Disparities in Academic Achievement Among Different Asian Ethnic Groups

By Jeff | Saturday, March 6, 2010 | View Comments

“What are you?”

asked the Chinese graduate student, looking at me. We had hired him and a Korean graduate student to intern in my research group. They knew I was some kind of Asian but they couldn’t figure out what kind from my name and my appearance. In the rarefied academic world of research and graduate school, they had never encountered any fellow graduate students, researchers, or professors who were Filipino. I wasn’t surprised. When I was in graduate school at U.C. Berkeley, I met very few Computer Science grad students of Filipino descent like myself (none, actually), and only a few other Filipino or Filipino-American graduate students. There were plenty of other Asians and Asian-Americans from other ethnicities.

NAM education workshop from New America Media on Vimeo.

An upcoming report from the think tank Education Trust-West, described here by New American Media, confirms my experience. This report will reveal significant disparities in academic achievement among different Asian ethnic groups in California. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, South Asian and Vietnamese students often scored better than their white classmates while Cambodian, Laotian and Pacific Islander students fell farther behind the longer they were in school. Filipino students’ performance tracked closely to whites.

Details can be revealing. 72 percent of Asian students in eighth grade were testing at grade level in English in 2009, outperforming their white peers by 6 percent. Chinese students scored highest, with 81 percent achieving grade level proficiency. Only 46 percent of Cambodian and 40 percent of Laotian students scored well, however. The differences get worse as time goes on. Only 6 percent of Laotian and 11 percent of Cambodian students reach college-ready level English proficiency by high school graduation, while 41 percent of Chinese and 38 percent of Korean students reached that same level.

Ling-Chi Wang, professor emeritus in ethnic studies at UC Berkeley, said Ed Trust’s findings show that the mainstream media image of Asians as the “model minority” image is incorrect. Wang spoke at a news briefing organized by New America Media. The briefing was part of a half-day training on education data research (video embedded above) for ethnic media reporters.

To me, this is another example of how diverse Asian-Americans are. While elite colleges may look at Asian-Americans as one big homogenous group, data from this report makes it clear that they are not. As Wang points out, “the needs of certain Asian groups have been overlooked and under-funded.”

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Guest

This is so fascinating to me. I think there's also something to that comment that started this whole article: "What are you?" It seems to be true across the globe that those with darker skin are looked down upon or mistreated by those with lighter. It is true in India, true in the United States and Canada, true in Europe, true in Australia - and are not Filipinos on average "darker" than their Chinese or Japanese counterparts?

I wonder how long it will be until some pseudo-scientist comes along and attributes the achievement gap to darkness - to proximity to Africa. It seems to be true that darker skinned Asians are those who live in that closer proximity.

It would seem to me that it has everything to do with access and socialization. Southeast Asian countries are invariably poorer than their central and north Asian counterparts. Darker Indians tend to dwell in the southern areas of the country, and also tend to be in the lower classes, all the way down to the Dalit, or untouchables. What is the connection between darkness and poverty? Between poverty and anti-intellectualism? Is it a matter of psychological oppression?

We see similar patterns of anti-intellectualism and a "disconnect" from education amongst disenfranchised minority groups in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe.

I feel that there is some loose correlation to be explored here, but I don't know enough yet to connect the dots.
manlalayag

I'm glad you opened this topic Jeff, this is great stuff!!! There are a lot of variables to this kind of study. I wish people would talk about this more without thinking that its racist. Filipinos do track well with Whites (if I could plug my article here: http://knol.google.com/k/academic-performance-i... ), but I think its a circumstance thing. Looking at these api's, the potential for college and beyond for Filipinos is very high. There could be the generational thing also. Some Filipinos I meet tend to wanna find jobs after high school. There is a need to support parents and siblings right after high school. But I think it is only a matter of time before the gap between Filipinos and our East Asian cousins can be closed.
jeffat8asians

Good points about working after high school. I knew Filipinos like that. Filipinos also have an anti-intellectual streak - when Filipinos call you a "pilosopo" ("philosopher"), they aren't flattering you.
jeffat8asians

@stickyrice: I do research on distributed systems, looking at things like Cloud Computing, DNS, and federation.
Sticky Rice!

Wowwy wow wow wow! =D!

SR
Sticky Rice!

Hello Jeff!

May I inquire what kind of 'research' do you do? Sounds very interesting! Link?

SR
filamako

Exactly! You hit all the points that many Filipinos experience. Also, this happened to me in undergrad in Chicago. The "what are you" line gets so old. Also, you forgot to add that gender is a factor to this with the lack of Filipino males not making that next step into higher education. Great post as usual Jeff!

8 Asians