Palo Alto reacts to Atlantic article

> Gunn has a current rate of cheating of 87%; Paly was recently discovered to
> have had a three-year, 20-student cheating ring that ushered some kids into
> prestigious colleges. Such fraud causes pervasive distrust and anxiety.

This level of cheating has been hinted at from time-to-time from comments posted to Weekly articles about the PAUSD. What credible proof is there that cheating is this bad? And if it really is this bad, what are teachers/Admins doing to put an end to it?

Thank you Marc
Your dedication is admirable and important. I can’t pretend to know the solutions, but my family fully supports your initiative.

A lot of people complain that classes at Gunn are too hard. If they are so hard, then why are many students getting A’s in them? It is perhaps right for teachers to have high expectations of the students; else, how would the students learn to do their best work?

This is the stigma in our community: if you are Asian and have good grades, then you have a tiger parent. There is this blame attached to the students who are doing well, who are supposedly promoting the “competitive insanity”. “We lack sincere passion” according to the Atlantic, but I respectfully disagree. My friend who is writing a research paper is truly excited about their topic and was extremely eager to share their work with me. My friend who is taking multivariable calculus as a junior is truly passionate about mathematics. My friends who are taking more than 2 APs are relishing the coursework, and none has complained privately that the coursework is too much or that their parents pushed them to taking it. Indeed, I have heard multiple people tell me the opposite: their parents won’t allow them to take the classes they want, for fear that they will be stressed. My friends taking the most AP classes are getting the most sleep at night (controlling for extracurriculars) because they have their acts together. They are good at time management, and one needs to convince your counselor and multiple teachers, who will know one well as a student, that one can succeed under a heavier workload before being allowed to take multiple AP classes.

Gunn students are passionate about what they do. Truthfully, one of the things I love about our campus is that so many people have so many hidden hobbies, skills, talents. I love watching the energy my classmates put in for the theatre production, or building a robot, or preparing an MUN paper, or sports or music.

If teachers really had high expectations, then grades would be purely test-based, as in college. If teachers really had high expectations, then there would be more classes where the brightest students are struggling. I believe that if there are students that can comfortably receive a high A in a class, then the rigor is not too much. And, students get A’s.

Isn’t high school a place to experiment? To learn how to fail or get a B? To learn that in the real world, there are many people smarter than you and that you will be competing with them?

Last year, the administration insisted on continuing to baby the students, including further measures like required filling out of time-management sheets, which were truly a waste of time and requiring every teacher to post assignments on Schoology. We are almost adults, and we could stand on our own feet — but there is an increasing push for the district to limit us the chance.

“Why are so many kids with bright prospects killing themselves in Palo Alto?” Rosin asks. Ultimately, like the experts she quotes, Rosin cannot answer it; “We don’t entirely know why teenagers kill themselves,”(73) she writes. Nevertheless, Rosin builds the case that Palo Alto’s parents and teachers pressured their youth into suicide. Then she chides her readers for believing such a simplistic argument, yet finishes by urging her readers to believe it nonetheless. This is not just a case of confused reasoning. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of suicide, of the community in which I grew up, and of my community’s place in wider society.

In her opening words, Rosin violates national guidelines about reporting on suicides; then she acknowledges them, and violates them again. When we publicize the names of those who died, as Rosin does, we tell the living that suicide is a sure way to become memorialized. When we dramatize how they died, as Rosin does, some will take our words as instructions. Rosin’s conversation with one suicide survivor proves as much: “She was lucky, she told me, that she hadn’t heard of “ how the high schoolers had died. (71). Yet after recording this, Rosin makes sure to tell her audience exactly how the students died

Rosin asserts that there are “two major causes” of distress among affluent teens: their isolation from their parents; and a “pressure to excel” that schools and parents exert and that teens often internalize.(68) She describes Palo Alto’s parents as “hazy and self-protective” (66) in 2014, “hovering between fear and denial” (69) of the suicides. She quotes Suniya Luthar, a psychologist who visited Palo Alto for two days, as saying that the community was “eerie in its “lack of feeling” at a public meeting about the suicides.(69)

Rosin’s description of Palo Alto’s response to the suicides is not just unkind; it is false. In 2011, my summer job was to assemble a database of local mental health providers for the HEARD Alliance, a Palo Alto organization with the express purpose of treating child and teen depression in the wake of the first suicide cluster. Starting in 2009, students, parents, teachers, and community leaders have been acting vocally and in concert to address problems of teen mental health, stress, isolation, academic pressure, and more.

Rosin’s description is also wrong on a deeper level. She and Luthar believed they saw insufficient sadness at the few meetings they attended. Do they truly doubt that we mourn? Must we prove our grief to strangers? People from the community saw something different: a group of leaders working to turn our very real sorrow into constructive actions.

Rosin implies that “tiger moms” and “helicopter parents” and teachers who pile on homework cause suicides. Yet her argument frays from the beginning, because the line of causation from parents to stress to suicide isn’t that simple, and she knows it. The most glaring difficulty is that Gunn is not uniquely stressful among US high schools. It ranks only 157th among high schools according to US News and World Reports, and it is not the only activity-rich school located in an affluent university town with high-achieving parents (think Cambridge, Princeton, Austin, Chapel Hill). But thankfully, most schools don’t have suicide clusters.

Rosin acknowledges that, “almost by definition, suicide points to underlying psychological vulnerability,” which can be triggered by “something ordinary,” (72) not just exceptional stress. She quotes the psychologist David Lester: “we really don’t have a good idea of why people kill themselves” (72). At one point, Rosin retreats from her initial aim: “I came to understand a lot about academic stress and adolescent misery, and about my own parenting . . . But the link between teenage alienation and suicide never clarified.”(72) She even reproves the reader for failing to recognize the ineffably “mysterious quality” (73) of teens. Yet in the end, Rosin says that parents and teachers, with their supposed “sense of absolute certainty about what children should do or be,” are “part of what landed us here” (73) : i.e., part of what caused the suicides.

Reasoning like Rosin’s is not merely flawed; it inflicts real harm in Palo Alto and other communities dealing with teen suicide. Such thoughtless musings torment the parents who survive their children’s suicides. Consider also the effect on dedicated, caring teachers, when people call their homework assignments a major cause of their students’ suicides. I saw that effect. I have rarely seen such sorrow in a face.

