students who will throw away an A-minus for fear of getting punished by parents willing to withhold meals from children with bad grades. And they poke fun at the “Asian grade scale,” wherein A = Average, B = Bad, C = Catastrophe, D = Disowned, and F = Forever Forgotten. 50 However, this strict defi nition of success is only one of the many frames that middle-class Asian Americans adopt in order to promote success among the next generation. 51 In fact, few of the Asian American parents with whom I spoke fi t the tiger mom trope, and most believed that the stereotype was overblown. Several spent countless hours volunteering in the children’s class- rooms and did not consider themselves particularly overbearing when it came to their children’s education. Still, many also felt that they held higher, or at least diff erent, expectations for their children than did White parents. John Cho, who said that his friends oft en questioned his nontraditional Asian parenting style, explained: “We give our kids freedom, but not as [much] freedom as White people give their children.” For many Asian American parents, trying to fi gure out how to strike the right balance between the educational values by which they were raised and prospects facing their children in the United States can be quite diffi cult. 52 While contemplating the struggles that she had with her own son over grades and homework, Irene refl ected that “Maybe if I was a third or fourth genera- tion here, maybe I would be more relaxed about it, because I know not every- body has to go to a good college to be successful.” With her son now enrolled in a California state university and majoring in advertising, Irene had fi nally come to some resolve. She was able to see the value in the path that her son had chosen given the opportunities he had available to him, which were dis- tinctly diff erent from her own. Yet, she also felt proud that she had helped This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 72 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? him get to this point by sometimes pushing him when he did not want to be pushed—a trait she attributed to the way she had been raised.Th e pressure that many Asian American students feel is not only parental but also cultural. A Smoke Signal survey found that most Mission High stu- dents cited pressure from family related to culture as the number one cause of their stress, anxiety, and depression. 53 In a CNN report provocatively titled “Are Asian Students Smarter?” that featured Mission San Jose High, Stanford University cultural psychologist Hazel Marcus argued that many Asian American families consider academic success a child’s duty to the family. “It’s the most important role. It’s your job. It’s what you are supposed to do, is to bring honor to the family by becoming educated,” she said. 54 Min Zhou and Xi-Yuan Li argue that Chinese immigrant parents oft en measure their own success by their children’s educational achievements. “If a child goes to an Ivy League college, his or her parents will feel rewarded and are admired and respected as successful parents. If their children are less successful, they lose face,” they note. 55 Stress is also self-imposed, especially among students who are aware of the many sacrifi ces their parents have made for their education. For instance, in response to a 2006 Wall Street Journal article on hyperinvolved “helicopter parents,” Melony Fong, a second-generation Chinese American student at Mission High, wrote:

When I think about everything my parents have been through in order to provide me with the opportunities that I have, I’m extremely grateful and, in turn, put pressure on myself to excel. Th is is the main force that propels me into taking challenging courses and achieving good grades. 56 Melony pushed herself not because it was what her parents expected but also because it was what she felt she owed them. Upset by a 2004 National Public Radio report about Mission High that she felt implied that Asian American parents were to blame for the high levels of stress at Mission High, Smoke Signal columnist Rebecca Gao explained that “We aim towards our defi ni- tion of success not because our parents expect us to, but rather because we know what we are capable of.” 57 Joining me at Mission Coff ee, Rebecca later explained that while Asian American parents may foster in their children a desire to succeed and a respect for hard work, by the time they get to high school, most Asian American students push themselves. “By that point it becomes so ingrained in our personalities, in our characters. How do we know that this desire to succeed isn’t us?,” she asked. 58 This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 73 Asian American students’ stress is also compounded by the model minor- ity myth. Many Mission High students clearly understood both the upsides and downsides of the stereotype. “Since we’re Asian, we like all the benefi ts that [go] with being a model minority. Except we also have all the pressures as well,” Cindy Wei, a Chinese American senior at Mission High explained.

“We always have to be perfect. We’ve got to get those A’s” (Figure 8). Cindy not only earned good grades but was editor in chief of the student newspaper, producer of the Mission High television station, and a regionally competitive volleyball player. Her eff orts were propelled by both her family’s dreams and those of a society that constantly told her that she could and should do better. Various scholars have documented how Asian Americans benefi t, in terms of their confi dence levels, teacher perceptions, and student tracking, from the stereotypes around their academic exceptionalism. 59 While stereotype threat tends to weaken the academic performance of some groups, particularly African Americans, stereotype performance tends to f igu 7b e 8. M ission Hig h students oft en experience hig h levels of stress over their grades. Th is cartoon published in the student newspaper, the Smoke Signal, illustrates the high standards to which many students hold themselves. Image by Cassie Zhang, artist, Smoke Signal, Mission San Jose High School, Fremont, California. This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 74 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? enhance the academic achievements of Asian Americans. But it also adds to stress and anxiety for Asian Americans who do not meet the high standards as well as those who do. 60 Th e Ethno-Academic Divide Academic stress, competition, and changes in social and academic culture impact everyday social relations at Mission High. Over the years, tensions have fl ared among parents and students over issues such as the school’s cur- riculum, homework, extracurricular activities, and parental involvement.

Th ese issues, especially those centered on academics, oft en divide White and Asian American families and fuel racial and ethnic tensions in the school and the neighborhood. Racial and ethnic identity play an important role in students experience at Mission High. A 2010 Smoke Signal survey found that 72% of Mission High students thought that ethnicity played at least a “somewhat important” role in social relations on campus. 61 Social groups tend to segregate them- selves along racial and ethnic lines, with the primary divisions being among White, Chinese American, and Indian American students. Indian Americans are sometimes accused of thinking of themselves as White and more assimilated than Chinese Americans and, according to many, mix better with White students. Immigrants are oft en labeled as “FOBs” (f re sh off the boat) or “fobby,” suggesting that they are nonassimilated and thus uncool. Among immigrant students, social lines are oft en further delineated based on familial histories in diff erent regions, social castes, and language groups. While students from mainland China sometimes refuse to work with students from Taiwan, students from Hong Kong some- times reject Chinese mainlanders. Cindy quipped that at Mission High, “instead of the Bloods versus Crips, we have Chinese versus Taiwanese.” Diff erences in language, skin color, caste, and religion among Indian Americans can determine who students will work with in class and are criti- cal identity markers. 62 For instance, Mary Walker reported that Indian American students oft en accuse her son of not being a “real Indian” because he is Christian. Racial and ethnic divisions are common in many schools, oft en stemming from several factors, including peer pressure and socioeconomic and cultural diff erences. For African American and Latino students, tracking into lower- division and special education classes, parental education, income levels, and This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 75 teacher biases are commonly noted issues that oft en physically and psycho- logically divide them from their White and Asian American peers. At Mission High, however, competition over grades and stereotypes about aca- demic intelligence drive wedges between and among White and Asian American students. “Mission High is made up of two student bodies,” explained Smoke Signal reporter Jennifer Kao, “those in Honors and those in non-Honors classes.” 63 At Mission High, these are racial and ethnic divid- ing lines as well. Mission High’s academic disparities are most evident between White and Asian American students, whom the California Department of Education considers to be its only “statistically signifi cant” racial groups. In 2009 Mission High’s Asian American students had a base score of 966 compared to 890 for non-Hispanic White students on California’s standard API.

