community is very, very competitive. when i go to the u.s., for example, or even the uk, i find that people are a lot more relaxed. reporter: he s not happy with his s.a.t. writing score, a mere 680. mind you, that s a 94 percentile performance. kristi lu stout, cnn, hong kong. sounds to me the fix is in getting people to want to do better in school. how do we fix america s schools? we re posing it to hal sparks, you know him well, something of an expert on china, roland martin, our cnn analyst. hey, roland, kristi lu stout was talking about the things that seemed to set these students apart. it is a test-oriented culture. there s a competitive demand to get into the good universities. there is private tutoring. they find americans and westerners too relaxed. sounds to me like we re failing on all fronts.
what s the secret? kristi lu stout checks it out. reporter: this hong kong junior is at ease at the keyboard and with the college boards. on the s.a.t.s he scored a whopping 790 in reading and 770 in math. 99 and 98 percentile scores. the secret, his after-school tutors. i m doing pretty well at school in no small part thanks to these tutors. reporter: he spends four hours a week with tutors at hong kong s kelly yang project. there s the myth that every chinese kid is good at math, but aside from that, i think it s just that they have the access to the school, to the extracurricular activities, which are going to be helping them with these different subjects. and there s also a lot of priority at home for them to do well. and their parents won t take b for an answer. reporter: students in hong
hong kong and this region, the confucius society is very test oriented. there s a heritage of that. but there are also some other pragmatic reasons why. you pass examinations, you get into better schools and you get into better universities. reporter: with such an intense emphasis on getting into that better university, actualering is huge in hong kong. according to a recent survey, more than half of hong kong students get private tutoring. the entire hong kong school community is very, very competitive. when i go to the u.s., for example, or even the uk, i find that people are a lot more relaxed. reporter: he s not happy with his s.a.t. writing score, a mere 680. mind you, that s a 94 percentile performance. kristi lu stout, cnn, hong kong. all right. so that s happening there. what s going on here? what s happening to our schools? budget cuts, exploding class size, tumbling test scores.