One of the more unfortunate features of Rosin’s article is that it is partly right. Student stress is a major national problem. Yet it is a complex social and economic problem, not just a problem of parenting or teaching. Why do teens feel such an extreme urgency to succeed? Consider that over the past 30 years, most jobs have become shorter-term and lower-paid, with more uncertain hours, fewer benefits, and fewer labor protections; the competition for stable, rewarding jobs is ferocious — even for those who begin with an unfair advantage, as most of us Palo Altans do. Students cannot always name these fears, but they feel them, whenever they reflect that the answers they are bubbling in right now with their No. 2 pencils might make the difference between two very different futures. Their parents feel these fears, when stealing time from a 70-hour workweek to play with their children. Their teachers feel these fears, when scrimping from a meager salary to buy the school supplies that they hope might help their students make the cut.

This is why it is so wrong to blame parents and teachers for students’ stress, let alone suicide. Because the problem does not begin with any of them. It is a flaw in the society that we all share. Yet it’s one we can fix. Working politically and collectively, we can provide more support and opportunities for people with a broader range of talents, passions, and —yes —flaws. It will not be easy. But of course, the things that matter never are.

Class of ’09

We all want answers , well it’s not complete, but here is what I gathered from my son, a survivor – he felt judged all the time. Starting in middle school, by his friends some, but his teachers mostly. His anxiety meant that he internalized a lot of rather harsh comments. They weren’t there to help you, just to show you the book and judge you on tests.

I am not sure teachers are aware that when they are teaching a boy with anxiety that their actions and judgements can have a huge negative impact.

This builds for years until he feels a failure, even though from the outside might look fine. Teachers need to be more aware of anxiety.

@Gabriel Lewis,
Wonderful post.

We took our kid out of the school district and are dealing with trying to undo a lot of horrible habits that developed in school. One of the worst things is realizing that the experience left a kid who doesn’t see teachers as people to turn to or who will help or even can be trusted because the experience in PAUSD. I’m not saying there weren’t a few good teachers, but just not enough to undo the effect of the rest or being treated like that. Another is that even when every external input is removed, and there are no grades or judgment, there is still a tendency to hide confusion rather than ask for help, to put appearances above learning. I almost don’t even blame the teachers. I think the culture in the district puts them in a tough position, though I wish they’d had the courage to live all those platitudes they spout.

One thing I found interesting about the article was how it talks about how parents in affluent communities don’t know their kids. That’s not what I see around here, but maybe it’s not representative. Having read the article, it reminds me of some really weird experiences with the school. I remember speaking with Kevin Skelly once, and he was talking about my kid as if it was just expected that the relationship was distant, when it’s very close. He was soooooo off the mark, I didn’t even know how to have a conversation. Same with the admin at the school and now even McGee. I felt really sad wondering if that’s how other people or even those administrators related to kids as parents. Almost like they don’t seem to understand that some people have closeknit families, and they don’t even know what that is. I would love to help my child learn how to trust teachers before high school is over.

McGee’s email response to the article also made me sad, because I believed the promise when he got here, and the sentiment is beautiful, but it hasn’t been backed up by action in our experience. If character is what you do when no one is watching, the test of character for a school administrator is what they do to put ALL kids and families first when no one is watching.

Gunn Junior,

Congratulations to you and your friends! Do you realize that others struggle? Please try and have some compassion,
not everyone can work at the highest level. And, if you are getting straight A’s at Gunn or PALY, you are working
really hard. End of story.

My niece graduated from Gunn in 2008. At that time she was near-suicidal from the pressure. She had had staging A’s at Castilleja, but when she was a sophomore, her parents divorced and she had to default to Gunn ( not enough $$$ for the tuition ).

She started getting C’s for the first time in her life, and was anguished about it. Her teachers at Casti told her Gunnwould be a piece of cake compared to their school. After all, she was used to 5-) hours of homework, all while being on the basketball team.

Being the new kid, she realized she would just have to figure out what the Gunn teachers wanted that was so different from Castilleja. She decided to talk to them about it. Some did not make themselves available for this, others told her to simply study harder.

Complicating this picture, my niece told us that the immigrant kids were really, really aloof and judgmental, even calling her a dumbs–t!

Humiliated, frustrated, and in fear for her future, my niece did what everyone told her: studied harder, took more AP classes, and started stealing her brother’s ADHD meds so she could stay up until 2:00 in the morning, later during finals and midterms.

In 2006, she finally went to pieces, and was hospitalized in San Mateo County.

To make a long story short, my niece transferred to Paly, but was held back one year because of allof all the school due to hospitalization. She was u able to get into the schools she wanted to, but managed to get into Boston College on a scholarship.
From there she had hoped to go to Stanford Law School, but because of the problems she’d had at Gunn, Stanford refused to take her–in spite of almost all A’s at Boston College ( while holding a part-time job, at that)!

My niece did get into Santa Clara U, as well as receiving acceptances from Lewis and Clark and other schools, but she really wanted to be in California again.

She got her law degree, and now lives and works in San Francisco–exactly what she had hoped for since high school at Castilleja.

The moral: if you can transfer your child elsewhere besides Gunn, DO IT! It is for their own well-being.

@staff,
Where do you work? Our experience in PA elementary was beautiful, supportive, and I thought better than we could have expected at any private school. Our personal nightmare didn’t begin until middle school, but even there it was the result of administrators and their political quagmire, and not what you describe. I have my criticisms that extend even to bullying by staff (of both parents and children), but I have never come across anything like that. Have the elementary schools switched to letter grades now? Ours had detailed feedback, no letter grades. The kids were pretty happy kids, too.

The experience relayed in the article about JP Blanchard rang a bell, that he was never able to forget he was a special ed student. I’m sure the circumstances were different, but it rang a bell. In our experience, the way admin handled things created an extremely unhealthy attitude at school level, and it kept our sensitive middle schooler feeling that way, too, they never let our child forget it – even seemed to take their politics out in school ways. The poor attitude by admin extending tendrils into every day in unhealthy ways that snowballed. When we made attempts to improve the learning environment, it was school not family that insisted on never letting up on the unhealthy situation. The excuse was that Gunn would be even more so and that life would be like that too, so better get used to it now.