Whites make up the majority of students in the lower-division and special education courses, while Asian American students are overrepresented in the honors and advanced placement courses, particularly those related to math and science. Th is academic divide means that White and Asian American students are less likely to be in the same classes, form friendships, and build social capital. Th e academic divide has also generated crude stereotypes about students’ intelligence and work ethic that reinforce their social divisions. White stu- dents are oft en labeled the “dumb White kids,” “blonds,” “ jocks,” “rah-rahs,” and “theater kids,” while Asian American students are referred to as “curve busters,” “nerds,” and “grade robots.” Th e labels extend to all kinds of social actions. Th ose perceived as being studious and academically oriented are frequently deemed “Asian,” those considered nonacademic are called “White,” and those Asian American students who do not fi t their assigned academic label are allegedly “Whitewashed.” Th ese derisive racial labels reinforce social divisions and the model minor- ity myth about Asian American academic success and, in contrast, a preva- lent assumption that White kids, especially White girls, do not earn good grades or study hard. “My best friend and I are blonde, light-eyed and in honors’ classes. When we walk into the room, you can tell from the body language [that Asian students are] thinking ‘Why are you in this class’?,” explained one Mission San Jose student. 64 In a controversial Smoke Signal article, staff writer Anamarie Farr argued that “I am part of a minority that is the object of discrimination at [Mission High]. No, I’m not a Gupta, Chan, Chen, Wu, or Wong. I am Farr and non-Asian. . . . Just because I don’t weigh This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 76 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? myself down with 4 or 5 or even 6 AP classes does not mean that I lack intel- ligence.” 65 Anamarie’s charge of “reverse racism” exhibited one of the many ways that White students and parents have pushed back against what they see as the dominant Asian culture in Mission San Jose schools. Many Whites have adopted the language of racial oppression to describe their sense of pow- erlessness in the face of rising academic expectations. Such claims, however, too oft en dismiss the ways in which White students still hold a privileged status at Mission High as the “normal” students, to which many Asian American students are oft en compared and judged.

Th ese debates also played themselves out in the classroom. Alice Mitchell described her anger at discovering that when her daughter was in elementary school, students organized a class vote to decide who was the smartest and most “superior race”—Chinese, Taiwanese, Indians, or Caucasians. Her daughter, one of only a few White students in the class, chose not to partici- pate. But as Alice recalled, the Chinese American and Taiwanese American students clearly outvoted the Indian American students. “I don’t remember who won between China and Taiwan,” she added. At Mission High, the racial divide has become so enmeshed within the academic divide that it lends itself to such biological fallacies. Academic performance also plays a signifi cant role in shaping students’ ethnic identities and peer groups. Among Asian Americans, those students who perform well are commonly valorized by their peers, whereas those who perform poorly are more likely to be marginalized. Maxine Frank, who is of mixed Chinese and Caucasian ancestry, relayed that because she is in honors classes, active in school clubs, and hangs out with mostly other Asian American students, she feels more Asian than White at Mission High. Alice Mitchell suggested that because her daughter had high test scores and grades, she is sometimes deemed an “honorary Chinese” or “blond Chinese” and is more accepted by her Asian American peers than many other White stu- dents. In contrast, Sally Park, who is Korean American and described herself as nearly failing out of Mission High, said that her poor academic perfor- mance made her feel like an outsider and led her to hang out primarily among the few African American and Latino kids at school. As is typical for many Asian Americans who do not fi t the model minority stereotype, Sally dis- tanced herself from her coethnic and racial peers. 66 Sally’s struggle also demonstrates the intersection between race, class, and academic performance that further cements social divisions. At Mission High, it was not only her grades but also her family’s income that led Sally to This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 77 feel like an outsider. Her mother was a single parent and was not able to provide Sally with the same advantages as those of many other Mission High students. Now a successful undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, Sally struggled to make sense of how her family’s income had aff ected her experience at Mission: I felt like my experience was so much more diff erent than the average student there. Th ey were involved in so many things. I mean, these kids are just so busy with things. Th ey would be playing some instruments. Th ey would have some sort of lesson like fl ute, or cello, or whatever have you. And then they would have some sort of sporting thing or ballet or whatever. And they all took prep courses for SATs. My mom couldn’t aff ord any of that. I felt like I don’t really belong here and I felt like that what they were doing was how it’s supposed to be. Th is is what successful students do. As Sally demonstrates, diff erences in income are an important indicator of academic achievement not only because of the actual resources that families are able to bring to the table but also because of the ways that “frames of success” are internalized. In Mission San Jose such class divides are subtle, marked sometimes by simply whether one is picked up from campus or not.

“Th e Hill kids,” as they are oft en called, must be driven to campus, whereas students who live in “the fl ats” or “the Apartments,” the neighborhood ’s one and only subsidized public housing project, more oft en walk or take the bus to school. “Students are very conscious of their geographies,” Paula Jones explained. While many students do not conform to the given racial stereotypes at Mission High, their social lives are still shaped by them. Several students noted how hanging out with White students, or hanging out in general, can be interpreted as a sign of one’s academic failure. Alternatively, hanging out with the Asian American students tends to suggest that one has no social life at all. Alice explained that even though her son is in honors classes with mostly Asian American students, he does not have many Asian American friends because they usually talk about homework, and “he’s not willing to become one of those robots.” Sam Phillips, who grew up in Fremont just minutes away from his current home in the Mission San Jose hills, attributed “Asian” educational values to his son’s struggle to live a “normal” teenage life at Mission High: Th e Asian culture does not operate like ours in a social sense. Th ey don’t come over to visit [my son] aft er school. . . . I wouldn’t say that they’re not This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 78 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? allowed, but they’re not encouraged to go and hang out with—I don’t think that they’re encouraged to hang out, even with other Asian families. Th ere’s a lot of studying that takes place. Most of the extracurricular activity is pretty limited to either music or traditional stuff like tae kwon do or martial arts or things like that. Sam’s understanding of Asian culture framed Asian American students as strict, homogeneous, and foreign while also helping to reinforce his claim that his son’s activities were normal. While many of the Asian American parents and students with whom I spoke rebutted Sam’s stereotypes, his com- ments point to the prevalent perceptions about Asian Americans that drive the social positioning of Asian American and White students at Mission High as well as the relationships among them.

