SAN JOSE, Calif. - By most measures, the Franklin-McKinley Elementary School District is struggling to get by. But on closer inspection, it’s also the site of a success story in which one segment of students is defying the odds in the working-class central San Jose district. Vietnamese-American students – most of whom are the children of refugees – are placing at the top of their classes and performing on par with children in affluent communities such as Palo Alto and Burlingame, according to state test scores. But unlike high-performing students in affluent districts, most of these students have none of the advantages of higher-income, higher-educated families. In many cases, these children will be the first to go to college, and in some families, the first to finish elementary school.

“You find this same phenomena wherever there is a large and tight Vietnamese community,” said Min Zhou, a professor at the University of California-Los Angeles who has studied the academic performance of Vietnamese students in New Orleans. “It’s not any one thing, but all the influences that come together with the clear vision that education is the only way up the social ladder.”

Certainly there are Vietnamese children struggling academically. But at Franklin-McKinley the test scores of Vietnamese-Americans – who make up 28 percent of the student population in the district and 6 percent of Santa Clara County’s – are helping to lift the district’s performance.

Ten of the 14 elementary and middle schools in the San Jose district, which is wedged between highways 101, 87 and Interstate 280, failed to meet state testing targets. Four scored so poorly on the Academic Performance Index that the federal government has threatened to take them over unless they improve.

But throughout the district, the largely Vietnamese population of Asian-American students is scoring at least 100 points higher than other students. At Hellyer Elementary, which has the highest overall test scores in the district and the largest number of Vietnamese students, API scores among Asians average 822 on a scale of 1,000. At Stonegate Elementary, Asian students scored 852, one point below Juana Briones Elementary in Palo Alto.

Zhou credits the availability of affordable tutoring centers and the Vietnamese community’s emphasis on education for some of the success. At the Khai Tri tutoring center in San Jose, the two-story building of classes is packed with Vietnamese students on a Wednesday evening. Parents rely on high school and college-age tutors to guide their children through an educational system they often do not understand.

“My mom is always saying don’t waste the opportunities we have here,” said Tina Huynh, a tutor at Khai Tri and a senior at Andrew Hill High School. “I went to tutoring centers when I was young and now I’m helping younger kids in the same way.”

Though many parents do not participate in school activities, they put their faith in the schools and teachers to lift the entire family. Such sentiment is reflected in an expression heard in many Vietnamese-American homes: “nhat su nhi phu” (first teacher, second father).

Franklin-McKinley’s students continue to do well after elementary and middle school: Every 2004 valedictorian at nearby Oak Grove, Yerba Buena and Andrew Hill high schools was Vietnamese-American.

More remarkably, the students are performing well even though their parents tend to have less education – which experts say is one of the biggest predictors of student performance. Just 33 percent of Vietnamese said they or their spouse had a college or postgraduate degree, the lowest of the four major Asian subgroups in the Bay Area, according to a Mercury News/Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation poll. In contrast, 89 percent of Indians said they or their spouse have a college or postgraduate degree.

At Hellyer, for example, 20 percent of parents have college degrees and 20 percent did not complete high school. At the state’s top-ranked school, Faria Elementary in Cupertino, nearly every parent has a college degree and more than eight in 10 have graduate degrees.

But like parents in more affluent districts, Franklin-McKinley parents place a high value on education. They emphasize studying and going to college as a means to getting professional jobs that will help the whole family, said Madison Nguyen, a member of the Franklin-McKinley board.

“If you’ve seen hardship as some of these families have trying to come over here, then when you come here it will be very clear to you what you have to do to get ahead,” said Nguyen, a De Anza College professor whose parents did not attend college. “And the answer is clear to everyone: education.”