Asian Pacific Americans for Educational Equity: Values and Policy Recommendations (2021)
CACF has developed a comprehensive, long-term APA Education Equity Agenda with values and recommendations to finally uplift and address our community’s needs for our public schools.
We have done so collaboratively, with students, parents, educators, advocates, administrators, and CACF member organization staff committed to envisioning and establishing an education system that is equitable for our most marginalized students. Our vision for education rests on a central underlying principle: our public schools must be truly safe, supportive, and welcoming. They must value all of our students and families.
Asian Pacific American (APA) students account for 16.2% of the New York City student population with over 180,000 APA students attending NYC public schools. Moreover, in NYC alone, the APA community consists of over 40 ethnicities, tens of languages and religions, and a multitude of cultures and immigration experiences. In fact, Bengali, Chinese, Korean, and Urdu are four of the top ten languages spoken in the City. Yet, APA students’ needs remain invisible in an education system that continues to overlook their challenges and barriers as well as their hopes and dreams.
Educational equity requires putting systems in place that acknowledge and address the specific challenges, histories, and needs impacting students from different backgrounds, to holistically support them as they learn. Despite the systemic inequities APA public school students and their families face, they are often excluded from or misrepresented in discussions on educational equity issues including school integration, opportunity gaps, systemic racism, and poverty. However, APA students continue to be impacted by overcrowding in schools, bullying, lack of quality language accessible and culturally-responsive services, underreferrals in special education, underfunding of programs for English Language learners, and more.
