"The Asian racial group is comprised of more than 48 distinct ethnic groups, and lumping data for Asian students together has masked the educational inequities faced by large sub-sets of the Asian American population." - Southeast Asia Resource Action CenterNote: Some text in this post is directly carried over from a final report I authored for a census data analysis class in late 2016, which examines the model minority myth from a quantitative, historical perspective. In the United States, the model minority myth refers to a controversial perception that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) are a monolithic subpopulation composed only of successful and affluent individuals whose children perform exceptionally well in the education system. Some figures appear to support such a myth. For example, in 2016, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that AAPIs achieved the highest public high school graduation rate out of all racial and ethnic groups. In higher education, researchers found that the proportion of AAPIs with at least one year of postsecondary education rose from 42.21% in 1980 to 58.69% in 2000. However, when disaggregated by ethnicity and nationality, AAPI participation in postsecondary education tells a much different story. The Campaign for College Opportunity reported that, in California, 70% of Indian Americans aged 25-years and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher. On the other hand, only 10% of Laotian Americans from the same demographic have achieved that level of education. College completion rates also differ between AAPI subgroups, as 80% of East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, South Korean) enrolled in a 4-year college earn a bachelor’s degree, while more than half of Southeast Asians drop out without a degree. An intra-AAPI gap also exists in K-12 education, as Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander students tend to perform worse compared to their White and East Asian peers on standardized mathematics and reading assessments. From this perspective, there is ample evidence against the model minority myth. Not all AAPI students thrive in the American education system. The above figures show that Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander students, at both the K-12 and postsecondary levels, are especially vulnerable. Thus, placing all AAPI students into a single category when gathering and reporting student data is a disservice to the AAPI community. When data is aggregated in such a manner, poor performances of specific AAPI subgroups are less likely to be noticed, preventing students and their families from receiving appropriate, targeted interventions. Fortunately, some state legislatures recognized this need for student data disaggregation and have led the path to gradually dismantling the model minority myth. This month, Rhode Island's General Assembly voted in favor of the All Students Count Act. The bill (full text available here) requires that Rhode Island's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education report data concerning "educational proficiencies, graduation rates, attendance rates, and access to educational resources" using the ethnicities and nationalities currently included in the United States Census, including Cambodian, Filipino, Hmong, Laotian, and Vietnamese. Currently, no accountability measures are tied to the law. Rhode Island's governor, Gia Raimondo, is expected to sign the bill into law soon, making the Ocean State third in the nation, after Minnesota and Washington, to pass an AAPI student data disaggregation law. Rhode Island legislators like Senator Jeanine Calkin are hopeful that the new law will help close the achievement gap between student subgroups. The push for AAPI student data disaggregation should not end here. Possibilities for further action are threefold.
Perhaps such efforts could further dismantle the model minority myth and help students like Trina Lei, whose unique needs and challenges as a low-income, undocumented, Filipino student were overlooked by the use of aggregate data.
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