Academic competition also oft en aff ects social relations among diff erent racial and ethnic groups. Th ough both Indian American and Chinese American students tend to do well academically, their performance is still subject to intraracial stereotypes. Mary explained that several Indian American parents have made comments to her about Chinese American students being more competitive and have felt threatened by their academic success. Ellie Cho, John and Tina’s daughter, commented that while racial and ethnic stereotypes surround the academic performance of diff erent groups, most people compete with their friends and those in their classes who more than likely are of the same ethnicity. Between White and Chinese Americans, she explained, “We don’t really compete with them because we’re not like friends with them.” 67 Competition, the pressure to succeed, and diff erent ideas about and expectations of academic success contribute to striking social divisions between and among Asian American and White students and parents both inside and outside of Mission High. 68 Stereotypes about intelligence and real disparities in academic performance aff ect students’ identities, social lives, and, as I will show in the next section, their lived geographies. new neig7fbo7b7food geog7bap7fies of 7bace Th e changing culture of Mission San Jose schools and increasing racial and ethnic tensions have created divides not only inside schools but also within the larger neighborhood and region. While many Asian American families have moved to the area in search of competitive, academically rigorous This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 79 schools, many established White families have left in search of less competi- tive schools that they perceived as off ering a more well-rounded and balanced education in a less stressful academic environment. In a clear departure from the traditional pattern of White fl ight, in Mission San Jose the rapid decline in the White population has proceeded amid rising home values and the entry of more well-to-do residents. 69 Th ese patterns have been driven in part by educational competition and diff erences between Asian American and White parents’ ideas about what constitutes a quality education and how their children can succeed. A far less recognizable trend is that even some native-born Asian American families are leaving the area for the very same reasons. Th e departure of both White and non-White families from the area underscores the importance of schools in shaping patterns of suburban racial and ethnic geographies that reinforce the racialization of Asian American space. As more and more White families have left , Mission High has even more clearly evidenced the ways that Asian Americans, and particularly Asian immigrants, are critiqued for their failure to integrate with and adopt the social and spatial norms of their middle-class White peers. Th e New White Flight In a 2005 Wall Street Journal article titled “Th e New White Flight,” Suien Hwang argued that non-Hispanic Whites were leaving Silicon Valley schools that they perceived to be too competitive and narrowly focused on academ- ics, especially math and sciences, at the expense of liberal arts and extracur- ricular activities. 70 Th e article focused on Monta Vista High and Lynbrook High in Cupertino. Few scholars analyzed the issue, but residents and the news media picked up on the debate—some claiming that White fl ight was a reality and others claiming that it was not. 71 Th e controversy became so heated in Cupertino that comments made by district superintendent Steve Rowley during the debate, which were critiqued as blaming Asian Americans students for the increasing pressure felt by White students, were cited by some as a reason for his fi ring two years later.

72 In an interview with the newspaper India-West, former Mission High principal Stewart Kew weighed in on the issue. According to Principal Kew, because Asian American stu- dents were leaving the district at the same rate as White students and because the drop in White enrollment had been, in his words, “gradual,” there was no This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 80 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? support for the White fl ight thesis. 73 However, nearly every parent, student, neighbor, and school administrator with whom I spoke believed that White fl ight was real at Mission High. A common maxim among the Mission San Jose residents was “every time a White family moves out of the neighborhood, a Chinese or Indian American family moves in.” While not statistically accurate, their point underscores the common perception about who the in-movers and out- movers are in the neighborhood. Some described this change as natural neighborhood turnover. Older residents who have lived in the neighborhood for years and no longer have children living at home sell their homes to younger families. Especially since housing prices have shot up in recent years, in part because of the schools, residents who have owned their homes for a long time can cash out and purchase homes in other areas that better meet their current priorities. However, these explanations do not fully explain the trends in the declin- ing percentage of young White families and students in Mission San Jose schools. Between 1981 and 2010 non-Hispanic Whites declined from 84% to 12% of the Mission High population, representing a drop from 1,405 to 273 White students. During the same period, overall enrollment grew by 471 students. Th ese trends were not just about White families failing to move into the neighborhood but also about some who already lived there deciding to move out. While these moves could have been motivated by job relocations, housing prices, or other factors, many of the Asian American and White families with whom I spoke believed that a signifi cant part of this trend included families leaving the area for communities that are within only a few miles of Mission San Jose, such as Pleasanton, Livermore, Foothill, and Sunol. Th ese are areas that have high-ranking schools (but not as high as Mission High) and high- end homes but more White students and what Leslie Clark, a White Mission High student, described as more of a “feeling for the White community.” 74 What explains the departure of families to these nearby neighborhoods?

Some credit Mission High ’s increasing class sizes. 75 Two parents with whom I spoke said that Mission High’s overcrowding and poor facilities have reduced the quality of its learning environment. Newer schools in the surrounding areas off er smaller class sizes, better facilities, and additional funding for extracurricular activities, academic enrichment, and other amenities. 76 A more commonly cited reason, however, was that many White families simply felt uncomfortable living in a predominantly Asian American and This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 81 especially immigrant community. Several White parents in Mission San Jose shared stories about friends who left the neighborhood because their son or daughter did not get invited to birthday parties or otherwise felt that they did not fi t in with the neighborhood’s dominant Asian American culture.

