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Not All Asians Are at the Top of Their Class
The myth that all Asians excel academically has created a data gap that
excludes several Southeast Asian communities, such as the Hmong and
Laotian. Many do not fit the stereotype of an Asian "model minority" and
advocates say that without the data to prove they exist, there is no way
to address the low-performance problems that persist for students in
these communities.
New America Media, News Feature, Carolyn
Goossen, Posted: Feb 20, 2007
FRESNO – Experience has taught MaiKa Yang, 25, that in order to get
the funding to start programs for young Hmong women in her Fresno
community, it's not enough that she's identified the problem and
possible solutions. She needs to be able to prove it. That's where she
hits a wall.
"We don't know the number of Hmong women who are going to college,
obtaining degrees, dropping out of high school, or who are getting
pregnant, even in Fresno, which has 30,000 Hmong," says Yang. "Without
this data, it's very difficult for me or others to get support and
funding for projects to help the younger community who we know are
struggling."
There is no data on Hmong young people in California to corroborate what
Yang knows is true: that most Hmong teens either drop out of high school
or don’t have the resources to go to college right out of high school.
Yang was herself one of the very few in her community to attend a
four-year college straight out of high school. She's returned to Fresno
with the goal of helping other young Hmong women pursue their dreams by
founding a support group for them. She hopes to develop a program that
can offer tutoring, mentoring, and even financial support to both young
women and men that would help them graduate from high school and go to
college. But she needs the statistics to get the funding.
The only recent data available for smaller Asian groups like the Hmong
is collected occasionally at the very local level by non-profit groups
that lack the resources to do a thorough collection. Data on their
educational attainment is almost non-existent. The U.S. Census does
collect data about these groups, but only once every ten years. Very
little can be gleaned from the data about the educational attainment of
young people in these communities. The data does confirm one thing that
Yang already knows: as of the 2000 Census, 66 percent of the adult Hmong
community in the United States had less than a high school education.
Experts admit that lumping the Hmong into the "Asian" group continues to
hide serious gaps in achievement and opportunity, and yet this happens
routinely in the education world. "They get put into the low achieving
track in schools, are disproportionately placed in English Learner
programs, and many are dropping out altogether," says UCLA Sociology
Professor Min Zhou.
The reasons Hmong students are struggling while other Asian students
appear to excel are multifold, says Khammany Mathavongsy, California
projects director of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center. "The
immigration experience of Southeast Asians is so different from other
Asian communities. We came as refugees. We were uprooted from our own
countries because of conflict, and we came with no resources. A lot of
our people are illiterate in our own languages because they come from a
peasant background. This makes us unique."
Mathavongsy emphasizes that Southeast Asians have only been here for 30
years, compared to the Chinese and Japanese who have longer histories of
immigration to the United States. And unlike the Vietnamese community,
the Hmong, Laotians and Cambodians lack affluent members who put
resources towards the communities’ economic development. The poverty
rates among these groups is consequently very high -- three times that
of the national average.
Yet the perception of Asian high achievement is so pervasive that it's
even difficult for Professor Zhou to obtain funding so that she can
further examine these perceived gaps. In fact, she faces great
skepticism when applying for academic research grants to examine
anything related to Asian communities. "If I develop a research proposal
that just focuses on Asian Americans, then I won't get funding. So I
must always include Latinos," she says. "This is because Asian Americans
are a small group and, more importantly, they are not perceived as a
‘problem’ group."
A bill that would require key government sectors to include those Asian
communities currently labeled "other Asian" in data collection was
re-introduced in the state assembly on Friday Feb. 9 by Assemblymember
Ted Lieu. Currently, state agencies are required to collect data for 11
Asian ethnic groups (including Chinese, Vietnamese, and Koreans). If the
bill passes, it will be the first time that Hmong, Tongan, Thai,
Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Malaysian, Indonesian, Taiwanese,
and Fijian communities are counted for state data collection.
While there has been no official opposition to the new bill thus far,
some education advocates are wary of spending resources on the
statistically small Asian subgroups. "Southeast Asian students are still
doing better than black and Latino students, who make up a much larger
group," says one school reform advocate who asked to remain anonymous.
"Those are the kids we need to focus more attention and resources on."
Yet without better data, bill proponents say, the full story of how
California's diverse communities are faring when it comes to education
cannot be told. "This bill is key to us," says Mathavongsy. "Not only
will it help us get more funding for local programs and help us design
more effective intervention programs for youth, but it will expose how
schools have long neglected our young people."
Assemblymember Lieu sees this bill as an important step towards
debunking the model minority myth, which assumes that all Asian students
are armed with cultural (or even genetic) tools that enable them to be
successful in school and in the workforce. Indeed, when clumped together
into one homogenous group, "Asians" appear to be excelling academically
in every area. They match or even outperform white students on many
markers of academic achievement, including SAT scores and the high
school exit exam. "Yet if you dig deeper, it’s clear that not everyone
is doing well," says Lieu.
Yang is hopeful that if implemented, this bill will help support her
work in Fresno's Hmong community in the long term. "Right now we only
know about the families and young people we work with directly. There
are so many more people out there who we want to help," she says.
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