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THE COALITION FOR ASIAN AMERICAN CHILDREN AND FAMILIES 50 Broad Street, Room 1701, New York, NY 10004 Telephone: (212) 809-4675 Fax: (212) 785-4601 Email: [email protected] Website: www.cacf.org THE COALITION FOR ASIAN AMERICAN CHILDREN AND FAMILIES The Coalition for Asian American Children and Families seeks to improve the quality of life for the New York City Asian American community by facilitating access to health and human services that are sensitive to all Asian American children and families. The Coalition promotes awareness of cultural values, linguistic differences, and immigration issues and serves as a resource for service providers through advocacy, production of education materials, coalition building and information dissemination. Board of Directors Sayu Bhojwani Jarrod R. Fong Larry Lee Susan Caughman Sharon Huang Edward Pauly, Ph.D. Jennifer Choi Hema Kailasam Tazuko Shibusawa, Ph.D. Ernabel Demillo M. Roger Kim, M.D. Lydia Fan Wong Eugenia Kiu Staff Myra O. Liwanag, Interim Executive Director Anita Gundanna, Child Welfare Program and Policy Coordinator Marian U. Tan, Project Director, CORE Vanessa Leung, Project Specialist Laura Ma, Project Assistant Andrea Wu, Project Assistant, CORE Funding Funding for this report was provided by the New York Community Trust and the Ong Family Foundation. Acknowledgments The Coalition thanks the following community organizations for their assistance in organizing focus groups and distributing surveys: CACF’s Concerned Mothers of the Chinatown Community, Chinatown YMCA, Chinese-American Planning Council, Council on Pakistan Organization, Filipino American Human Services, Inc., Forest Hills Community House, Immigrant Social Services, Korean American Family Service Center, South Asian Youth Action, Univeraity Settlement House, and YWCA of the City of New York—Flushing Branch. The Coalition is also grateful to the Urban Education Project at New York University for their additional analyses. Special thanks to those individuals who offered their input and guidance: Sayu Bhojwani, Khyati Y. Joshi, Ed.D., Larry Lee, Ed Pauly, Ph.D., Christine Yeh, Ph.D., and Amy Ellen Schwartz, Ph.D. and Dylan Conger of the Urban Education Project. This report was written by Vanessa Leung with assistance from Hsin-Yi Huang, Jessica S. Lee, Myra O. Liwanag, Laura Ma, and Andrew Tsui. Opinions and recommendations expressed are those of the Coalition and do not necessarily represent the views of agencies, families, students, or funders. TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY . 1 INTRODUCTION . 4 Why Must We Now Look Carefully At Education? . 5 The Coalition’s Methods . 5 Who are Asian Americans? . 6 Who are Our Asian American Students? . 7 Where are Our Asian American Students? . 10 ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE Family Expectation of Education . 12 Focus on Research: Relative Functionalism . 12 Impact of Stereotypes on Learning . 13 Testing Rates . 14 Dropouts and Push-outs . 16 English Language Learners . 18 Special Education . 20 Curriculum and Extracurricular Concerns . 21 Beyond High School . 22 RECOMMENDATIONS: ACADEMICS . 23 INFORMAL EDUCATION Character Development . 24 Ethnic Identity development . 24 Lack of Asian American Presence in Curriculum . 25 Social Interaction . 26 Harassment . 27 RECOMMENDATIONS: INFORMAL EDUCATION . 29 PARENT INVOLVEMENT Barriers to Involvement . 30 Focus on Research: Differences in Parental Involvement . 30 RECOMMENDATIONS: PARENT INVOLVEMENT . 33 COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION Building upon Trust . 34 Challenges to Partnerships . 35 RECOMMENDATIONS: COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION . 35 SPECIAL ISSUE: EDUCATION AND CHILD WELFARE . 36 CONCLUSION . 37 ENDNOTES . 38 TABLE OF FIGURES . 39 APPENDIX: Ethnic Identity Development Process. 40 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Asian American students currently make up 12.4 percent of the New York City public school student population. Unfortunately, Asian American students are a highly invisible segment whose difficulties remain overlooked by schools and society. The model minority stereotype of Asian Americans as a homogenous group of academic success stories prevents many policy makers and school staff from acknowledging any academic and emotional struggles that these students face. The needs of the Asian American community are not understood and therefore often left unmet. The diversity in ethnicities, cultures, languages, and experiences of the Asian American community complicates outreach efforts. Therefore, it is imperative that policy makers and school staff understand the struggles and implement appropriate measures to address the needs. The Coalition for Asian American Children and Families has written this report as a general review of the issues facing Asian American students and their families in our schools. The objectives are to dispel myths, bring attention to struggles, encourage