@Paula,
I hope your post was ironic. The Biggest threat to your property values is NOT solving things. There has been too much protecting the brand at the expense of doing what’s best. The district has done a lot, but only in ways they find acceptable. In some other key ways, they have fought making important changes for the sake of our kids. I wonder if that was why all the pre-emptive hullaballoo?

The most thought provoking line was-
“There are a lot of very hard truths that are just not being spoken.”

I suggest dropping all of the agendas and then put down all of the electronic devices and start talking to and listening to the students.

There are no perfect solutions but things can be better.

Sometimes the truth hurts. But it’s better to face it rather than sweep it under the rug. Sounds like some of us are still at the denial stage.

Of all the solutions I’ve heard so far, the best way to avoid the possibility of suicide in a Palo Alto high school is to make sure your kid doesn’t go to a Palo Alto high school. Although Palo Alto is a wonderful place, it’s hard to figure out why people will insist so strongly on living here, even with such outrageous housing prices. The students are under so much stress, but they not the only ones under stress. So many parents here (the non-rich ones) are under a lot of financial pressure. So many doctors in their 40s who are still renting, while the housing prices accelerate further out the reach of their savings. Others, who took the plunge, putting all their savings and retirement funds into a down payment, and essentially imprisoning themselves into their jobs for the next few decades. People, Palo Alto is great, but seriously, is it really worth it?

Re: the comment by Paula, who wrote:

“The Atlantic article was terrible. It slandered our community, claiming (falsely) that high expectations are causing our kids to take their lives. If this meme is picked up by larger national news outlets like 60 Minutes it will crush real estate values. We need to keep a lid on this.”

Are you saying this ironically? If you are SERIOUS, it’s really SHOCKING — and an indication of the crass, money-grubbing values that some people in Palo Alto are displaying these days. Infusing “real estate values” into a discussion of what we can do to be a more humane, loving community does truly indicate that something is amiss here.

Dear Gunn Junior,

Is babying the student means that in the middle school with 4 core subjects kids have 5 or more tutors? Is babying means that freshman are taking the SAT before it changed? Is babying means that programming intro class teacher told the students “See you next year in AP” in September? Is babying means that half of the class afraid to ask a question not to be judged? Is babying means that tests didn’t match the tough material?
Look around. Not all students write papers, do research, consider “B” as “OMG” grade, participate in sport or go to competitions? YES! Many parents afraid to add additional stress to kids, who are already privately struggling, putting a facade not to be judged.
Compassion is a great personal skill. Look around and talk to the quietest kid in the class. Try it next day you are at school.

Since when is high expectation a bad thing? I just read a story in the Mercury News last week about a school district in North Bay where minority students score better than their peers in the Bay Area. One of the reasons of their success: high expectations.

Maybe the issue is to match the appropriate expectations with an appropriate support system that involves teachers, parents and the students’ honest self-knowledge. And we, including the students, should feel fine that high expectations are not meant for everyone.

And not everyone has to go to a liberal arts college. A vocational school can be great if it is the right fit.

Tiger moms. Need I say more?

Dear Bob (whose inquiry is right after my letter at the top of this thread),

Yes, an 87% rate for cheating is unbelievably high, and deserves to be sourced.

This number for the rate of cheating at Gunn is on page 24 of the Stanford Survey of Adolescent School Experiences, as administered earlier in 2015 by the educational consultants at Challenge Success.

I there were an online link, but the best I can do is to email you the report as an attachment. Write to me at savethe2008@gmail, and I’ll be happy to oblige.

To answer your second question: the problem is too overwhelming for teachers to really do anything about, except through the usual admonitions and enforcement of existing rules. The entire culture must be changed, and this is up to administrators, the School Board, and Superintendent McGee.

At the Board meeting on Sept. 8th, Mr. McGee declared the problem of cheating in our high schools “of premier importance.” But in the very next meeting he brushed the issue aside, saying that in the intervening two weeks he’d uncovered no “outright cheating” but only minor issues of copying homework and uncertainty about what kind of collaboration is permissible.

He made these remarks even though Paly’s “Verde” magazine had written last spring of the three-year “Ring of Dishonor” that involved some twenty students, and even though there were significant cheating scandals at Paly in the spring of 2014 which were disturbing enough to make the local news, including television.

Amid all this, we ought to remember three things:

1) Our rates of cheating are high but not unusual. Challenge Success finds rates of cheating of 80-90%, nationwide.

2) Cheating is a moral problem, yes, but (and especially for our purposes here in Palo Alto) primarily a mental health problem.

The pressures around cheating–whether and when to go along, how to do it, whom to confide in, how to lie about it, which friends to keep and which to lose, the high stakes regarding grades and college admissions, the knowledge that other kids’ parents are helping them cheat, even the physical threats that sometimes occur–cause continual anxiety and mental distress. And how can you sleep at night with such worries?

3) For a long time this problem has existed, and the adults have known about it (or ought to have known) yet have done nothing. Our kids aren’t stupid. They’re bright kids, and they can easily see that, at least in this matter, the adults simply don’t care to look after them.

The lesson our kids take away is that school is a game, in a jungle of competition for grades, and that the appropriate attitude is cynicism. They cannot, of their own, change the situation. Only the grown-ups can, and the grown-ups do nothing (in effect, colluding in the cheating).

And this is what we are teaching our teenagers.

Challenge Success has a new book out (“Overburdened and Underprepared”) that describes the success of St. Francis High School, right down the road in Mtn. View, in changing its culture of cheating. For more on this book, and on a host of things related to the well-being of teens, visit: http://www.facebook.com/savethe2008.

For now, we’re sending our kids every morning off to a training in cynicism. And cynicism is of no comfort if, in addition, you happen to be feeling in mortal, adolescent despair.

Sincerely,

Marc Vincenti
Campaign Coordinator
Save the 2,008
savethe2008.com (join us!)
savethe2008@gmail.com

I have little good to say about the over-rated Palo Alto school system. My children are grown and doing great – found their ways into great universities and beyond despite classroom and district policies and politics that made them feel like under achievers. We had to fight the system at every to turn to help our children balance the institutionalized competitive overdrive with manageable real life expectations and to help them maintain healthy self images. I wish I had pulled my daughter out as early as grade school rather than continue to trust that these professionals had her best interests at heart. They did not, though they thought very highly of themselves, and because of the pressure they placed on her to conform, she struggled with a low self image until her talents and creativity were recognized in the work arena and her adult life. And our experience with Palo Alto schools was well before the current craziness being fueled by over-zealous parents. It’s a pity that all the educated thought and money that has poured into this district over the years only seems to have made things worse. The suicide rate speaks for itself. Shame on today’s educators and shame on a cultural shift that has served to steal our children’s childhood from them.

