Making Visible the Invisible: Disproportionate Representation of Asian and Pacific Islander Students

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Examining Methodological and Conceptual Complexities in the Study of Racial Disproportionality in Special Education

Abstract

Objectives
As in public health research (Ro & Kee, 2010), AAPI students are too often invisible in disproportionality research or treated as a homogeneous group such that within-group diversity is overlooked. To address these gaps, we report a dual-study effort to describe patterns of AAPI disability identification and to identify ethnic and sociodemographic correlates of students’ identification.

Perspective
AAPI students’ experiences in the U.S. continue to be characterized by racism and social, economic, and educational disparities, with distinct sociohistorical factors shaping the experiences of ethnic groups (Ng, Lee, & Pak, 2007). Potential disparities are often masked in statistical analyses in which AAPI students are treated as a homogenous group. Yet even basic disaggregation into Asian and PI groups reveals noteworthy inequity. (e.g., PI students’ overrepresentation among students suspended; Nguyen, Noguera, Adkins, & Teranishi, 2019). Although often likely constrained by power, research nonetheless routinely overlooks AAPI’s diversity, which may in turn hinder acknowledgement and disruption of systemic inequities constraining educational opportunities for AAPI students, including within the realm of special education.

Methods
We leverage on two distinct data sources given the complexities of studying special education identification (for discussion, see Sullivan & Bal, 2013) and the longstanding limited availability of corresponding data on AAPI students’ ethnic identification in education and health (Srinivasan & Guillermo, 2000) in order to explore two dimensions of AAPI disproportionality: (1) state patterns of both Asian and PI risk for various disabilities compared to White students, and (2) student-level risk of special education identification by ethnic/nationality groups, accounting for common sociodemographic controls.

Data Sources
Study 1 leverages states’ federally-required child count reporting, a staple of disproportionality research informative in amendments to federal special education law. Federal reporting did not require differentiation of Asian and PI groups until 2000, but analyses of federal special education data have rarely considered potential differences between these two groups; we do so here. In Study 2, we analyzed the risk of identification when accounting for ethnic subgroups and child and family characteristics common in recent research using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Kindergarten Cohort of 2011.

Results
Study 1 findings indicate distinct patterns of Asian and PI students’ identification for special education nationally and across states in each of the federal disability categories, suggesting earlier findings of severe underrepresentation of AAPI students were an oversimplification of underlying patterns. Study 2 results further indicate AAPI disproportionality in special education is not as straightforward as simple under-representation. The base model showed the salience of ethnic group membership, but this was attenuated by the inclusion of sociodemographic and performance covariates (Morgan et al., 2018) distinct from the lone past study (Cooc, 2019) of AAPI ethnic group differences in identification. The insignificance of the family sociodemographic characteristics in the student-level analysis suggests that the dynamics of White-AAPI differences in special education identification may be distinct from the more often studied White-Black and White-Hispanic differences.

Scholarly Significance
Our investigation underscores the importance of disaggregation and challenges ‘monolithic’ conceptualizations of AAPI’s experiences, needs, and outcomes.

Authors

• Amanda L. Sullivan, University of Minnesota

• Vichet Chhuon, University of Minnesota

• Tara Kulkarni, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Thuy Nguyen, University of Minnesota