It may be true that Asians have an IQ that is 5 points higher then whites. But in these tests and interpreting the results it isn't cknowledged that most Asians in these rich and very smart cities are not participating in these tests while in America almost everyone does includng people who are here illegally. The comparison is apples and oranges. In Asian countries if you are poor you don't go to school for 12 years and you don't go to the better schools and you don't get tested in these major tests that releases results to the world. You work in a kitchen or farm or market and probably aren't even aware that there are IQ tests in school. India does the same thing as does most of the Middle East. If the U.S. only tested their college bound kids then perhaps these stats might be meaningful.

If first generation Asians were brought up just as most Americans are then I would agree that it would indicate a higher IQ. But they are not. The Asian immigrant parents obsess over them teaching them, watching over them as they do their homework, punishing mediocrity and only accepting their best. If American parents brought their children up this way and if our culture supported it and reinforced it, who knows, we might surpass all other groups.

I worked with a guy who loved baseball. His two boys played baseball and off season practiced baseball. The guy coached baseball and coached his kids constantly from the time they could walk. At 8 and 10 the kids were pretty good, better then their peers. Were they "naturals"? No, just the expected result from the extra effort their father made to teach them.

On another blog recently I read where a airline evaluated their pilots and found that Asian pilots were typically well qualified on paper. They knew the manuals by heart and did well on the tests. But the author lamented that since their learning style was to memorize everything by rote that their actual abilities fell well below what their tests would indicate. He said that landing a big jetliner in a crosswind was still a mystery to these well trained and experienced pilots and flyng with them was often sheer terror.
The problem with an IQ test is it tests your knowledge of what you've been taught, well not really it tests your knowledge of what the test writer assumes you have been taught. You can take a child, almost any child and teach it exactly what the test will ask and voila you have a high IQ student. But the practical ability may well not meet the expectations. The teaching style of the Asians and people of various other countries fit this model and yield good results. But we still don't know if in fact the children are smarter or simply trained dogs. I find it interesting that in the 60's and 70's Japan began mass marketing motorcycles to the West but for many of these motorcycles they were simply cheap copies of existing technologies often including the worst features (i.e. the outside oil lines of English motorcycles). During the 70's and 80's the Japanese and mainland Asia began marketing earth moving equipment to the west but they again were cheap copies of Caterpillar equipment. Odd, isn't it for the worlds smartest people to have to copy us ignorant Westerners. Now havng said that I would agree that the Japanese for example have made improvements in cars and motorcycles that our system failed to make. But this too speaks to their obsessive nature as demonstrated by their schools and the tiger moms. Not saying it is a bad thing, I like having 8 cupholders and three cigarette lighter outlets in my vehicles. But again is it a result of greater intelligience or greater OCD.
The bottom line is you can raise your kid's or ur own IQ (as tested). There are tutors and classes that will teach you the tests. You could sit with your children for four hours everyday and do the job our schools fail to do. You can send your children to private schools that have a reputation for success. Knowing this I come back to the question of is the IQ of Asian's higher or is their education system better or do they simply train them in the same way you train an animal to perform? I do not know. It could be all of these things. I do know that the answer is more complex then it appears.