One of my children graduated from Paly and now we are in the Menlo-Atherton district. It’s an outstanding school — in many ways I prefer it to Paly because it is more diverse — with many students going to Stanford and other top schools. Menlo Park and Atherton parents include many highly educated overachievers. Other communities adjacent to Palo Alto — Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, for example — have similar demographics. Though I am grateful we are not seeing this problem here, I also have to wonder: what’s the difference? Are our parents more caring? Our teachers more compassionate? I doubt it, but am surprised that no one has tried to understand why our districts are succeeding where Palo Alto is failing.

@Chip
I think you are mistaken about your assessment. While I do not agree with Asian Cheater’s attempted rationalization for cheating, the documentation regarding quotas limiting Asians at the elite schools is extensive, and not really debatable at this point. Most debates now focus on whether or not this limitation placed on Asians is justified, for the purpose of creating greater diversity. I suppose the jury is still out on this one.

The UC system is a special case…they have already outlawed using race as a selection criteria. Immediately after this went into effect, the admissions rates of Asians skyrocketed, uncovering the bias that was obviously evident. At Ivy League institutions such as Harvard, no such rule exists, and the percentage of Asians hovers at a stable percentage, despite the vast increase in number of Asian applicants.

It is a statistical error to say that the percentage of Asians admitted to a college (UC) is greater than the percentage of Asians in the population. This is the same reasoning they used to justify the Jewish quota, decades ago. As you know, many Asians place a strong emphasis on education, and there are a disproportionately high number of Asians with outstanding high school resumes.

The only fair way to compare is to compare the applications of the students who got in, and to see if there were higher standards set for certain racial groups. A higher standard placed on Asians at many elite schools has already been clearly demonstrated. Please spend 10-15 minutes on google reading and educating yourself about his, if you’re interested. Most likely, I expect you will not…you probably already have your own ideas about it. Those who have grown up Asian in America already know this too well, and it is very disappointing to continue to hear debate about something that is no longer debatable.

Frankly, I am only interested in what the students have to say. They are living every day with this issue, and as an adult I have no real insight into why this is happening, only that it IS happening.

We need to hear from the students.

I know this will not make the problem go away, but what about a movement to move the train tracks so they don’t run right through the city, and right next door to PALY. First reaction: no way, that’ll cost a fortune, be very disruptive etc etc. Instead of spending a ton of money on high speed rail, how about re-routing the existing tracks. While the re-routing is going on increase the number of commuter buses.

Father of 3,

There’s no other place to put the tracks. There is, however, an ongoing discussion of trenching or tunneling them because of the proposed high-speed rail–both will be extremely expensive, but less so than trying to move them.

Asian Cheater: That is a very sad state of affairs that you and your friends feel you have no choice but to cheat in order to have a chance of getting into the best schools. What happens to you when you get to one of those “best” schools and come up against students who didn’t have to cheat to get there? I guess you’d be justified in doing a little more cheating, wouldn’t you? You already said that it’s not really cheating since you were forced into it by the quotas which limit your god-given right to go to the “best” schools. You’re succumbing to a herd mentality, even if you’re part of an elite herd. Find a college that promotes honesty, integrity, best-effort, creativity and independent thinking. There are many of those, and they all don’t cost 200K, and sacrificing of your integrity, to attend. Beware the college-conspiracy.

@Father of 3

I agree with you. While I acknowledge the pressures that some students may face, it does not justify cheating, in my opinion. I should say that Asian Cheater should not claim to speak for all Asians, as many of us find cheating to be immoral, wrong and plain unfair. Perhaps too much pressure in this community is focusing on the short game, i.e. getting into the best college. College is only the very first step in a long, tortuous and unpredictable journey through life. If you work hard, remain strong, and be true to yourself, and be good to your family and friends, you can make it in life, not matter what type of broken road you take to get there. Look around you at all the happy successful people and ask them about their stories…the prestige of their college alma mater likely plays very little role in their current life.

maybe I will just have my kid take the GED and write some cheating apps for pausd. Probably would make enough money to pay for college and then some. TESTTEXTinc.

When hired, “cheater for a reason” you will have to be able to perform. Everyone knows who the cheaters are and who is actually smart eventually.

After reading the very well written, totally harmless Atlantic article and the response in the Palo Alto Gunn folks like MS Durbin it seems obvious that these folks just do not get it. They are the problem, not the kids.

If I would have to be tought by or have to deal with such hypersensitive, missing the point kind of people on a daily basis, I might contemplate suicide myself.

the atlantic article sums it up nicely

crazy helicopter parents drive teachers crazy. crazy teachers drive kids crazy

go the root

It’s the family’s fault. If my parents moved me to a non-western country like China which required me to become proficient in their language that was not spoken in my home, and become known by a funny western name, and forced me to learn to play an instrument like the Erhu, and lay the typical filial head trip of being number one in everything, and then financially take care of them, and make them wealthy, it would make me crazy.
It’s not my culture, and don’t know why they are trying to make me into someone who I am not.

On many articles, I keep on seeing parents slandering teachers for grading on a curve. I can’t speak for Paly, but I’m a Gunn senior, and never, in my past four years, have I or any friends of mine had a teacher who limited the number of students getting A’s. Many actually try to help us, offering extra credit opportunities or even rounding off an 89.5 to a 90 (this has helped me numerous times).

@Not impressed,
You bring up a really good point, which keeps coming up: All of this fingerpointing, blaming parents, etc — if those things were true, then why aren’t the similar and even wealthier districts surrounding Palo Alto experiencing the same problems?

What if everyone is wrong? These things are complex, yes, and lots of things can contribute. But like a bucket that overflows when many different things are thrown in, the same bucket doesn’t overflow almost no matter what you throw in if the water level is lowered to begin with. What if everyone is missing the reason the bucket is already at capacity to begin with? It makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. Seriously, all this frenzied blame of parents ignores the fact that until the suicides, the word in the parent communities was that Palo Alto had some of the more laid back parents and less social pressure than some of the more affluent school districts ringing it.

