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Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Education SummitCAPAC recently convened its first ever Education Summit to dispel myths about Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students. Due to stereotypes of overachievement, the needs of underserved AAPI students for linguistically and culturally competent services are often overlooked. The Summit, featuring three panels of experts, provided an opportunity to examine the unique challenges facing AAPI students and educators, as well as recommendations on how to address these challenges. Opening Session
Panel I: Barriers to AAPI Higher EducationModerator: Congressman Robert “Bobby” Scott
Panel II: Language Issues in AAPI EducationModerator: Congresswoman Mazie K. Hirono
Panel III: AAPI EducatorsModerator: Congressman Mike Honda
AbstractsPanel I: Barriers to AAPI Higher EducationModerator: Congressman Robert “Bobby” ScottAffirmative Action: How does it really impact Asian Pacific American students?Khin Mai Aung, Staff Attorney, Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund How do race conscious actions in public educational decision making affect Asian Pacific Americans (APAs)? How does affirmative action really function in admissions to elite institutions of higher education? Does diversity really benefit us all in the same way? Relatedly, what is diversity’s proper role in k-12 education, and how does that impact our students’ preparation for higher education? These provocative and cutting edge issues have been recently considered in courts as well as by voters across the country. When Michigan voters considered whether to outlaw affirmative action in November 2007, proponents argued that APAs disproportionately lose out in any public sector race conscious decision making. But is this really the case across all APA ethnicities, and does affirmative action consider differences in achievement and opportunity for diverse APA populations? Why did 75% of Michigan’s APA voters vote against this proposal according to the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund’s exit poll? Similarly, last year, the United States Supreme Court considered the legality of school boards in Seattle, WA and Louisville, KY using race as one factor in assigning students to local public schools. A key issue centered around these plans’ impact on Asian Pacific American (APA) students, since one of these plans lumped our populations with whites and the other with other people of color. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in U.S. Higher Education: Facts, Not Fiction - Setting the Record StraightDr. Robert Teranishi, Associate Professor, NYU Facts, Not Fiction: Setting the Record Straight , a report sponsored by the College Board, New York University’s Asian/Pacific/American Institute and Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy, and the National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education, sheds light on the success and challenges of Asian American and Pacific Islander students within American higher education—a group largely overlooked in the public policy literature. The report is the culmination of two-year’s work and represents an important collaboration among researchers, policymakers, educators, and community activists from around the country. Asian American and Pacific Islander students are often touted as an American success story—and many are successful; a fact that this report affirms and supports. Like most stereotypes, however, such generalizations are pernicious because they fail to account for a great many students facing a variety of academic and social challenges. Facts, Not Fiction addresses several common stereotypes or “fictions” and debunks each by carefully examining the empirical record related to each. The Key to America’s Prosperity: Education Access for All – Challenges Faces by Undocumented AAPI StudentsSookyung Oh, Immigrant Rights Project Coordinator, National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC) While it is widely held true that America's future prosperity lies in the hands of its young people, undocumented immigrant students who consider this country their home are repeatedly denied the opportunity to realize their full potential. Multiple barriers exist in accessing public education, despite laws and measures that protect access or at the minimum, do not seek to bar access. The National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC) and its Los Angeles affiliate, the Korean Resource Center (KRC), have on record hundreds of cases of undocumented Korean American and other AAPI youth denied admission to public education institutions (K-12 and postsecondary) and rejected applications for in-state tuition across the country as a result of several factors: misapplication of law, ignorance of public education policies and unawareness of AAPI community immigration patterns. Ultimately, in the absence of federal policies that legalize undocumented immigrant students and promote the full integration of immigrants, individual schools, local school districts, and state legislatures will continue to take matters in their own hands and fail to take full advantage of America's talent. The Glass Door: Barriers To Educational Attainment of Southeast Asian YouthsDr. Khatharya Um, Associate Professor, UC Berkeley This presentation highlights the key issues in Southeast Asian American education. Despite laudable cases of success and signs of improvement in educational attainment rate, a large segment of the Southeast Asian population in America continues to face serious educational challenges. The impediments are rooted both in the pre-migration experiences and in the post-resettlement conditions. Because of the long histories of colonialism, under-development, war, revolution and genocide, many Southeast Asian refugees came to the US with limited formal education, and little or no exposure to Western schooling system. These families and communities are essentially without sufficient resources to effectively assist their children academically, and have little social or political capital to leverage for external intervention. Moreover, the resettlement and incorporation experiences of Southeast Asian refugees have presented additional challenges. Poverty, and all the attendant problems of re-settlement into impoverished, high crime neighborhoods and under-resourced schools remain key impediments to the successful schooling and learning of Southeast Asian students. Additionally, lack of educational support programs and racism in the schools are among the institutional barriers that further deter Southeast Asian educational achievement. The consequences are manifested in the persistingly high drop-out rates, and by extension, limited post-secondary education attainment rate, and high arrest and incarceration rates in the Southeast Asian American communities, particularly Cambodian, Laotian and Hmong, three decades after resettlement.
