Extra credit is not extra. It’s just credit. It’s what separates the good students from the bad students.””Aww – recess is so fun,” Lulu offered as her final sally. But after that, Lulu, like Sophia. always did the extra credit. Sometimes the girls got more points on extra credit than on the test itself – an absurdity that would never happen in China. Extra credit is one reason that Asian kids get such notoriously good grades in the United States.Rote drilling is another. Once Sophia came in second on a multiplication speed test, which her fifth grade teacher administered every Friday. She lost to a Korean boy named Yoon-seok. Over the next week, I made Sophia do twenty practice tests (of 100 problems each) every night, with me clocking her with a stopwatch. After that, she came in first every time. Poor Yoon-seok. He went back to Korea with his family, but probably not because of the speed test.