Yes, we have educational problems to solve. But many of those same circumstances exist in districts nearby and they don’t have the same level of depression or suicide.

What if you are all wrong, and it’s something else? I can think of two major potential causes that haven’t even been considered. They are possible to fix, and it’s possible to quantify whether fixing them “empties the bucket”.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if tiger parenting had nothing to do with it. (Not that tiger parenting is desirable, just that I wonder how many of those above conjuring and casting their stones at easy bogeymen would eat crow if they found out they were wrong? We do have a surfeit of crow in this town…)

@Paul – you see 5% of parents as lunatic fringe. Interesting.

I see about 15% of teachers as callous, uncaring, and uninterested in teaching the students. And the school can’t get rid of them; parents can’t get their kid away from them, and the schools won’t help the kids recover.

It is a real problem.

Change the bell schedule and let them sleep. Menlo-Atherton starts at 9:00 and later on some days.

During one Gunn evening event when I parked on a nearby street and walked into the campus, I noted there is a cemetery right across the street from Gunn. Normally the landscaping makes it not so obvious when traveling by car, but when walking it was blaringly present. I did wonder whether young minds who are already stressed may be facing the reality of death everyday and it got swirled in with their cyclone of other adolescent thoughts… I may be totally off on this, but just wondered.

“I’ve also read in Terri Lobdell’s PA Weekly articles that there is a group of “insider” parents who make huge PIE donations”

That speaks volumes right there. It’s flashing red lights and sirens. Could it explain why a student who allegedly hacked the district computers to alter her grades was let off with a one-week suspension and no expulsion or criminal investigation?

No, it’s correct. I was taught by Stanford student teachers at Walter Hays and Paly back in the ’60s and ’70s. The practice may no longer exist but it did at one time.

@Joe Bloe – Nothing has changed since the 60s? Time to step out of the time capsule. Or stay there and remember the good times because life is more difficult now, for sure. Our kids don’t even have time to relax and enjoy childhood – their future is bleak.

I agree with the elementary school teacher, it is not uncommon to hear kids in elementary school who talk about going to Stanford. It is discouraging to see High school parents whose kids did not get into UC or stanford cringe when they are asked where their kids plan to go to college. Kids in elementary school are overscheduled and it starts there. When I had taken my child for music instrument tryouts at JLS this summer, I heard a parent ( not Asian) tell her child, an incoming fifth grader to choose a brass instrument since that ensures a college scholarship eventually. There is tremendous peer pressure among girls in fiffth grade to attend the volley ball clinics to make the Volleyball feam at JLS. Those are parent generated, When elementary school parent says thaf if she does not sign her kid up for multiple activites after school, her child will not know what to do with herself or will fight with her siblings, that to me is a problem right there.

Suicide is a complicated phenomenon, stress brought upon your child to pursue some lofty ideal of success or because you do not have the bandwith to deal with their everyday ups and downs at elementary schoo is not. Parents need to back off and not push their elementary kids to five six days of activities unless the kid is genuinely interested. Kids need downtime at all ages especially at the elementary school level and indulge in free play ( not scheduled, controlled and monitored playdates of the parents choosing) so they are able to acquire the tools to cope with the stresses of adolesence and whatever else life throws at them in our middle and high schools.

Growing up, if we had a sucky teacher, we had to deal with it. There were no parents trying to fix it for us, with donations or without. That is where building resiliency comes from. Maybe every child does not need to be a winner!

I could give a list of examples of the different parenting and teaching foibles we have experienced over the years. Rather than adding fuel to this debate echoing many of the examples above, I just want to say that what one family calls good parenting appears to be bad parenting to another family. We have been criticized many times by other families by our approach to parenting because our style is so different. But saying that, we have also been the hangout house for our kids’ friends because of the relaxed atmosphere. I have at times had to be discreet about delivering a message to a friend to go home and do piano practice, rather than play here, or that a latch key doesn’t go straight home to do homework but comes here for an hour or so before going home before parents arrive home from work.

On the one hand, I feel guilty about doing this, but in a small way I feel I am able to help a child to take a few moments of relaxation away from the never ending “to do” list. BTW, some parents have forbidden their kids to be friends with my kids, but I always let the kids be kids and if the parents don’t like it and forbid my kids from going to their homes, I won’t forbid their kids from coming here if that is what they want.

Another thought-provoking piece on this topic is the “Freshman Address” by Yale College Dean Richard H. Brodhead to the entering Class of 2003. It is entitled “The Hazards of Success” and can be found at: http://www.yale.edu/opa/arc-ybc/v28.n3/story4.html

An excerpt from the conclusion of Brodhead’s address:

“Last and in certain ways most troubling, along with the many benefits the culture of achievement may have brought you, it is possible that it may have induced in you some of the mindlessness it tends to promote toward its own goals. The trouble with habitually scanning the landscape for games one could enter and and do well at is that it promotes the thoughtless assumption that these are the games worth playing. But after awhile, however proficient you are at some events, you will want to make your own reckoning of what is truly worth your effort, time and care. I have known Yale students whose schedules were so crowded with commitments as to make the Secretary of State seem like a lady of leisure, and I in part applaud this way of life, since in my experience wisdom is more likely to grow from activity and involvement than from passivity and sloth. But as you construct your new life here, it would be well for you to remember that the goal of your activity is wisdom, not mere busyness, and to take pains to see what your involvements are teaching you. It’s quite possible to lead a whole life in successful compliance with some external protocol of success. In Grove Street Cemetary you can see the gravestone of a long-deceased professor listing every degree and prize he won and every university position he held. (The ultimate resumé! I hope it helped him in the next admissions process!). But it would be at least as impressive to have lived up to some thoughtfully-achieved personal idea of what makes a valuable life, so I hope you’ll take time, here, to think and reflect. If you leave here with a ripened sense of what life seems best worth living, you’ll have the accomplishment best worth the accomplishing.”

The problem is not with Chinese American parenting.

There have been tiger parents of all races.

However, many people have been shocked and horrified by things that immigrant Chinese parents do to their children ( read “ Love is Only for White Kids”, a non-fiction account of a boy growing up with Chinese immigrant parents).

Some teachers have complained that no one informs immigrant parents ( not just Chinese) that they have not been allowed to inform them, that many forms of punishment allowed in their countries of origin are illegal here–and could result in the child being put into foster care. Both of my children’s former counsellors have complained, as well–and what do we do about it?

