Links

Study: Asian Students Uncounted, Underserved in N.Y.C. Schools²³ by Jacklyn Zubrzycki

New Orleans Schools Face Complaint About Treatment of ELL Families²⁴ by Lesli A. Maxwell

Synthesis

These two articles from Education Week draw attention to various obstacles faced by Asian-American students in urban public schools. Both articles highlight how the performance of these students is often unknown. The first article focuses on the lack of test-score reporting for Asian-American students in NYC public schools, while the second article illustrates how language barriers can prevent parents from being informed about their child’s education.

Study: Asian Students Uncounted, Underserved in N.Y.C. Schools draws attention to how Asian- American students are often thought to be universally high achieving, which is in contrast to the realities that they face in NYC public schools. This perception is in part due to the lack of reporting of Asian-American students’ test scores. Schools that have small numbers of certain racial and ethnic groups may withhold those groups’ scores. This is done in an attempt to protect student privacy, as it is much easier to identify individual students within a small population. As a result, the performance of Asian-American students in NYC public schools is often not publicly reported. In 2007-08, 302 elementary schools did not report Asian students’ scores, compared with 232 that did.²³ This insight made me wonder about the negative implications that data disaggregation may have for test-score reporting. If a school disaggregates testing scores based on ethnicity, then they might be more likely to withhold the scores of these ethnicity groups, as there will be fewer students in each group than if the students all fell under the “Asian-American” category. Then there may be even less, publically available, information on the academic performance of different ethnic groups in public schools.

In addition to issues surrounding data reporting, language barriers can also obscure the performance of Asian-American students. Many Asian American students in urban areas are sons and daughters of immigrants who may not know English very well. Thus, their parents may not be aware of their children’s academic achievement and/or struggle if they don’t have adequate access to ELL resources. The second article, New Orleans Schools Face Complaint About Treatment of ELL Families,  talks about a complaint that has been filed against a handful of charter schools in New Orleans, stating that these schools failed to provide translated documents to non-English speaking parents regarding enrollment, report cards, parent-teacher conferences, school events, disciplinary actions, and services that are available for students. In addition, these schools have not adequately provided interpretation services. Due to language barriers, parents may be deterred from getting involved in their children’s education. One parent stated that she did not know what special education services were being provided to her child at Carver Prep, as none of the information was provided to her in Vietnamese. Additionally, she could not understand how her child was progressing in the special education program because her report cards were only provided in English.²⁴ Parents who are not fluent in English may have a hard time realizing the issues that their children face in school, especially if the school does not provide adequate translation and interpretation services.

These articles highlight two different ways in which the academic performance of Asian-American students can be obscured: a lack of publically available data and language barriers. It is important to recognize the obstacles that Asian-American students may face in schools so that a clear target can be established for educational reform.