The "Asian" Category in MCAS Achievement Gap Tracking: Time for a Change (original) (raw)
Related papers
The 'Asian' Category in MCAS Achievement Gap Tracking
2011
Data gathered on Asian American students in public school by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is aggregated into one general "Asian" category, which may skew the results, both perpetuating an enduring myth and masking any true gaps that may exist for certain Asian American subgroups. As explored in this article, achievement gap tracking for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) is an apt example.
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.
Academic Profiling: Latinos, Asian Americans, and the Achievement Gap
Addressing the "achievement gap" in academic performance has become prominent in educational reform efforts. However, too often,outcomes gathered from accountability measures are used to createhierarchies between students' performance based on gender and race/ethnicity. While such comparisons have traditionally beenmade between Black and White students, recently, more attention has been given to the performance of Latina/o and Asian American studentsbecause of their growing numbers in the educational system. In Academic Profiling: Latinos, Asian American, and the Achievement Gap, Gilda L. Ochoaexamines how afocus on the achievement gap, which she argues gives the "illusion" that inequality is being addressedby shifting the focus to high-stakes testing, hinders both Latina/o and Asian American students by ignoring structural and systemic injustices that "perpetuate hierarchical and binary thinking" (p. 2).
Questioning the model minority: Studies of Asian American academic performance
The current paper reviews literature on the academic performance of Asian Americans with a critical eye toward understanding the influence of discrimination on this process. Specifically, this study seeks to understand the extent to which researchers have gathered sufficient knowledge to dispel "conventional knowledge" of Asian Americans as model minorities. We questioned the extent to which studies explicitly measured student performance as a product of individual effort and Asian cultural influences, while simultaneously measuring the impact of exposure to discrimination. We present a review of studies on Asian American academic performance published 1990 -2008. Our analysis suggests that social science research has continued to perpetuate the stereotype of Asian Americans as a "model minority." The majority of the reviewed studies did not differentiate among Asian American ethnic and generational groups. These studies also tended to infer culture as an explanation for the high achievement of Asian Americans without examining the impact of sociopolitical factors, such as racial discrimination. In fact, many of the reviewed studies reported that Asian Americans were deficient relative to Whites on attributes thought to be related to culture (e.g., personality characteristics, parenting behaviors) while finding that they achieved academically at levels similar to or higher than Whites. Finally, the majority of these studies have not used culturally appropriate methods to test their hypotheses and research questions. Thus, we recommend that studies embrace emic/population-specific and sociopolitical approaches to understand and explore factors that contribute to academic achievement in this group.
The Academic Achievement Gap of Black American StudentsVis-à-vis Whites and Asians
2017
The black-white test score gap is an empirical problematic that dates back to the 1940s. In many standardized tests the mean scores of black students on average are typically at least 1 standard deviation below the mean scores of white students. As Roland G. Fryer Jr. and Steven D. Levitt (2004) point out, ―a wide variety of possible explanations for the test-score gap have been put forth. These explanations include differences in genetic make-up, differences in family structure and poverty, differences in school quality, racial bias in testing or teachers‘ perceptions, and differences in culture, socialization, or behavior. The appropriate public policy choice (if any) to address the test score gap depends critically on the underlying source of the gap‖ (447). For the most part, conservative thinkers emphasize the former two approaches, i.e., genetic make-up and differences in family structure and poverty, and prescribe standardization of curriculum, testing, extra assistance progr...
Teachers College Record, 2009
Background: In recent years, Asian Americans have been consistently described as a model minority. The high levels of educational achievement and educational attainment are the main determinants for identifying Asian Americans as a model minority. Nonetheless, only a few studies have examined empirically the accomplishments of Asian Americans, and even fewer studies have compared their achievement with other important societal groups such as Whites. In addition, differences in academic achievement between Asian Americans and Whites across the entire achievement distribution, or differences in the variability of the achievement distribution, have not been documented. However, this is an important task because it provides information about the achievement gap for lower, average, and higher achieving students. Purpose: The present study examines differences in academic achievement between Asian American and White students in average scores (e.g., middle of the achievement distribution), in extreme scores (e.g., the upper and the lower tails of the achievement distribution), and in the variability of the achievement distribution. The main objective of this study is to determine the achievement gap between Asian American and White students in the lower and upper tails of the achievement distribution to shed some light on whether the achievement gap between the two groups varies by achievement level.
Racial and Ethnic Achievement Gap Trends: Reversing the Progress Toward Equity?
Educational Researcher, 2002
Racial and ethnic achievement gaps narrowed substantially in the 1970s and 1980s. As some of the gaps widened in the 1990s, there were some setbacks in the progress the nation made toward racial and ethnic equity. This article offers a look below the surface at Black-White and Hispanic-White achievement gap trends over the past 30 years. The literature review and data analysis identify the key factors that seem to have contributed to bifurcated patterns in achievement gaps. The conventional measures of socioeconomic and family conditions, youth culture and student behavior, and schooling conditions and practices might account for some of the achievement gap trends for a limited time period or for a particular racial and ethnic group. However, they do not fully capture the variations. This preliminary analysis of covariations in racial and ethnic gap patterns across several large data sets has implications for future research on the achievement of minority groups.