Report finds education disparities among Asian subgroups in California
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/KPCC
Pomona College Dean Sefa Aina urges policymakers to address education disparities among Asian-Americans, Pacific Islanders and native Hawaiians in California.
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A report released in Los Angeles today reveals what its authors call grave disparities in educational achievement between Asian-Americans, native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in California.
For one Asian-American subgroup, the Hmong of Southeast Asia, the idea that all Asians are academic high achievers is a dangerous myth. Nearly half of Hmong adults don’t have a high school diploma.
It’s dangerous, says University of California researcher Lois Takahashi, because the myth keeps the struggles of Hmong families out of the policymaking spotlight. She says statistics about the much larger Samoan, Guamanian and Tongan populations in California are just as troubling.
"One fifth of Pacific Islanders in our grades 9-12 are expected to drop out by grade 12," Takahashi said. "That’s very similar and almost equivalent to the dropout rate for Latinos in the state."
Most of those dropouts are bound to falter in life. The teens’ struggles and the shortcomings of schools to address their needs play out in cities such as Hawthorne, the center of the Southland’s