Educational Strategies Overlook AAPI Diversity

When one thinks of Asian Americans, for most people what comes to mind are well-educated, high-income earners; overachievers; and hard workers whose children are destined for spots at elite Ivy League schools.

But this model minority perception is just that: a perception. It also overlooks one big issue: Asian Americans are far from homogenous.

“­The Asian American Pacific Islander community is comprised of over 48 different ethnicities,” notes Joy Yoo, associate director of marketing and communications for the Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund, a Washington, D.C.- based organization that provides hundreds of scholarships each year to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs). “­There are hundreds of different languages. It’s very diverse. ­There’s also immense diversity in need and immense diversity in educational need.”

According to the American Community Survey, 11 percent of Asian Americans live below the poverty line. Many Asian American groups have college-degree completion rates far below the national average. Many also have income levels below the median income. Among Southeast Asians, 34 percent of Vietnamese, 43 percent of Cambodians, 47 percent of Laotians and 48 percent of Hmong adults attended college but did not graduate, the survey shows.­The survey also revealed that 50 percent of Native Hawaiians, 54 percent of Tongans and 58 percent of Samoans entered college but left without graduating.

Misunderstood group

­The AAPI community, one of the nation’s fastest-growing minority groups, gets a lot of plaudits for remarkable achievements in the academy and elsewhere — and that’s not always a good thing.

“­The high level of educational attainment among some AAPI groups has overshadowed the needs in some groups,” Yoo says, adding that, until relatively recently, there was very little data on individual Asian American groups and Pacific Islanders.