Nina Young, a White Mission High senior, explained the sense of discomfort that both she and her mother sometimes felt living in an Asian American– majority neighborhood: When I was going to school in elementary school, like walking to school, like all the parents and all the kids would be speaking Chinese or another language so like I couldn’t even understand them. And like my mom, I know that she would get kind of like kind of upset because she felt kind of like excluded in a way. ‘Cause like there would be like a few White moms, but that is it. And most of them, like Asian[s], talked their language and you don’t know what they’re saying. So that bothered me, too, because people did it in school sometimes. Unused to feeling like outsiders in their own neighborhoods, some White parents and students took aim at the use of Asian languages in schools and elsewhere. A lice Mitchel l reca l led that when her chi ldren were in elementar y school, she would sometimes hear other White parents make comments such as “What are they saying behind our backs?” when parents spoke together in Chinese. Th ese comments refl ect the sense of social displacement, isolation, and xenophobia that may have contributed to some White families’ decisions to leave the area. While multiple factors play into White students’ declining populations at Mission High, overwhelmingly the most commonly cited reasons among parents, students, and administrators with whom I spoke were academic competition, stress, and the culture of Mission San Jose schools. Many White parents expressed grave concerns about the amount of homework assigned to students, the selection of courses available to nonhonors students, students’ opportunities to participate in nonacademic activities, the level of academic stress, and a desire for their children to have a “normal” high school experi- ence and receive a “well-rounded” education. By “well-rounded,” parents generally referenced their desire for a greater focus on sports, extracurricular activities, and the liberal arts, especially music and theater. “Normal” typi- cally referred to more active social lives and extracurricular activities such as football games and homecoming dances. White parents’ narratives about what it is to be a normal, well-rounded American teen privileged the actions This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 82 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? and practices of their own children as both commonplace and desirable while implicitly critiquing Asian American students and parents for failing to conform.White Americans’ power to label and be labeled as normal and well- rounded was buttressed by a host of social stereotypes of suburban American teens and by dominant educational norms in the United States. 77 George Lipitz argued that Whiteness secures its power by virtue of its invisibility. “As the unmarked category against which diff erence is constructed,” he wrote, “whiteness never has to speak its name, never has to acknowledge its role as an organizing principle in social and cultural relations.” 78 At Mission High, the invisible power that White students and parents held included their quiet acceptance of their own normativity. Meanwhile, despite being in the numer- ical majority, Asian American students at Mission High were constantly reminded by their classmates, administrators, and neighbors that they oper- ated on the margins of normal suburban American life. Many school administrators and parents who had watched family aft er family leave the school also believed that academic competition was a central concern, particularly White students’ declining academic performance rela- tive to that of Asian American students. Principal Sandy Prairie said that she had spoken to many White parents over the years who had decided to trans- fer their children from Mission High to nearby Irvington High, a school with a much higher percentage of White students, more lower-division classes, and a reputation for less stringent courses and homework through its magnet arts program. In explaining their reasoning, she said that many felt that “there wasn’t any way their kids could compete [at Mission], so why bother?” Th e bar at Mission High was simply too high. In order to get their children into a top-tier college, most parents wanted them to graduate in the top 15% of their class and knew that they stood a better chance of doing so at Irvington. 79 Others spoke about families they knew who had moved out of Fremont altogether because they felt that their children could not or did not want to compete. Natalie Tindo explained that a common attitude among the White families she knew who had left Mission San Jose schools was that their children would be “a bigger fi sh” somewhere else. Alice Mitchell, who had lived in Mission San Jose since 1989, described the strategies she had seen families use to keep their children competitive. One White couple had two children—one who was performing well in Mission San Jose schools and the other who was not. While maintaining their house in Mission San Jose for This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 83 their higher-achieving child to attend Mission High, they purchased a condo in Pleasanton for the other child to enroll in a less rigorous school. “Th ey felt pretty strongly that [their younger kid] would do just fi ne in a normal school,” she explained. Invoking the term “normal,” Alice reiterated the per- spective I heard over and over again among White parents at Mission High.

Th e competitive culture fostered by Asian American parents and students at Mission High was abnormal, if not unhealthy, for their children and was not one that set their children up for success. Others spoke of White students and parents they knew who were con- cerned about Mission High’s academic focus, including its heavy math- and science-based curriculum, the small number of lower-division courses, and signifi cant homework and academic stress. Mission High teacher Paula Jones recalled discussions she had with White parents who elected to send their children to Irvington High instead of Mission High. Th ey explained to her that they were ma k ing the move because Mission Hig h “catered to the A sian students.” She described their sentiment as follows: You don’t honor the needs of the White students. You’ve shut down all elec- tives. Th e wood shop is shut down, which only the White kids sign up for.

Th ere are no electives available for the White students that the parents felt were appropriate. All you’re doing is upping the advanced placement this, advanced placement that. Th is is no longer a traditional, regular high school that is amenable to a regular kid. Claiming their values and practices as “regular” and “appropriate,” many White parents had left Mission High with a clear sense that the unconven- tional and unwelcome educational practices of Asian American families drove their decision. Maxine Wan felt this deeply. As a Chinese American student at Mission High who had watched many of her White peers leave the neighborhood, she reasoned that it was because “Th ey would rather go to a school that’s not so amped up on Chinese culture.” Clearly, she was part of the problem. Mary Walker added that not only were Asian Americans oft en seen as the problem, but they were also used as scapegoats for changes in the school that they had nothing to do with, such as wood shop. Wood shop was not shut down because of Asian American students, she argued, but because of statewide education budget cuts. “Th ere are kids that are just regular kids among Asian kids. Th ey are in nonhonors classes and would have preferred those classes,” she said. “Th is has nothing to do with Asian and non-Asian.” Mary’s claim that there were “regular kids” among Asian American students This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 84 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? at Mission High was a rebuke of the criticism and racial stereotypes oft en aimed at Asian Americans but one that simultaneously reinforced the domi- nant norms about what is it to be a “regular” American teen. Social issues also topped the list of concerns among many White students and parents. Leslie Clark and Brandy Patterson, two White Mission High seniors I met with in a cramped but comfortable teachers’ lounge, were clear about why they had considered transferring to Irvington High. Leslie said that her central concern was having a more diverse student body that included more White and non–Asian American students, which she felt would allow her to grow more socially. Brandy thought that at Irvington she would be less likely to be stereotyped. “You’re not every day hearing that you’re White, you’re dumb. Th ere, you might hear it once a week,” she explained. Alice Mitchell expressed relief that her two children were at Irvington High and not in the Mission High “pressure cooker.” Her daughter is a cheerleader, and her son plays baseball. Because of the lack of academic pressure at Irvington High, she felt that she has seen them grow a lot “in the social side of things.” Oft en enough, however, the distinctions between wanting a diff erent type of education and less competitive and stressful schools and feeling uncom- fortable about living in a predominantly Asian American neighborhood can be a bit blurry. Alice said that the families she knew who sent their children to the nearby schools in Sunol were either White or mixed White–Asian American couples who said that they were looking for “less homework,” “more balance,” and “more Caucasians.” “And they’re pretty direct about it,” she noted. Lisa Bell added that while clearly White fl ight at Mission High had multiple causes, at its base it was driven by one simple fact: “Parents want their kids to be surrounded by students like them. It’s as complicated and as simple as that.” White families leaving Mission San Jose schools appear to be making the same kind of strategic educational decisions as Asian American parents to try to give their children the most educational, social, and economic advantages they can. But diff erences in their perceptions about how to best prepare and position their children to compete invite consideration of how privilege and advantage may accrue to Asian Americans and Whites diff erently. I have shown that the experience of most Asian Americans suggests that education plays a key role in their economic and social mobility, but this may not be as critical for Whites. Scholars have long documented the advantages that his- torical and contemporary neighborhood segregation provide to White Americans, including not only access to higher-performing schools but also This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 85 neighborhoods with lower crime, higher housing values, more public resources, stronger social networks, and greater social and cultural capital. 80 As George Lipsitz points out, the “possessive investment in whiteness” is something that White Americans carry with them wherever they go, producing unfair gains and unearned rewards in whatever spaces they occupy. 81 Meanwhile, other groups do not receive the same gains by virtue of their skin color and in fact oft en experience social and economic devalua- tion of their spaces. While Asian Americans may have benefi ted in many respects from their access to Mission San Jose’s high-performing schools, their presence seemed to increasingly devalue the neighborhood for many White Americans. As their White neighbors left , many Asian Americans also began to wonder if they might too might be losing out on some of the privileges that living in well-to-do suburban neighborhoods was supposed to aff ord them. Asian Overfl ow Th e neighborhoods in Pleasanton and Livermore to which many White families have relocated are beginning to attract more Asian American fami- lies as well—a trends that some families call the “Asian overfl ow” out of Fremont. For instance, between 1990 and 2010 while the overall population in Pleasanton grew by about 40%, the percentage of Whites decreased from 91% to 67% and the Asian American population grew from 6% to 23%. In addition to changes in overall immigration in the region, Asian American population growth, particularly among new families settling into the area, can be explained by some of the very same factors that led to the rapid rise of the Asian American population in Mission San Jose—the availability of high-performing schools and new homes. But among those Asian American families who have left the Mission San Jose attendance area for these neigh- borhoods, the trend also underscores intraracial divides between native-born Asian Americans and Asian immigrants regarding Fremont’s schools. A point made by several interviewees is that some Asian American fami- lies, particularly those born in the United States, leave Mission San Jose schools for the very same reasons as White families. Th ey tend to see the intense pressure to succeed educationally as an Asian immigrant value and, like White families, feel out of place in a predominately immigrant com- munity. Born in Indonesia but raised in the United States, Natalie said that she considered leaving Mission San Jose because even though she is of This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 86 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? Chinese descent, she neither speaks Chinese nor feels that it is “healthy” to have her children in such a competitive academic environment. She also felt isolated from her many American-born Chinese friends who moved out to Pleasanton and Livermore and oft en encouraged her to do the same: Th ey all left . I could name like fi ve families that I used to know, lived here, our girls grew up together, and one day they just kind of go “Uh, no we’re not coming here anymore” because it’s foreign to them. Th ey don’t feel comfort- able. Being an American, they don’t speak Chinese anymore. Several 1.5- and second-generation Asian Americans adopted the language, practices, and preferences of their White American peers, further distancing themselves socially and spatially from their coethnic neighbors.