Physical and emotional abuse ( being disowned, having a puppy– yes, a puppy– taken to the pound) are not legal, viable, or appropriate disciplinary actions for a less than perfect score on a single test. I think most people in the PAUSD middle and high schools know of one or more immigrant children who were punished with physical and/or emotional abuse.

We had neighbors from Japan who were cruel to their daughter, and after years of complaints to the authorities, she was taken from them for a year. Once they got her back, they returned to Japan.

@Gabriel Lewis

Thank you for your incredibly well written and thoughtful post. I wish you had written the Atlantic article instead. It would’ve been a much higher quality article.

It’s interesting to see the number of comments above that mention PiE (even though it’s clearly a tangent). Posters have referenced PiE’s insider circle, elite, big donors, and cliquishness. This appears to be in reference to the fact that it’s not only our students who have to compete in a high stress environment, but parents compete about who can donate more money. Palo Alto is a culture of competition.

Our family has donated to PiE every single year since our kids started school. However, after being one of many families thanked publicly in PiE’s latest annual report for half the amount of what our family actually donated (ie. PiE screwed up), I have to agree with previous posters. It’s clear PiE does not value donors outside the “Leadership Circle”. We will not be donating anymore.

Before we allow some of the bigots in this community to turn this into a racial bashing exercise, let’s go back to the main issue we are facing.

Teens in our school district reflect the diversity and the challenges we all face living in hyper-competitive Silicon Valley. For those of us working in this environment, we see lots of bad behavior from people trying to get ahead on a daily basis (at work, during commute traffic, youth sports, etc), and this goes across different socio-economic, political and ethnic lines.

Kids today are forced to mature much faster because of these realities. They are dealing with a tough situation, and that’s why even the so-called experts haven’t been able to figure this out. It doesn’t help to have some people resort to simplistic racial scapegoating to express their own prejudices and fears of a changing world.

We would be much better as a community focusing on helping these kids navigate through these challenges. Can’t change the minds of those who are full of resentment and prejudice, but at least I hope they can express their views in a different forum instead of using others’ tragedies to voice them.

You know what happens to overworked kids? Something we used to see a lot when we live in Shanghai and HongKong: they rebel, big time, and start sneaking out at night to party, etc.

OR, they get to college and have some freedom–and take too much, getting into trouble with cutting classes to sleep in late, partying, drinking and using drugs to excess….,sometimes getting put on Academic Probationor being expelled.

OR, if they make it through the college system and into the workforce, they lose that first job due to excessive absences due to playing hooky, oversleeping, drinking all night, drug use at work.

OR, they become very irresponsible adults ( often like their fathers, who physically abandon the family but still financially support them), because they never got a chance to have fun or just be a “kid”.

As stated, we saw this play out over and over again in high pressure societies such as HongKong and Shanghai, where we lived for five years, as well as Japan, Singapore, Beijing, S Korea, and Taiwan, where we have visited extensively.

Apparently, up until the latter 20th century, this was also true of Prussia, the Netherlands, and Lucembourg. But they at least learned from the failures and no longer raise their children nor educate them this way.

We suspect the Adian countries may have influenced some of the local school districts (PAUSD, Cupertino, etc) in that childhood basically ends when elementary school begins.

AJ tutoring should donate to Pie. He is really making a mint off the district.

Growing up in the Midwest, my three neighbors were a policeman, a librarian, and a manager at a carpet cleaning company. In Palo Alto, my neighbors are a surgeon, a tech CEO, and a manager of a hedge fund.

The problem with Palo Alto is that there is no standard of “normal.” My neighbors back home were plenty happy, even though they couldn’t afford to buy a doghouse in Palo Alto.

@PAK, South of Midtown,
about your post concerning Google etc. hiring Stanford grads — read this lengthy article for more details!

http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2015/04/02/stanford_graduates_get_fought_over_by_tech_companies_like_snapchat_and_have.html

From Slate/Business Insider
It’s PROXIMITY to Silicon Valley, not a superior Computer Science program at Stanford
just fyi…

Mixed messages – sorry I wasn’t clear – the three docs from my block don’t live there now. I was describing the professions of us kids who hung out together. Only one of those three docs lives in town. I do recall a lot of Palo Alto people older than me whose parents had blue collar professions, but of course that has changed for the most part. Yes, in this area now the medical docs are no longer the rich ones. I know docs who’ve had to apply for financial aid for their kids.

I would like to disagree with many of the above who think there is something wrong with having accomplished friends and neighbors. Idealizing blue collar work and jobs is becoming a kind of ludicrous and unintentionally degrading “noble savage” argument.

I grew up in mostly “average or way below average” places, and having so many nice, smart neighbors and friends here, who care about the environment, our kids, and just everything, has saved me. I love that I can dream out loud and I’m not looked at like I have some kind of horrible disease. That there is always someone to talk about politics, science, current events. I never feel like a freak for acting like I’m interested in something more than smoking, drinking, watching football, and gossiping. I love every place I’ve lived, and yes, have many “normal” friends (by whatever embarrassingly elitist standards the above discussion has created for normal), and have the opposite of an elitist attitude, but it’s like being let out of a cage that I can be myself and there are so many people here that I can relate to.

One of the thing I most love about our schools is the families, and the kids who are so interested in everything (at least before they get it beaten out of them).

All this “noble savage” idealization is just getting silly and degrading. People are just speculating and letting their prejudices run wild, and making bogeymen out of their neighbors. The simple fact that the communities ringing us have more of everything people keep blaming this on should give pause to consider other causes.

I would like to clarify one of the things mentioned — that the district has extraordinarily high rates of cheating. I remember when we took the survey whence this result came that the definition of cheating was extraordinarily loose, and this was a prevailing opinion among others I heard discussing the survey as well. I do not exactly recall the survey question regarding it, but I believe the definition of cheating included smaller things like comparing answers with a friend on an individual worksheet (not a test), which, while perhaps slightly undesirable, comes from a desire to confirm one’s knowledge rather than work off of somebody else’s brains. Other examples of cheating, I believe, included hearing about a test before taking it. I never hear anybody actively share test questions. Most often, this takes the form of describing the difficulty of the test and is as much an outpouring of relief/dissatisfaction of the first student to take the test as it is a statement of fact to the second student, which really doesn’t help them much. Cheating rings such as the one at Paly probably do occur, but the statistic that 87% of students are cheaters is a misrepresentation suggesting that far more students are concerned about grades without the learning to back them up than are actually the case.

