we're back at the top of the hour with more live news, right now we need to hand it over to "your bottom line" with christine romans. the public school education you receive shouldn't depend on your zip code. but in some parts of the country, it does. welcome to "your bottom line." in a moment the extreme measures some parents and students take to try to get a quality education no matter where they live. but first let's begin with the conventional wisdom on education courtesy of "saturday night live." >> while simultaneously in china, over a billion kids were doing math.

>> ouch. but true, l.z. granderson wrote an opinion piece this weekend. kids may should go to school year round in part because we're trying to compete with the rest of the world where they're pretty serious about education. hi, l.z. what prompted you to write this piece? >> oh, man, saturd"saturday nig live" skit is a good place. it really started with my own frustrations as a parent. i have taken my son to four different schools in about two years desperately trying to get him into a school that's going to push him and have him ready to complete with the rest of the world and this is both public as well as private schools and i finally found somewhere and i'm lucky because i have the resources and the ability to do that, but everyone in this country doesn't and that really concerns me. >> in united states on average, you go to school 180 days and

we're going to show you in the back where that is with other industrialized countries. you think if there was a longer school year, that would help. but finland has fewer days in the school year and they are at the top of the year. >> in the piece that i wrote, i actually looked at a multipronged attack. and the summer school was one part of that conversation. you're absolutely correct. finland is only in school on average ten more days than we are, but what they have done culturally is shift their attitudes about education so the positions of being a teacher are highly sought after, they're respected, education is more respected and the way they evaluate and test teachers is much more stringent than they have right now in the united

states. o because of the three-month gap, studies show that kids forget things too. so maybe we can do both, have better teaching, but also get rid of this three-month break in which our kids are forgetting things and then having to relearn them in the following fall. >> with two working parents, sometimes that summer gap is tough because you're trying to figure out child care, you're trying to figure out how to handle the summer where for parents things haven't really changed. kim, i want to bring you into this conversation and ask you from a teacher's perspective and an educators perspective, should we have a longer school year? >> i don't think there's any question that educators know that the more time a student spends on task the better off they are in terms of the chances they have to succeed. the more time you're spends learning, the betteroff you're going to do in school. the question of extended school policies is whether or not they're designed in conjunction with the community and educators. we're all for it.

that's happening all the country. in massachusetts they extended learning time and that's been a success. we wa >> let's switch to something es, steve perry is our education contributor. steve in your state there's a story that's really gripped a lot of parents and educators, 26 families were outed by a school district for sending their kids to a better school, problem is they didn't live in that school district. one of the moms was even charged with larceny, you're seeing a picture of her in court right now. that's from back in april. i want to ask you, does this represent sort of the unevenness of the public school education in this country? >> it is the american low point, it is the worst that we have to offer, when a person is damned to failure by virtue of the fact that they live in a poor

neighborhood, that they don't have the resources to go to school, this is the worst that america has to offer its children because we can do better. one of the reasons why we don't have absolute school choice is because we fight so hard to make sure that teachers get to keep their jobs come what may. but when we put children first and we focus on their needs we find as parents said earlier, there are so many parents that i meet that are constantly looking for a better school for their children but they don't have the resources to move their entire family or to purchase an education. so when we look honestly at vouchers, this doesn't happen, meaning that we don't get arrested for sending your child to a better school. how do you get arrested for sending your child to a better school in the notion that people pay their local taxes and that's what pays for their local school is a by gone one. federal taxes throughout the country were in some way collected to make sure that that

school could run. so a public school is truly a public school not a local school. >> some people try to use this case and others like it, there have been others in ohio and elsewhere as a reason why vouchers should be available so people have the opportunity to use a voucher and get where they want to inside the private school system. what do you think about that. >> we remain opposed to vouchers, what vouchers do is they take scarce resources and divert them to private and religious school. we have no problem for parents who choose to pay for a private education, that is their choice. but in an era with an economic crisis, and a downturn in school budgets, but to take a small amount of money to affect a small amount of students is not the right answer. the right answer is about having policies that force school districts and states all across this country to have equity everywhere in every school.