Like White fl ight, this created divisions between Fremont and other sub- urban communities and also within Fremont. Maureen Xu, who came to the United States from Taiwan at the age of fi ve, lives in the Mission High attendance area but chose to send her eldest son to Irvington High. She cited a number of reasons for her decision, including her son’s learning disability, a desire for less homework and competition, and more family time, social diversity, and space to have a social life and pursue his personal passion— marching band. “I thought, ‘You know, it would really suck to play in the marching band for a constantly losing team,’“ she explained. Interestingly, however, Maureen noted that her youngest son is getting ready to graduate from middle school and wants to continue on to Mission High with his friends. Maureen said that she was considering allowing him to do so, mostly because he looks “more Asian,” has more Asian American friends, and per- forms better in school than his brother. But she added that she and her hus- band (who is White) decided that if he does make the move, he will not be allowed to take honors classes. “We don’t need him to be so stressed out that all the academic curiosity is squeezed out of him,” she explained. “I don’t believe that’s healthy.” Th e geography of race in Mission San Jose and its surrounding areas has been impacted by academic competition and residents’ diff ering defi nitions about a quality education. Academic competition and diff ering social and cultural ideas about what constitutes a good education have become fi lters through which the varied racial and class interests of Asian American and White families are understood and enacted. As both groups attempt to maxi- mize their perceived interests, they have created and exacerbated patterns of This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 87 racial segregation between Whites and Asians Americans and even among Asian Americans. t7fe politics of sc7fool bounda7bies In 2000, a new school boundary plan announced by the Fremont School Board catalyzed race and class tensions that had engulfed Mission San Jose schools for decades. Like patterns of White fl ight out of the district, the boundary controversy showed how the changing culture of Mission San Jose schools had raised tense race relations and helped to restructure social geog- raphies that reinforced extant racialized stereotypes about Asian Americans in schools. But it also showed how Asian Americans fought back against the mounting criticism to proclaim the value of their spaces and their right to the type and quality of education they had come to expect at Mission High. Ironically, however, as Whites continued to leave Mission San Jose schools, Asian Americans found themselves fi ghting hard to maintain what some perceived as racially segregated schools that were, nonetheless, high- performing. Th is ironic twist in the long and sordid tale of American racial segregation in suburban schools exposed how new dynamics of race and class have challenged the ways public policy makers oft en understand issues of educational equity. For nearly a decade, between 1991 and 2000, boundary disputes embit- tered and embattled the Fremont Unifi ed School District. Th e central focus of the debate was the Mission San Jose schools. In 1991, Mission San Jose schools had the highest test scores, the largest percentage of Asian American students, and the highest rates of overenrollment and overcrowding among all fi ve Fremont attendance areas. 82 With the goals of equalizing enrollment, facilities, and curriculum across the district, the Fremont School Board began discussions about redrawing school attendance boundaries. Early talks signaled that some Mission San Jose students would no longer be tracked into the esteemed Mission High. Aft er several years of debating which Mission San Jose elementary school was to leave the attendance area and fl i p - fl opping on whether boundary changes would occur at all, in 2000 the school board fi nally settled on Fred E. Weibel Elementary. Weibel was then the highest-ranked Fremont elementary school and the third highest-ranking elementary school in the state and had the largest percentage of Asian American students of any school in the district, with a 75% Asian American This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 88 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? student body. Draft ed in 1999, the plan would direct students from Weibel to Irvington High, where API scores were more than 200 points lower than Mission High and non-Hispanic White students were in the majority. Th e reaction of Mission San Jose parents was immediate and intense.

When the school board was deciding which Mission elementary school was to be redirected to Irvington High, Ellie Cho, who was enrolled in a Mission San Jose elementary school, recalled heated parent meetings that sometimes spilled over into arguments between parents at her brother’s Boy Scout meet- ings. School board meetings oft en brought out hundreds of angry parents opposing any changes to the Mission San Jose attendance boundaries.