Panel II: Language Issues in AAPI EducationModerator: Congresswoman Mazie K. HironoNo Child Left Behind and AAPI English Language LearnersDr. Clara Park, Professor of Education, California State University, Northridge This presentation will discuss the educational needs and appropriate services of English language learners of AAPI backgrounds in relation to the current NCLB, and make suggestions for the re-authorization of the Act. Transforming Multilingual EducationChristina Wong, Director of Community Initiatives, Chinese for Affirmative Action English Learners like all students have a right to access quality education. Unfortunately, school districts including San Francisco implement multilingual education programs that continue to limit their access and success in the classroom. CAA will provide an overview of the current challenges in San Francisco and share key elements in a new action plan that the district is currently drafting to address the needs of English Learners.
Panel III: AAPI EducatorsModerator: Congressman Mike HondaChallenges of AAPI EducatorsSusie Jablinske, President, National Council of Urban Education Associations (NCUEA) This presentation will reflect on the need for more AAPI educators because of the increasing number of AAPI students in our schools and their need for role models. Many of our AAPI students are found in our urban schools. Questions that need to be answered are what must be done to recruit more AAPI individuals to become educators and what must be done to retain them. Besides providing a professional salary, what are the other factors that will influence talented AAPI to enter the Pre-K - 12 classrooms? What are the systemic factors that should be in place to allow AAPI educators to meet the needs of the students that they teach? What changes in the current system must take place that would allow AAPI educators to successfully meet the needs of their students and therefore create an educational environment that is welcoming to potential AAPI educators? Challenges of AAPI Education AdministratorsDr. Howard Wang, Associate Vice President, Student Affairs, California State University, Fullerton Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) administrators in higher education face many challenges, not the least is their inability to seek out mentors and role models from among a very small number of experienced and senior AAPI administrators. It would be challenging to insure a pipeline of students to be trained to hold leadership positions in higher education administration. AAPI students nowadays tend to select majors and have career plans in business, science and engineering related fields. AAPI administrators who work with students must have available to them appropriately disaggregated data of AAPI subgroups in order to gain a better insight of the great disparities that exist among AAPI subgroups, and to devise intervention and support programs. Federal grants supporting community outreach and partnership programs that facilitate high school graduation and college attendance are essential. One of the final challenges may well be the need to organize a national advocacy group of colleges and universities that serve AAPI students. Challenges of AAPI School Board MembersDr. Kim Oanh Nguyen-Lam, Board Trustee, Garden Grove Unified School District AAPI school board members face unique challenges and are in a unique position to advocate the needs of AAPI students. Dr. Nguyen-Lam will highlight some of her experiences as a Board Trustee for the Garden Grove Unified School District in California and how her work at the Center for Language Minority Education and Research at California State University, Long Beach has influenced her perspective on the school board. Speaker BiographiesKhin Mai Aung is a Staff Attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) in New York City, where she oversees the Educational Equity and Youth Rights Project. Among other matters, she works on bilingual education, language access, anti-Asian violence in public schools, school discipline, post 9/11 and gang profiling, affirmative action, and school integration. She works with Chinese immigrant students in Bensonhurst (Brooklyn), NY to monitor a federal consent decree concerning English Language Learner rights at Lafayette High School, and has won reinstatement for three veteran Cambodian and Latino teachers in Lowell, MA who were dismissed after discriminatory fluency testing. She has filed a Supreme Court amicus brief supporting the school districts in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District, and was active in the battle against Michigan’s anti-affirmative action Proposition 2. Before joining AALDEF, Khin Mai served as the Director of Policy and Civic Engagement at Youth Leadership Institute, a community-based youth development nonprofit advocating for youth voices in public policies and initiatives impacting children and youth. She was also a Staff Attorney at the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco were she launched a pilot youth law project and ran a direct legal service program serving Asian Pacific Islander elders. She began her legal career in commercial business litigation at the San Francisco office of Morrison and Foerster. Susie Jablinske is the President of the National Council of Urban Education Associations (NCUEA), an organization that represents over 200 of the National Education Association’s (NEA) largest locals, representing over 650,000 NEA members. She is also currently a first grade teacher in Edgewater, MD, and will be completing her 43 rd year in education on June 11, 2008. She has also held numerous elected leadership positions in her local, state and national education associations over the last 30 years. KimOanh Nguyen-Lam is the Associate Director of the Center for Language Minority Education and Research at California State University, Long Beach, and was recently named the Executive Director of the CSU Consortium for the Strategic Language Initiative (SLI) Program. In this capacity, she provides leadership to the 23-campus system to establish programs in Arabic, Korean, Mandarin, Persian and Russian, languages identified by the federal government as “critical” to the national security and global economy. She also serves on the School Board of Garden Grove Unified in Orange County. Prior to joining the College of Education at CSU Long Beach, Dr. Nguyen-Lam was with the K-12 school system for 14 years, serving as a bilingual classroom teacher, ELD Mentor Teacher, Title VII Project Director, Title I District Coordinator, and a ELD Program and Curriculum specialist. Dr. Nguyen-Lam has served on numerous state education panels and committees related to bilingual education, teacher preparation and certification. She is currently an Advisory