For Asian American students, new magnet school admissions plan creates roadblocks | Opinion

The most frustrating part of the debate about the new magnet school admissions process is the absence of Asian American voices. From reading the news, one might think that the School District’s new policy is only focused on increasing access for Black students while fighting resistance from a privileged white elite. But no one mentions how the new plan affects Asian Americans, who have historically been one of the largest ethnic groups in Philadelphia’s top magnet high schools. And this group is far from privileged.

Asian Americans, one of the fast-growing populations in Philadelphia, are often recent immigrants. They enjoy no greater privilege than any other working-class families in America and depend on public magnet schools for opportunity. But this new process blocks the path to opportunity through hard work.

I started my education in this country at the age of 9, when my family first immigrated here in 1987 under President Ronald Reagan’s immigration policies.

I still remember the day my father dropped my sister and me off at Cheverly Tuxedo Elementary School in Maryland for the first time. I didn’t speak any English. I was totally lost in a new country and a new school where I didn’t have any friends.

My sister and I were the only two Asian immigrant students in our school at the time. I was often bullied in my new school. I never told my parents about the bullying because I didn’t want them to worry about me when they were at work.

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My teachers were always very supportive and punished the bullies. The bullies stopped after I fought back and stood up for myself; I eventually became friends with some of them.

After working my way up through my English as a second language program, I joined my sister in a talented and gifted magnet school program in Prince George’s County, Md. My family moved to the Wayne Junction section of Germantown here in Philadelphia in the mid-1990s. It was traumatic and hard having to constantly move from school to school. But that magnet school launched me on a path to college and a successful career.

Like many Asian Americans, my sister and I got into magnet schools not because our parents had any kind of privileges. They had a primary level education in China and didn’t even speak English at the time. It was because of their determination and sacrifice to provide a better future for my sister and me that they worked long hours while my sister and I studied on our own.

» READ MORE: Philly schools changed special admissions process in the name of equity, but some parents say it’s penalizing kids

Many of Philadelphia’s Asian American magnet school students are from first-generation immigrant families where parents don’t speak much English. They are food service delivery people, cooks, cleaners, and dishwashers. They work tirelessly in restaurant kitchens, grocery stores, dry cleaners, and laundries.

Those are unglamorous jobs that require hard work. And, likewise, many Asian Americans believe that magnet school admissions should be based on merit, so that hardworking students of all races and ethnicities can raise themselves up.

But this new selection process, with its lottery and zip code preferences, is unfair to all families whose children have worked and studied hard to meet the admissions criteria under a merit-based system.

Now families are worrying about where to send their children if they lose the lottery, even though their children may be among the top of their class with straight A’s and perfect attendance.

What kind of message are we sending our children that their grades and efforts do not matter but they must pray that they will be lucky enough to win a lottery drawing? Is this the kind of democracy that we want to promote to our next generation? A lottery is not fair and it definitely does not guarantee equity.

Michael Zhang is one of the organizers of the Stop Asian Hate demonstrations in support of Christina Lu.