Various protests were organized, including one in which around 175 cars drove around Irvington High to highlight the long commutes and traffi c that would be caused by the change. Susan Barnett, a Mission High teacher, recalled several cars displaying placards reading “Our kids will never go here!” “It got very nasty,” she explained. At least four diff erent groups opposing the proposed boundaries were formed, mostly among parents at Weibel. Stacy Zhong, an immigrant from Hong Kong who had moved into the Weibel attendance area primarily for the schools, was heavily involved in one of these groups. She described how she and other parents sent fl iers to every home in the neighborhood, collected donations, built a website, organized parents to attend Fremont Unifi ed School District meetings, and began a campaign to recall several school board members. Among many other things, parents accused Superintendent Sharon Jones, who proposed and defended the plan, of “social engineering,” or purposive manipulation of the school system by moving students for the sole purpose of raising test scores across the district rather than investing in improving schools. 83 In the lead-up to the decision, parents booed, hissed, and shouted profani- ties at board members during public meetings while bearing signs that read “No, no, no boundary change or see you in court.” 84 Witnesses recalled meet- ings in which students, parents, and school board members were crying.

Police offi cers were present at several meetings that lasted well into the even- ing during which hundreds of parents signed up to address the board. Tanya Saito, a Japanese American student at Mission High who served as a repre- sentative to the board, said that she was sometimes scared to leave the meet- ings alone and had to be escorted out. “We were defi nitely hated at the time,” she recalled. Even 15 years later, she was still visibly upset by the memory of how those times divided her community. This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 89 Th e views of Weibel parents were not, however, uniform. Th ough some residents argued that both Asian American and White parents were equally upset by the proposed boundary changes, most agreed that Asian American parents were the most upset and active in opposing them. Part of the reason was simply because Weibel was a 75% Asian American school. But there were other reasons as well. Sitting in the home that she had custom built only blocks from Mission High in order to ensure that her children would receive a coveted spot in the school, Stacy Zhong explained that Asian Americans were the most involved because “the whole reason that they had moved to the area is because of the schools.” In contrast, working on the campaign against the boundary changes, Stacy was shocked to fi nd that there were White par- ents who thought that sending their children to Irvington High was a good idea because it was less competitive and their children would have a better chance to “shine.” None of the Asian American families she knew felt the same. “Asian parents want to give their child [the] most, how do you say, competition. Th ey think that you challenge the children in order for them to succeed. You don’t put them in an easy environment so they could feel good,” she explained. Stacy clearly overestimated the extent to which all Asian American parents agreed with her position, yet she also pointed out the dif- ferences that seemed to animate both sides of the debate. Alice Mitchell, who is White, had two children enrolled at Weibel and did not oppose the boundary changes because she felt that her kids would do better at a more “well-rounded” school. She explained that her struggle had not been over whether to send her children to Irvington but rather her initial decision to enroll them at Weibel:

We were actually concerned about going to Weibel because of the whole pres- sure cooker elementary school mentality. Not really so sure that I want to do that to my children. Not really so sure that I want to send my children to a school where [when my daughter] was in her kindergarten, there were 120 students in her class. Th ey still had a lottery to get into the school. People camping out at the school to get their ticket to get their child in. And if you didn’t get in, then you [were] overloaded somewhere else. For the 120 kids in her class, I think she was 1 of 5 Caucasians. Th ere was a little bit of concern of being that much of [a] minority. I was like, “Is this really a good thing, not a good thing?” We almost thought that in spite of great tests scores, [it] might not really be what we wanted. Alice said that she was more concerned with her daughter’s shyness at that point than her academics and was looking for a place that would allow her to This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 90 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? “fi ll out on the social side of things.” “We weren’t concerned about her ability to keep up academically,” she explained. “We just wanted to make sure she was going to be able to make friends and explore things socially.” Ultimately, that priority led them to sit out the attendance boundary debate. But as Alice’s comments point out, her social priorities were confl ated with the racial dynamics of Mission San Jose schools in which White students were increasingly in the minority. Like their opinions about White fl ight, the opinions of neither Asian Americans nor White parents about the boundary issues were as simple as these examples suggest. Indeed, parents support for or opposition to the boundary changes were motivated by a complex intersection of various inter- ests and values. Th e boundary dispute, however, helped to show that many White and Asian American parents saw themselves as benefi ting from Mission San Jose schools diff erently. Further, the dispute evidenced the ways in which their views about the kind of education that such schools provided were becoming more and more racially polarized both within Mission San Jose and across the city. Many Asian American parents were not only upset by the prospect of moving to Irvington High but also took off ense at the ways in which school board members approached the issue of the move with parents. Letha Saldanha, an Indian American who served on the Fremont Unifi ed School District’s Equity Commission during the boundary dispute explained to National Public Radio reporter Claudio Sanchez how Asian American par- ents thought diff erently about the issue than members of the school board who were, at the time, mostly White: [Asian American parents] just don’t take a chance with our children’s educa- tion and most of us make a lot of sacrifi ces. Th is is one of the cultural diff er- ences. . . . You don’t go into a meeting with Asian parents and tell them that test scores are not important and that it really doesn’t matter—your child will do well wherever they go—which is what the traditional administration tries to tell us. 85 Th e failure of administrators to understand the weight of the boundary deci- sion for many Asian American parents further fueled racial tensions about the issue. Asian American parents were also deeply off ended by comments made dur- ing various public hearings. Th ey complained of residents who mimicked and mocked their accents, accused them of abusing their children by forcing them This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 91 to study, and charged them with making Fremont into another Chinatown.

