Organizing for Asian Pacific American Student Empowerment (original) (raw)

An Invisible Crisis. The Educational Needs of Asian Pacific American Youth

1997

An urgent educational crisis threatens the futures of a growing number of Asian Pacific American students, both immigrant and American-born. This crisis is largely invisible to most Americans, even to many in the teaching profession, because many see all Asian Pacific American students as members of a model minority destined to excel. This image is a destructive myth for the many Asian Pacific American children the schools are failing. The number of Asian Pacific American students is large and growing rapidly, and the context for educating these students effectively is changing. While immigrants who came to this country after 1965 were well-educated and well-off, more recent groups of Asian Pacific Americans are poor and poorly educated. The schools' task is complicated by historic problems of poverty and racial discrimination. Language and literacy issues are foremost in the problems of these students. In addition, most schools do not have curricula appropriate to educate multilingual and multicultural student populations. Support for families and youth development is inadequate. Community groups and foundations can offer much-needed support to school's efforts to help this underserved population. Recommendations for foundation help to Asian Pacific American students center on: (1) community/school/family partnerships; (2) institutional change and accountability; (3) curriculum development; (4) language development research and programs; and (5) teacher recruitment and training. Appendixes lists 19 resource organizations for program information and 13 other resource organizationS. (Contains 4 tables, 2 graphs, and 61 references.) (SLD)

Understanding Asian American Student Achievement

Professional School Counseling, 2017

This study investigated the relationships of parent networks and parent empowerment to the academic performance of the children of Asian immigrant parents in U.S. schools. It also examined the role of parent networks in explaining the association between parent empowerment and children’s academic performance. We conducted multinomial logistic regression and path analysis on responses of 317 Asian immigrant parents from the Parent and Family Involvement Survey of the National Household Education Survey, 2007. Parent networks and some parent empowerment components (i.e., competence, parent contact with the school counselor) were significantly related to academic performance. Findings suggest the importance of school counselors utilizing empowerment strategies to help those Asian immigrant parents who need support with their children’s education.

Voices of the invisible: Education policy promoting Asian American youths

Education Policy Analysis Archives

The objective of this commentary is to call attention to the importance of education policy that promotes Asian American (AA) communities. I argue AA communities have not received enough attention in the domain of education policy primarily due to the stereotypes embedded in the dominant “model minority myth” and “perpetual foreigner ideology.” Furthermore, I discuss how the exclusion and misrepresentation of AA communities lead to civic and political alienation of AA youths, in addition to physical and psychological violence toward these populations. I conclude by proposing research questions related to promoting AA actors in education policymaking.

Teaching Asian American Students: Classroom Implications

2000

This study examined the unique learning styles of Asian-American students, noting different Asian immigrants' backgrounds and relating Asian cultures to children's learning. Data came from a literature review; interviews with 19 families from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan who had a total of 33 children ages 6-21 years; and home and community observations conducted during spring 1998-spring 2000. Results indicated that all students came from nuclear intact families of foreign-born parents who were active in their children's academic lives. Students reported that structural teaching and clear expectations helped them focus on content being taught. Half of high school and college students preferred self-directed learning and individual projects. Teachers' approval and encouragement were important reinforcers. Parental supervision and support played an important role in children's learning. Parents provided a safe, supportive environment for their children and usually involved their children in extracurricular activities. They also pressured their children to be not only successful, but also outstanding. These children of East Asian parents adjusted well academically to American schools. They may need teacher and administrator psychological support and understanding to reduce pressure from the home and community. (Contains 12 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.

"Asian Americans and Education"

Chang, B. (2017). Asian Americans and education. In G. W. Noblit (Ed.), The Oxford research encyclopedia of education (pp. 1-39). Oxford University. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.102, 2017

(full version) A review article on the state of educational research concerning communities that are included under the Asian American umbrella category. Abstract and Contents The communities that constitute the racialized category of Asian Americans consist of approximately 20 million people in the United States, or about 5% of the total population. About 20% or 4 million are of primary or secondary school age, and over 1.1 million are in higher education. Both in popular and academic discourse, “Asian American” generally refers to people who have ethnic backgrounds in South Asia (e.g., Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), Southeast Asia (e.g., Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam), and East Asia (e.g., China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan). As “Asian American” is an umbrella term used to categorize a very diverse, heterogeneous, and transnational set of populations, Asian Americans as a group present various challenges to education and research in and about the United States. These challenges can concern paradigms of achievement, citizenship, family involvement, access (e.g., higher education, bilingual education), language and culture, race and ethnicity, and school community. In order to address these paradigmatic challenges, a great deal of scholarship has called for a disaggregation of the data on populations that fall under the pan-ethnic “Asian America” umbrella term, to gain a more nuanced and dynamic understanding of the many diverse populations and their historical, cultural, economic, and political experiences. To further address the problematic framing of Asian Americans in education and related fields, scholars have applied critical lenses to key tensions within conceptualization, policy, curriculum, and pedagogy. More recently, the notions of intersectionality and transnationalism have been generative in the study of Asian Americans, within not only educational research but also Asian American studies, which generally falls under the field of ethnic studies in the U.S. context, but has also been categorized under American studies, cultural studies, or Asian studies. While characterizations of Asian Americans as “the Model Minority” or “the Oppressed Minority” persist, the relevance of such static binaries has increasingly been challenged as the Asian American populations and migrations continue to diversify and increase. Contents: I. Introduction II. Demographics and Naming of Asian America (Key Demographics, History and Politics of Naming) III. Key Tensions within Education (Existing Conceptualizations, Intersectionality and Transnationalism) IV. Moving Forward (Current Issues, Next Steps and Pedagogies) V. Further Reading

Asian American and Pacific Islander Students: Equity and the Achievement Gap

The authors studied more than 1 million Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and White seventh graders in a statewide California testing program between 2003 and 2008, examining their reading and math achievement. AAPI student performance is often reported as an aggregate in discussions of the success of schoolchildren and issues of racial and ethnic achievement gaps. The authors disaggregated the performance of 13 AAPI subgroups and found significant achievement gaps between White Americans and their AAPI peers in reading and math. The data refuted the premise of the model minority myth. The evidence indicated that AAPI students are diverse in their achievements and demonstrate a continuum of academic performance.