Board member of OCAPICA (the Orange County Asian Pacific Islanders Community Alliance) and the Coast College Community District- Measure C Oversight Committee. She is an appointed member of State Superintendent O’ Connell’s P-16 Education Council. Sookyung Oh is the Immigrant Rights Project Coordinator at the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC), whose mission is to project a national progressive voice on major civil rights and immigrant rights issues and promote the full participation of Korean Americans in American society. In this position, she is responsible for coordinating NAKASEC's immigrant rights-related campaigns. Before joining NAKASEC, she worked for several years developing and coordinating public health education, social services, and the HIV testing & counseling program at the Philip Jaisohn Memorial Center, a Korean American community-based organization in Philadelphia, and coordinated SoRi MoRi Philadelphia Korean Cultural Troupe. Sookyung graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Political Science, and was active with Asian American community organizing on and off campus. Clara Park is a Professor of Education at California State University, Northridge. She is the co-author and co-editor of Asian-American Education: Prospects and Challenges (1999) and research anthologies: Research on the Education of Asian and Pacific Americans (2001), Asian American Identities, Families, and Schooling (2003), Asian and Pacific American Education: Learning, Socialization, and Identity (2005), Asian American Education: Acculturation, Literacy Development, and Learning (2007). She was the President and Vice-President of National Association for Asian and Pacific American Education from 2003 to 2007, and served as the President of California Association for Asian and Pacific American Education between 1999 and 2002. Robert Teranishi is Associate Professor of Higher Education at New York University and co-principal investigator of the National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education, a project funded by the College Board. He also holds positions as a faculty affiliate with the Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy and a senior research associate with the Alliance for International Higher Education Policy Studies. Prior to his position at New York University, Teranishi received his Ph.D. in Higher Education and Organizational Change at the University of California, Los Angeles and National Institute for Mental Health postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written extensively on racial inequality and diversity in higher education. Khatharya Um is a political scientist and Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and is currently the Director of the Berkeley Programs For Study Abroad. Her publication, teaching and research focus includes contemporary Southeast Asia, Asian American communities, genocide studies and migration studies, with a special emphasis on refugee and transnational communities. Her current research project centers on second generation Southeast Asian Americans. Professor Um is also actively involved in community organizing and advocacy, particularly on issues of access, equity and inclusion of language and cultural minority communities, for which she has received numerous awards. She conceived and developed the first and only summer institute for Southeast Asian high school students in the University of California system. She also served as Chair of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, and of the National Association for the Education and Advancement of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese Americans, and served on the board of the Asian Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund and as Commissioner of the Cambodian National Health Crisis Initiative. Howard Wang received a B.A. (Biology) from the University of Oregon, and an M.S. (Clinical Microbiology) from the University of Wisconsin. He taught clinical mycology at the Mayo Clinic and conducted research in Legionnaires disease at UCLA, where he obtained both an M.A. and a Ph.D. degree in Higher Education Administration. Dr. Wang is the Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Executive Director of the Student Health and Counseling Center at the California State University, Fullerton. He is frequently invited to consult on student affairs management issues in higher education by universities in China, Japan and other Asian countries. He serves as a coordinating editor for a soon-to-be published book on international student affairs, and the 2 nd edition of the UNESCO manual on international student affairs and student services. Dr. Wang received the 2007 Asian American Heritage Month Role Models Award from the Asian Business Association of Orange County (ABAOC). He is a member of the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) Greater Los Angeles Chapter, and serves as a director on the advisory board of the OCA-Orange County Chapter. Dr. Wang also serves on the Corporate Board of Advisors for ABAOC. Dr. Wang is a member of the Community Resource Council for the Fish Contamination Project Collaborative, a public outreach and education component of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Christina Mei-Yue Wong is the Director of Community Initiatives at Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) in San Francisco and is currently the lead staff working on K-12 education policies which includes language access, multilingual programs, school integration, and violence prevention. She works closely with the Visitacion Valley Parents Association (VVPA), CAA’s parent leadership group of monolingual Chinese immigrant parents who strive to ensure immigrant parents have the opportunity to be involved in their children’s education. Christina also chairs the Asian and Pacific American (APA) Education Coalition in San Francisco which includes youth, parents, service providers, teachers and administrators, collaboratively working to meet the needs of APA youth and their families. She is a co-author of two studies on language access for parents with children in public schools, No Parents Left Behind (2005) and Lost Without Translation (2006). Both studies have led to 1) state legislation to better enforce the translation of written school materials for limited-English proficient parents; 2) state funding for a clearinghouse of translated documents that can be used by school districts throughout the state; and 3) allocation of local funds to expand SFUSD’s language services to school sites. Christina also oversees CAA’s immigrant rights project that monitors local and federal legislation and provides local resources to immigrant communities.
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