>> let's talk about school performance for a minute because i want to introduce you guys to booker t. washington high school, this school, it's students, it's parents, it's teachers, they took matters into their own hands and increased graduation rates to almost 81%. they won the president's race to the top competition, what you're saying is the video that they put together to try to win this race to the top commencement competition so the president's going to come there and give a commencement address. all of the stake holders in this community, what they were doing right, there are places where we are seeing public schools despite the odds managing to raise their graduation rates. >> you know, the one word that you rarely hear when politicians and educators and the teachers unions all get together, you rarely hear the word parents. that to me is the number one. i know what the research says,

the research says if you have better teachers and better quality of teachers the kids will succeed and i'm not going to argue with the numbers, but if that child goes home and education is a priority in that home, the kid is going to feel empowered, the children are going to feel empowered and they're going to want to work harder. i understand the political and the ideological arguments that occur between teachers and politicians but we have got to get back to the parents because it's about what's happening at home and what's important at home. that's what you saw a booker t. is the parents inspiring the children to push themselves. >> very good stuff, thank you, everyone. you have heard of the battle hymn of the tiger mother, haven't you? but what about the battle scars of the tiger children. cnn is asking what ps to all the

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i want to introduce you to high school senior maria castro. she dreams of studying

engineering at stanford university. but does her public school give her the quality of education necessary for admission? and what can she do about it? soledad o'brien reports. >> maria, what is the ratios of the 45? >> the one, the one and the 2. >> reporter: maria wants a career that pays her, so she's pushing her school to get it. >> i would do a whole week's lesson, i was like okay this is too simple for me, i was like okay, what's next. >> reporter: do you worry that when you go off to college, you're not going to be prepared to compete? >> yeah. especially with this example, english, we're learning to count the whys and when to count the whys. that's things that my little sister should be learning, you know? >> reporter: it's because more than half of the 2,200 students at maria's school don't pass

state wide tests in reading and math. >> when they come to school, they come in the fourth grade reading level and behind in math so we have a lot of catching up to do. >> it's just me and my little sister. >> reporter: she's the sixth of seven children. >> all of my brothers and sisters were straight a students. >> reporter: an they went from being a students to -- >> dropping out. >> reporter: my sister got pregnant when she was younger and i think everybody was expecting me to follow into their same footsteps. >> reporter: everyone includes her father, she overheard him at her 15th birthday party. >> he was like it's just a matter of time before she fails. >> reporter: fails? >> yeah. he was just like, it doesn't really matter what she does right now, i mean she'll eventually give up. >> reporter: did it motivate you in any way? >> yeah, it did. >> reporter: it did? >> now it's like if i'm going to get straight a's, it's not just for you anymore, it's for me.

>> reporter: you can hear more about how maria despite everything is overcoming problems in public schools. here's a striking juxtaposition to maria's story, another education debate. this one about tiger moms who expect nothing more than perfecti perfection, but is all that pressure just pushing your kid into the bamboo celling? there's a whole world missing when you search on orbitz.

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the tiger mother wrote a op-ed in usa today. if in their early years we teach our children a strong work ethic, perseverance and the value of delayed gratification, they will be much better able to become self-reliant when they're adults. but this push to excel in the classroom is not prepping many for the real working world. carmen wong is -- i want to share with you, what is the bamboo celling? because we hear from the tiger mother about excellent, perfectivation in math, perfection at the poiano, and perfection at the violin. >> it keeps asians from reaching the top ranks of companies, it's self inflicted in that there are

cultural barriers or differences this impact our behaviors, but there are also some organizational barriers that keep us from moving to the top. >> we have a 96% graduation for asian students, far andcarman. yet five ceos are asian or island pacificers. where is it in the "real world." >> not to be controversial here, but, listen, we all have expectations, i'm the product of two very different expectations being the asian side and hispanic side. >> your dad is dominican. >> my mother. >> the thing is with the hispanic culture, for example, they're very low education rates and the expectations there are very low. when it comes to the asian expectations in the workforce, we are excelling just as we did in school, but the problem becomes the personality that folks say or look at and say,

