I meant mostly at the high school level. Particularly in the "high end" school districts. Loads of home work, drills, competitive test taking ... because, you know, the Chinese/Koreans are all "way ahead" and score so well in international competitive examinations. I would ignore those examinations (frankly I would ignore the spelling bee too!) but newspapers love such stuff, and scare the middle-class with "we are falling behind the Asians".
College hasn't gone Asian-style yet in the US.
The reason I bring that up is that due to the way the Indian IT sector works, we don't get the best test takers (they are grabbed by the big brand name service companies). So we get people who generally did't do well in various kinds of tests. I count that as a blessing :-)
As an aside, I am impressed that someone who went to an IIT (and so had to do well in the most competitive exam in the world) sees the dark side of these tests.
Interestingly, India just scrapped competitive exams for 10th grade (CBSE) which is a great first step.
This is definitely happening in the US and around the world. In fact, I think perhaps you're being too charitable towards American colleges. But then I suppose it's all relative.
College hasn't gone Asian-style yet in the US.
The reason I bring that up is that due to the way the Indian IT sector works, we don't get the best test takers (they are grabbed by the big brand name service companies). So we get people who generally did't do well in various kinds of tests. I count that as a blessing :-)