I also want to take this chance to say that most teachers (at least, every teacher that I’ve had) are good (and I’ve been in PAUSD all my life); they care about their students. Most parents are the same. This outcry over teacher-student and parent-student relationships represents more of a vocal minority and there is so much more to us than this as a community. It has been heartening to see how much my school has come together in the wake of the suicides and to see how much the conversation about mental health has broadened.

In less than 12 months I have been put down by gunn teachers over and over. I reached out 12 months ago and one after one transfer of phone valley to another, no one could help me find counseling for my son. This year I bubbled up things to language department in hopes of providing feedback and felt resistance. the teachers are overwhelmed and I simply don’t care. Even for the FOS teacher who put blame on my son.

I have given up on Gunn! I am an educated experienced mom. I can’t imagine the frustration my son feels. I even tried calling the assistant principle and no help.
This place is toxic! Too big, teachers overwhelmed, and the front office and attendance office folks could use some new social skills from target. They are so unfriendly I wonder if Dr. Herman even notices.

It occurs to me that one of the reasons all the measures have not been successful is that they are so much easier to offer to kids and families who don’t need them as badly as the “vocal minority” who really do, as @very concerned parent evidences. Those who try to speak out or are experiencing injustice or problems probably aren’t going to come packaged nicely, they’re probably upset, and if there is any hint of needing special services, or needing a problem solved where staff might be to blame for something, forget it. If they get someone upset, they’re more likely to be hurt by retaliatory pettiness from staff than helped, and the snowball continues.

Good people can do bad things within a system in which there is virtually no accountability to deal with anything they find objectionable or difficult. McGee hasn’t changed that, in many ways, he’s allowed the worst admin players to entrench. Inviting in the CDC isn’t going to fix that, because guaranteed, the same people are going to be their tour guides and show them only what they want them to see.

@An Answer hit the nail squarely – it’s important to understand that mental illness plays a huge roll. Not every kid is vulnerable. And it’s not because (as many posts speculate) the size of their house, wealth of parents, snobbiness, or any other nonsense posted online. The prejudice and misinformation above is astounding.

To the CDC’s findings, the schools handle mental illness terribly. We had teachers purposely keep expectations hidden (drives anxiety) yell at kids( anxiety & depression) berate them about homework ( anxiety & depression) ignore kids months on end without a single kind word (isolation & depression), retaliate when the kid raises a question (hopelessness&depression), start the term by giving kids poor grades so ‘they work hard to catch up'( anxiety) overload and sleep deprivation (depression), secret deadlines & and testing beyond course material (anxiety)…

Basically our teachers are not trained in professional behavior. They are using all manner of manipulation in the classroom to make kids lives hell.

The school takes no responsibility and DOES NOT EVEN SEE THIS AS A PROBLEM. The clusters will reoccur until the schools change how they deal with mental illness.

Punishing mental illness has not worked. Maybe it’s time to try something else…

There seems to be a correlation in the increase in the number of cheating incidents ( since the early to mid 2000s) to the increase in the number of immigrants from China appearing in large numbers in certain districts (especially Cupertino, Saratoga, Fremont, and Palo Alto).

I am hoping this is merely coincidental, but if circumstantial evidence could convict, this would certainly look bad for people directly from China and the values they bring with them. I suspect their definition of cheating differs from the American definition.

I suspect one reason colleges ratchet up the requirements on Chinese applicants is that they assume some percentage are gaming the system to get in.

So this becomes a kind of catch-22: some kids cheat to get in; the school cannot find them all, so reacts by clamping down on total entrants, or ratcheting up the entrance requirements. Then knowing it is harder to get in, the kids (or families) game the system harder.

This proceeds until the honest kids are blocked from entrance at all. This is the real tragedy – honest kids are getting blocked out of the system. Or at least out of some of the “desirable” schools.

The good news? These kids will probably be happier at a school which isn’t infested with cheating. The bad news – it is deeply unfair.

elementary school parent:
You can google for school satisfaction surveys – here’s one from last year which indicates a pretty high level of satisfaction, though it is not broken out into elementary, middle and high schools:
http://www.paloaltoonline.com/media/reports/1402692172.pdf

We sent our child to middle school with some apprehensions, but he is very happy there. Some teachers are better than others, but all seem to be trying. I really don’t recognize the picture of the schools painted in these comments.

I’m also glad to live in district that is diverse and I hope it remains so (we’re Caucasian). Our kids are going to work with and live with Asians, who are the fastest growing racial group in the U.S., and 60% of the worlds population. Why would anyone want to give their kids a false sense of their own competence/work ethic by shielding them from going to school with Asian kids?

Gunn Junior,

Your view is not representative of the Gunn population. Anecdotal evidence is not good science. It’s great that you and your three friends don’t feel stressed and sleep-deprived. But what about the rest of your community? In college, you can’t say “Gunn students are passionate about what they do” based on four pieces of evidence. Researchers have spent years doing qualitative and qualitative analysis of the Gunn and Paly culture, using significant sample sizes to make their conclusions.

Also, I’m not sure why you think college grades are purely test-based. Perhaps this is true in some majors, but in the engineering, political science and psychology classes I took at Stanford, grades were based on class projects, class participation, papers, proposals AND tests. In general, those tend to be much better indicators for success, growth and understanding than how much information you’re able to regurgitate on an exam.

I understand why you’re frustrated about the time management sheets. I would hate that, too. But… what would you have had them do? After four suicides? Just keep doing what they were doing and hope something changed? Perhaps some students are gaining valuable time management skills from the sheets… and perhaps the school is learning how to better manage homework loads and identify other important trends. (I don’t know — I’ve never filled one out, and I don’t know how they’re being used.)

Also, just because someone got an A in the class, doesn’t mean they understand the material, or that the class isn’t that hard. You can cheat (apparently something like 86% of you cheat, BTW). You can memorize without gaining a true comprehension. You can stay up all night cramming, and then forget everything you learned the very next day. There are a lot of ways to measure “learning” and “success,” and your grade is only one of them.

As parents we need to look very very honestly at our motivations.

As ambitious people we want our kids to succeed as much for ourselves as for our children. This is the cause of the pressure.