further examination, and call for the offering of proper support services to ensure equal access to quality education. MYTH I: All Asians are alike. The Asian American community is diverse in language, culture, immigration experience, and socio-economic status. In order to address the needs of Asian American students and their families, their diversity and complexity must be closely examined. • Statistically, Asian American families appear to have a high household incomes, but household averages are deceiving. Asian American households tend to include extended family members so that household incomes are driven up by multiple wage earners who individually bring in less than the New York City per capita average. • Many Asian American students are immigrants or children of immigrants. While there are multiple Asian ethnic groups from East, South and Southeast Asia, there is an even greater number of languages and dialects spoken. Members of the same ethnic group may not necessarily be able to communicate with each other due to the vast number of languages and dialects spoken. MYTH II: All Asians are good students. Contrary to what many believe, there are Asian American students who struggle academically. Struggling students need access to proper support services and resources. • Asian American students do drop out. In the Class of 1999, Asian American students had a higher dropout rate than White students. Almost, one in five Asian American students from the Class of 1999 did not receive a high school diploma. The dropout rate given a four-year outcome for Asian American students has increased steadily over the past five years. • Average standardized test scores hide real need among Asian American students who are struggling academically. Within some Asian immigrant groups, more than half of the students did not even take certain standardized exams because they were exempt due to their recent immigrant status. In fact, compared to all other racial groups, Asian American students had the smallest percentage of students who took reading and math exams in elementary and middle school. — 1 — MYTH III: Asians don’t need help handling stress and difficulties. The combination of multiple pressures, hostile environments, and cultural misunderstandings can greatly affect the emotional and overall development of Asian American students. Much of today’s focus on education has been on performance and testing standards. Unfortunately, not enough attention has been placed on non-academic issues that have a definite impact on the academic and future success of students. Asian American students and their families will respond to help when approaches are culturally sensitive. • Incidents of harassment go unaddressed. This issue has long been ignored for Asian American students. South Asians, Muslims, and recent immigrants, in particular, have experienced an increase in harassment. Such harassment, if not addressed, can breed distrust, anger, fear, and helplessness, and may lead to physical harm. • Asian American students often have to balance disparities between values of Asian and mainstream American cultures. Such struggles result in generational conflicts between parents and students. • Many Asian American students may feel great pressure to excel academically because education is often seen as the only opportunity to improve one’s life situation. Such pressure, if not addressed, can have a great emotional toll on students. MYTH IV: Asians do not need to be part of discussions on diversity. The stereotype of Asian Americans as a model minority denies the history of Asian Americans who have faced oppression and allows exclusion to persist. The portrayal of Asian and Asian Americans in the school setting can sup- port or undermine the worth of an Asian American student’s ethnic heritage. Schools play a role in the development of an appreciation of ethnic heritage and a healthy sense of identity. Schools must recognize that ethnic identity is an important part of a student’s development. • Asians and Asian Americans are rarely represented in school curricula. As a result, most students lack exposure to Asian and Asian American culture and history, and do not recognize the challenges faced by or the contributions of Americans of Asian descent in this country. Lack of exposure to Asian and Asian American culture leads to unnecessary misunderstandings and misrepresentations of Asian Americans. • Many Asian American students, especially immigrants, do not understand the impact of stereotypes and the history of race relations in America. Schools can offer invaluable opportunities to learn about and appreciate diversity. It is important for schools to equip students with the tools to gain an understanding of immigration history, impact of stereotypes, and race relations. MYTH V: Asian American parents are not interested in school involvement. Some New York City public schools seek to improve relationships with parents and partnerships with community based organizations. However, they.