Reply #2: Not just parental involvement but parental expectations.

[LibDemAlways]

Asian parents take education extremely seriously. At an 8th grade awards assembly at my daughter's middle school I overheard a group of Asian parents discussing their children's grades and agreeing that nothing less than an "A" was ever acceptable. It's very much a cultural thing.

In my daughter's high school graduating class of 2011 three students, all of them Asian and children of immigrants, were accepted to Ivy League Universities - Harvard, Brown, and Columbia, respectively. They all had perfect, or near-perfect SATs, had taken every AP course offered, and participated in every school activity they could squeeze in. Those kids are positively driven.