And now because this article has linked Palo Alto schools and suicides forever are we upset with this article because it is a blot on our resumes to even send our children here?

Marc Vincenti has a point. And he seems to be motivated by what he believes rather than status.

Oh brother. As a life long Palo Altotan and a product of the PAUSD, elementary through high school (My 2 children also. Myself Paly ’77). ‘Tiss my belief that this suicide epidemic a manifest of of complications that occurs under ones roof. It’s an ugly burden on ones shoulders. Sorry.

One child killing themselves is data that the system is not working. A whole bunch of them–and lets confront that fact that we have had a bunch of kids kill themselves–was a long-ago emergency that we never really dealt with. Almost all of our students are going to do well, but McGee is burning through a trough of dollars that seem to be spinning the wheels, but not accomplishing anything. Programs won’t save our children (Project Cornerstone is a joke), good people will. We need more good people.

@Alex,
Let me get this straight. You think that because you (who graduated 40 years ago) and your kids who also presumably graduated some years ago, were fine, therefore parents of the dozens of depressed kids and those who killed themselves must have done it to their kids? That your individual past experience proves there is something so different about Palo Alto parents than Woodside, Atherton, Los Altos, Mountain View, and Portola Valley parents that you can definitively claim something in other people’s homes is so different than holy yours that it MUST be THE cause?

I have a data point for you. Depressed kid in PAUSD. Parents and child tried for years to deal with obvious problems at school, if anything, school personnel made things worse. Left PAUSD. No more depressed. Worst way to cause tears? Suggest returning to PAUSD. (Not about academics – more challanging academic load since leaving.) This is actually half a dozen current data points. All felt decidedly unsafe and unwelcome in school. Untrustworthy behavior from district flowed through teachers so there was no ability to go to school for help. Bullying and cyber bullying not dealt with in trustworthy way. CDC will never see what personnel don’t want them to see, it will happen here, too. They will almost certainly not interview families who left to see what factor school was in children’s health. (Much lower increase than projected this year – where did they go and why?)

Parents are an easy and vague target for people who want to avoid making the hard choices to fix the schools. Absolutely no evidence Palo Alto parents are any different than any of the parents in even more affluent communities surrounding where they don’t have the problem. Seriously, heard lots of stories of boys being yelled at for not paying attn, not turning in assignments, and stories of how snobby the social environments are etc. Not Palo Alto.

Get out of your smug shell. If you aren’t going to help, at least don’t pile on. Children are hurting.

@why,
You have twisted things into quite a pretzel trying to place blame on families. Drinking, for example. How do you know that takes place after hours? Where I went to school, most of the drugs were plotted for, procured, and taken during school hours, away from parents’ view. How do you know it wasn’t the deadening effect of school related more to the drinking? How do you know it wasn’t peer pressure from school, which is so often the major influence in substance abuse? Kids spend most of their time at school and engaged in schoolwork. You paint a rosy picture of teachers being welcoming and parents being monsters, but in our experience, school was traumatic and no one at school to trust or willing to stand up.

It did take a lot of courage to leave, though, and that was all on us parents, who thought it was possible to work with schools and tried too long.

Imagine if our country has only one branch of government that is responsible for the well-being of everyone. Imagine that there is a crisis in our country – such as youth crimes. To what extent would people look to the government to take care of that problem? To what extent would people turn around and say that it is a problem originating from the home? Regardless, pointing fingers wouldn’t solve the problem, nor pouring more and more resources into one institution. The reason is because one institution in our society cannot be solely responsible – nor humanly capable of looking out – for the well-being of everyone. It is like asking one parent instead of both parents to be responsible for the well-being of a household. It is not humanly possible nor is it wise/most effective. One needs the physical, mental and creative energies and combined resources of all.

Asking parents to help contribute to effecting change (by becoming much more informed and aware and willing to take steps) makes complete sense; however, that is only one side of the coin. The other side is parents having equal say at a societal level. Parents are not organized. There is one institution that has the ultimate say – and that is the school system. PTA does not count. Making comments on Palo Alto Online does not count. Talking amongst each other does not count. The day when parents can boycott the school – just like teachers do when they don’t agree with something – is when parents’ voice count. Hopefully, at that time, parents will have a more unified and informed voice to put forth.

Same with student voice. If student voice is to mean something, it needs to arise outside the school system – meaning, collectively organized not as part of one’s experience inside a school. Students who presently do well/don’t do well in a particular school cannot objectively represent all students. One needs to develop perspective – and that comes from stepping outside and reflecting back.

“When we originally went to the moon, our total focus was the moon. We weren’t thinking about looking back at the earth. But now that we’ve done it, that may well have been the most important reason we went.” 40 Years of Blue Marble: A New Kind of Self-Awareness, The Atlantic, December 7, 2012
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/40-years-of-blue-marble-a-new-kind-of-self-awareness/266040/

@ Father of 3,

I think we all agree that some kinds of parenting and schooling can be harmful to students, and that parents, teachers, and administrators should work to change these harmful practices. Yet it is not enough to admonish individual parents and teachers —especially when the individuals are not to blame; note that even Hana Rosin admits that many of those who died simply weren’t facing the stereotypical parental or academic pressures. There are systemic problems, and to solve them, we must change the systemic conditions that gave rise to them.

Through political choices made over the last forty years, we have built a society with very little support for mental health (particularly among those who cannot pay), and where most people face the constant threat of economic failure, with dire consequences — one illness can be enough to drag a family from the middle class, often permanently. This puts intense stress on students, teachers, and parents. I know I felt it as a student. No amount of good parenting or teaching — and I received plenty of both— would have made those worries disappear, because there was, and remains, good reason for them. (Just to be clear, these stresses don’t “explain” suicide any more than parenting does; both are just part of a causal network that differs for each individual).

We can make different political choices, however. We can build a more forgiving economy, one that supports mental health and economic wellbeing; one that gives parents more time with their children, and teachers more space to support their students. Other countries have.

Contrary to what you say, this perspective does not absolve anyone of personal responsibility, or make the problem completely “external” to our community. There are concrete things we can do, right now, here in Palo Alto. Yes, we can and must strive as individuals to be better parents, teachers, and friends. But there are also city meetings to speak at, committees to join, candidates to support, and organizations to build — and these efforts will be necessary for lasting change.