The “highest math and reading scores on record” achieved by US students and mentioned by Obama should refer to their performance in the Program for International Student Assessment, designed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. PISA is global program to evaluate 15-year-old school students’ performance in mathematic, science and reading in OECD member and non-member states, figure out the fields a country relatively excels or is backward in and evaluate the countries’ education policies, curricula and teaching quality.

Given the different functions of scores, parents should not only stop nagging their children to devote more time to homework just to get higher scores, but also acknowledge the difference in intelligence between children and avoid pushing them so hard as to make them desperate in their blind pursuit of higher scores.

Besides, parents should discuss with their children why they fail to get higher scores. In other words, parents should pay more attention to the process, rather than only the outcome of studies.

By making use of their advantage as adults, parents should also try to create opportunities for their children to stay away from fierce competition and concentrate on their advantages instead of scores alone. For instance, it would be wiser for parents to find out which schools would give full play to their children’s talents and what special skills their children excel in.

Also, as scores in different levels of exams have different significance, not every score deserves the same emphasis. In some exams, parents need to focus on the mistakes of their children to help them with the elements they have not mastered, while in others they should cultivate and boost their children’s confidence, even if they realize that high scores are just accidental.

There is nothing wrong in parents expecting their children to perform better in exams, yet if overemphasis on scores hurts their children, then the parents should be the ones to blame.

The author is director of the family research center at the China Youth & Children Research Center.