you know, this person doesn't look like what i'm used to seeing a ceo look like, they don't see that and is does that hurt the personality traits that you need, are they there in your culture beyond the book learning? >> that's a lesson i learned early on out of college. >> well, jeff, it's interesting because the battle hymn of the tiger mother, which was the parent extreme parenting story has translate under to the battle scars of the tiger children and now you're hearing from all these kids who say, wait, it's not all it's cracked up to be. you can memorize all you want, but there are life skills that tiger mothers maybe aren't giving. >> that is the point, when it comes to success, yes you can be prepped and go to all these programs so you can do better on standardized exams, but where are you developing the social skills so that when you get to college you can hang out with all of these different ethnic y ethnicities and get involved in sports and so on because in the real world, that's where you excel and then when you add on

what we're not saying the term is, but i'll say it, the institutional racism or prejudice. when that becomes at play, the way you'll have to get through that is to play the game the way that the majority do. >> it's interesting because there was a discussion earlier this year at davos a big gathering of the world's leaders in switzerland and amy chua and larry summers actually got in a tiff about this. he said, look, the a students are professors, the c students are the wealthiest donors. think about it, people on average live a quarter of their lives as children. it's important that they be as happy as possible during those 18 years. he's focusing on creativity, invasion and some things that driven parent may be forgetting when they talk about the violin lessons and all that. jane? >> when i was doing research for the book, i interviewed 100 executives, not just asians. i wanted to get a broad view of

what it takes to be a leader in the company. i found different stages of a leader's development. the beginning. it's important that you are an individual contributor and you put in the hours and put your head down. at some point in the game, though, the requirement of your leadership skills change. you need to move away from being a contributor to someone who can build credible relationships. people sometimes forget that once you start in a company, you might need to figure that out. >> there is something for everybody to learn in both of these extremes and that's what is so interesting here. >> an op-ed in the "usa today" it has to be a combination and i feel very lucky because i had to be a straight a student and excel in everything and a mother who is very, very savvy when it comes to how to manage relationships in the workplace and how you need to be in this country. the advantage for all our groups whether it's ethnic or racial groups in america is there is this american culture of succeeding and how to suk seed

has to do with more than just doing a great job. thank you so much. the group is called "breaking the bamboo ceiling." can you have a five-minute conversation without checking your blackberry? can you make it through dinner without answering the phone or checking your phone? you might need a digital diet. we have a four-step plan to regain a little bit of balance in your life. ♪

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put down your phone. unless you're tweeting the phone. put down your computer unless you're browsing our show page at cnn.com/yourbottomline. technology reporter and recovering digital addict daniel sieberg's first book "the digital diet." >> i'm happy to talk to you about this. i just have to get one e-mail out.

>> when my friend ali velshi and i go to dinner, he has two devices in front of him. >> you see the top of his head more than you see his face. >> he processes all the information and can answer in a split second. he's managing his tech obsession. you say there's four steps to getting through this digital diet. >> this is something that i've struggling with myself and i hope the book offers tools and tips and exercises. it is broken down into this four-step plan. the first step is to rethink and this is all about taking a step back and getting some perspective and research in the book, too. then you move on to reboot. that's about a little bit of a detox. i'm not suggesting people throw all their devices out or anything like that. a day or two just to get perspective on things and then the third part of it is reconnect. go out and meet with people you haven't seen in a while and having that face-to-face conversation and people think you have been mia for a while at a dinner or something like that and just go out and socialize. the final step is revitalize

including wonderful technaul. there are apps and devices that can improve your word. one favorite phrase is outsourcing self-control. sometimes we need help. an app that prevents you from text while driving. eliminating some things that are distractions for us and allow us to focus on stuff that we're doing. >> technology can be your friend or what is making your life harder a hard harder to manage. >> getting back into technology in a way you loved it, again. you know that am a big geek at heart. >> i know you are a geek. that's what we love about you. >> i'm happy to admit that. at one point i wanted to throw all my devices in a blender. the reboot part, it's a little bit of detox, as i say, but more about structuring your e-day and