Weibel parents were referred to as excessively wealthy, elitist immigrants who were not assimi lating into A merican cu lture. “Th e fact that [Mission San Jose parents] feel Irvington area schools are somehow inferior to theirs is insult- ing,” Lunette Rawlin, an Irvington High parent, told a San Jose Mercury News reporter during the debates. “Th ey feel that we somehow don’t value our chil- dren’s education as much as they do, and I fi nd this attitude elitist.” 86 In a similar way, Katherine Newman documented how White baby boomers in a New Jersey suburb who were not able to aff ord the middle-class lifestyles that they enjoyed as kids tended to direct their anger toward wealthy Asian A merican fami lies whom they described as “ i l leg itimate elites.” 87 Th e descrip- tion displayed their sense of Asian Americans as foreigners who were taking advantage of an unearned but privileged position in the United States. Like the battles fought inside Mission High, the district-wide debate played on many residents’ sense that Asian Americans’ income, education, and academic achievement were leading to an uneven playing fi eld for Whites. And yet, it also showed how the actions of Asian American families were cast as falling outside the norms of “acceptable” behavior. Comments made about Asian Americans in Mission San Jose schools repeated long-held narratives about Asian Americans as foreigners who were exercising undue control over the fate of the city and introducing ideas and practices that were simply un-American. Th e boundary changes were fi nalized by a vote of four to one by the school board in early 2000. Anna Muh, the fi rst and only Chinese American mem- ber of the school board and the fi rst successful Chinese immigrant to run for offi ce in Fremont, cast the lone vote against the plan. Th e boundary issue, many said, fi gured prominently into her election to the school board, as it helped to galvanize Asian Americans around an issue. 88 Th e other four mem- bers of the board were White, and three were known longtime advocates for Irvington High. 89 When the boundary changes were announced, angry Weibel parents stormed out of the meetings, shouting statements such as “lynch the board” as they left —a biting phrase given the torrid racial history of school desegregation in the United States. 90 In response, Weibel parents initiated a series of legal battles. Among them was a racial discrimination suit fi led by 20 Asian American parents against the Fremont Unifi ed School District, the school board, and the superinten- dent. Th e suit alleged that the district’s plan was racially motivated and designed to divert high-performing Asian American students to other This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 92 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? schools to boost academic scores around the district. Th e lawsuit read as follows: Th e basis of the new boundaries was not equal convenience or equal facilities, but in fact to remove Asian students from the higher performing schools to schools that needed performance scores boosted. Th e board and Superintendent Jones implemented the boundary changes for the purpose of singling out Asian students. 91 Th e suit claimed that the district’s eff ort to seek a racial balance was a viola- tion of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and sought com- pensatory damages related to any loss in home property values. 92 Meanwhile, some Weibel parents shift ed their focus away from legal action to the creation of a separate Mission San Jose school district. Weibel parents collected over 7,000 signatures in support of the district (as many signatures as the proposed student population), raised over $100,000 in donations, and fi led their petition in Alameda County. 93 Th is was the fi rst time that California had ever seen a new school district petition sponsored by a majority Asian American coalition of parents. Th e proposed district would be over 60% Asian American. In an ironic twist, race and class equity were the central grounds for the county’s and state’s concerns over, and ultimately their denial of, the pro- posed district. In an editorial to the San Jose Mercury News, Fremont super- intendent Sharon Jones argued that the creation of a new Mission San Jose district would “promote racial segregation, cause substantive economic hard- ship to both resulting districts, and signifi cantly erode educational opportu- nities for all students.” 94 Th e Alameda County School Board unanimously rejected the proposal, stating in its report that such a district would carve out an “enclave of privilege” and violate state rules prohibiting racial imbal- ances. 95 On appeal, the California State Board of Education reversed Alameda County’s fi nding regarding racial segregation, arguing that because the proposed district would match the racial composition of the neighbor- hood, this did not constitute segregation. Th e board, however, unanimously upheld the county’s decision to deny the split. Th e denial was largely based on class rather than the racial composition of the new school district, as the board ruled that the proposed district would leave the Fremont Unifi ed School District with more low-income students. Th e various rulings and petitions brought into focus the awkward posi- tion of Asian Americans in educational politics in the city. As racial This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 93 minorities, they were subject to forces such as W hite fl ig ht that threatened to isolate them spatially in ways that could disadvantage them. But as a high-income and highly educated group, such isolation might also serve to their advantage relative to less well-off groups, which included both lower- income Whites and other racial minorities. Asian Americans used the tools provided by both their class privilege and status as racial minorities to try to retain their place in Mission San Jose schools. Th e denial of their petition, however, evidenced the limits of their privilege vis-à-vis lower- income groups and other racial minorities in matters of school equity.

But it left open questions about how equity is defi ned between high- income Asian Americans and similarly situated Whites as well as among groups that claim to hold such diff erent defi nitions of a high-quality education. In the end, the redistricting plan seemed to achieve the goal of promoting greater program equity across the district, at least in Irvington. By 2009, the percentage of A sian A mericans at Ir ving ton Hig h had doubled to 50% of the student population. Meanwhile, Irvington’s API scores rose from a base score of 715 in 2000 to 831 in 2010, earning it a ranking among US News and World Report ’s top 1% of American public schools in 2009 and 2010. More AP classes were off ered at Irvington, in part due to a compromise with Weibel parents to drop legal action in exchange for, among other things, increasing the number of honors and advanced placement courses at Irvington and allowing students to take classes at Mission High not off ered at Irvington High. During the same period, Weibel Elementary dropped from the num- ber three–rated elementary school in the state to the number three–rated elementary in the district. However, the plan left many highly upset Asian American parents in its wake. Mission High principal Sandy Prairie contrasted the experiences of White parents whose children went to Irvington, who for the most part were “very, very happy,” with the experience of Asian American parents, who “resolved their issues” and “made it work.” Letha Saldanha expressed the disappointment felt by many A sian A merican parents over the school board ’s handling of the issue: Th ere is a myth going on that everything is so peaceful in Fremont aft er the boundary change and everybody is happy. It’s not that everybody is happy.

It’s that the people who were impacted have given up and aren’t seething and have just said, “Hey, they’re not going to listen to us so, we are going to work through it.” 96 This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 94 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? Ironically, one of the ways in which many Asian families chose to “work through it” has reinforced the racial divisions between Mission San Jose and the rest of the district, which were at issue in the boundary dispute. According to several residents, aft er redistricting, Asian American families were more likely than White families to send their children to private schools or move into the new Mission High attendance area or out of the district altogether.

Sitting in his modest ranch-style home only blocks from Mission High, Randy Zeng explained how he and four other Chinese American families he knew moved from Weibel into the new Mission High boundaries aft er the plan was passed. To do so, he sold his 3,500-square-foot custom-built house and moved into a 1,500-square-foot older home in Mission Ranch, a neighborhood that he felt would be safe from future boundary disputes. Stacy Zhong did the same. She allowed her daughter to fi nish at Weibel and then sent her to private school for two years while her son completed his last two years there, and she and her husband remodeled a home in view of Mission High School. Right aft er her son graduated, they moved into their home inside the new Mission District. According to Principal Sandy Prairie, the district’s underestimation of the value that people placed on Mission San Jose schools is why the plan failed to reach its population targets for the Mission District: What I think the superintendent and school board never dreamed would happen is that people then would be willing to sell their houses once they got out of junior high and move into the attendance area when they hit high school. And that’s what we started to see happen. And that’s why our popula- tion never, ever really went down. 97 In 2001, the year when the boundary change fi rst went into eff ect, the popu- lation at Mission High went down by about 140 students and continued to fall for the next two years. But by year three the numbers started to climb up again, such that by 2009 the school enrollment was back to its 2000 levels.

