Breaking Down the Homogenized View of Asian American Academic Success

The Asian American community is one of the largest and fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States. Among approximately 11 million Asian Americans, there are over 25 ethnic subgroups of Asian ancestry residing in the United States. Often in policy making and selected scholarly research, Asian ethnic groups are lumped into one category, which distorts the disparate reality found among these Asian American communities. High academic achievement is part of the broader discussion of Asian American success in the United States that has prompted the media to coin the term "model minority". The perceived homogeneity of Asian Americans in this image may potentially have harmful effects on children from Asian subgroups that do not fulfill the "model minority" stereotype. This book investigates the educational aspirations and attainment of Asian American students, through an analysis of data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (1988) and interviews from a small sub-sample of Asian American students in the Bay Area. The results demonstrate a clear distinction among Asian ethnic populations in both educational aspirations and attainment.