New Jersey School Eases Pressure on Students, Baring an Ethnic Divide (2015)

TLDR The school district, was facing a crisis. Its students were overburdened and stressed out, juggling too much work and too many demands.

Superintendent urged parents to join him in advocating a holistic, “whole child” approach to schooling that respects “social-emotional development” and “deep and meaningful learning” over academics alone.

Superintendent suggestion revealed a divide roughly along racial lines:

On one side are white parents who has come to see the district’s increasingly pressured atmosphere as antithetical to learning. “My son was in fourth grade and told me, ‘I’m not going to amount to anything because I have nothing to put on my résumé,’ ” one parent said.

On the other side are parents like Mike Jia, one of the thousands of Asian-American professionals, who said Superintendent reforms would amount to a “dumbing down” of his children’s education.