Meanwhile, the Asian American student population and its relative portion of the student body continued to rise year aft er year.

While failing to reach its population goals for Mission San Jose schools, the boundary changes and the reactions of students, parents, and administra- tors to them heightened social tensions over the racial, ethnic, and class composition of the schools. Within the debates, Asian Americans continued to be stereotyped as high achieving but abnormal and out of place. But Asian American families fought back against these stereotypes and for a place in Mission San Jose schools. To many Fremont residents and city offi cials, the This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 95 debates exposed how deeply Asian American families, particularly Chinese and Indian immigrant families, felt about the schools and what was at stake in their children’s academic success. It cast into stark relief the diff erences between many White and Asian Americans’ defi nitions of a “high-quality education” and how these diff erences are resolved in education politics. • • • In searching for solutions to 21st-century challenges of racial inequality, the past seems to hold fewer and fewer clues to the future. As rapid immigration and internal migration have stirred the American melting pot, old lines have been broken and new ones are emerging. Th ese divisions do not look like or act like the old ones, nor are they driven by the same forces. In Silicon Valley, Asian American and White parents’ interracial academic competition and diff erent defi nitions of “good schools” are among the major drivers of their social geographies. While Asian American families struggle to provide their children with the most rigorous education they can aff ord, some White fami- lies are leaving these same schools that they view as too intense, stressful, and competitive. Just as the failure of schools oft en shapes suburban communi- ties, so too does their success. 98 Regardless of the source, however, the emerging racial divide in Silicon Valley schools and neighborhoods is troubling. Many of the Asian American parents with whom I spoke did not want their children to attend predomi- nantly Asian American schools. Indeed, like most minorities, they held greater preferences for living in racially integrated communities than did White Americans. 99 Many Asian Americans felt that the departure of White families left them in a more “ghettoized” community that was subject to easy stereotyping. While many did not want their children spending their time in theater classes or playing football, they also did not have a problem with other children doing so and welcomed the diversity that White students had once brought to Mission San Jose schools. But aft er the exodus of so many White families, many Asian American parents, especially immigrants, felt that they had little choice. If they wanted to keep their children enrolled in a high-performing, academically rigorous school, they had to keep them in Mission San Jose schools. It was, aft er all, the reason why most had moved to the neighborhood in the fi rst place. During our conversations, some began to question the wisdom of their decisions. Th ey worried that the Mission High “bubble” created a false sense This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 96 • A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? of the world in which their children were in the majority and among the most successful but was not preparing them for the “real world.” In a society where power and opportunity are not equally distributed based on one’s merit (or test scores), these parents struggled to prepare their children with a useful skillset to navigate the terrain outside their neighborhoods. As Wendy Cheng has noted of Asian Americans in San Gabriel Valley, many did not “feel” their race or the limits of their racialized privilege until they left the boundaries of their community. 10 0 By encountering fewer and fewer Whites in their schools and neighborhoods, many worried that their children would lack the social capital and networks needed to break through the glass ceiling. And indeed, in a market in which 80% to 90% of jobs go unadvertised and are obtained through personal networks, their concerns seem all too justifi ed. 101 Just down the road from Mission San Jose in Cupertino, Tomás Jiménez and Adam Horowitz observed that Asian Americans’ performance in schools challenged the characterization of Whites as the taken-for-granted bench- mark population that sets achievement norms to which all other populations adjust. 102 While I agree that Asian Americans have challenged these norms, they have not completely upset them. Nor have they taken away the power of dominant educational norms to bestow benefi ts upon White Americans within contexts in which they are not in the minority. In leaving Mission San Jose for other neighborhoods, White Americans seems to be reasserting their benchmark status. In tackling this divide, old policy paradigms of educational equity based on Black-White and urban-suburban divides fail to address new realities. Th e debates over school boundaries showed how awkward it was to fi t Asian Americans into boxes of privilege that had largely been drawn for Whites. In apply ing establ ished criteria to prevent seg regation in schools, A sia n A merica n families received mixed messages about their place in the educational system.

On the one hand, they were told that their status as racial minorities made them more vulnerable to the forces of segregation and therefore that they could not, even by their own will, voluntarily separate themselves from others.

On the other hand, they were told that their desires to create their own school district was “elitist.” Th eir economic status made for easy parallels to the NIMBY reactions of White communities past and present. 103 Undoubtedly, class interests aff ected the desires of Asian Americans to remain in the Mission San Jose district, and their class status enabled their resistance to the boundary changes. But their racial privilege did not work in the same way that it did for Whites. While Asian Americans might have This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A Quality Education fo7b W7fom? • 97 wanted to carve out an “enclave of privilege,” their enclave was one in which racialized perceptions about them as foreigners, abnormal, and unwilling to adjust to the norms of middle-class suburban American life left them as the target of various forms of otherizing. As much as they prized Mission San Jose schools, Asian Americans also wanted to be able to live in diverse com- munities. Many remained in the face of White fl ight simply because they felt as though there were very few places in which their educational practices were understood and valued, such as at Mission High. But their decision came at the cost of living in more racially integrated neighborhoods—a cost that nag ged at many residents as they considered the va lue of their new found community. Th e debate seemed to be a missed opportunity to have a meaningful con- versation about the diversity of educational goals and interests that Asian Americans brought to Silicon Valley and how schools and neighborhoods could adapt. In this case it might not have meant that Asian American fami- lies would not have had to leave the Mission San Jose schools, but perhaps they felt better about doing so. It might have meant that they did not leave school board meetings bitter that their voices were not heard, that they believed that public offi cials were seeking out creative solutions to meet their needs, and that their core values were not sidelined or discounted. By helping residents work through their fears, policy makers can help communities not only fi nd solutions to tough problems but also build respect and tolerance for diff erence in the process. 10 4 While schools have been at the forefront of Silicon Valley’s politics of development and demographic change, Asian Americans have also quietly made home in the region in other ways. Just down the road from Mission High are several ethnic shopping centers that are popular among Asian American students, who regularly gather there aft er school and on the week- ends for a needed pause from their otherwise pressure-fi lled lives. Th ese shop- ping centers are beloved and active in the lives of their parents and grandpar- ents as well. Th ese multigenerational gathering spaces, however, have not simply faded into the background of suburban shopping centers lining Fremont’s freeway exits and major arteries. Like schools, these spaces have become fl ash points for larger politics over racial and ethnic change in the region. Th ey have become places in which questions about what it means for communities to roll out the welcome mat and make a place for diff erence are being hashed out among friends, neighbors, and various political and eco- nomic interests. This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:33:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms