Asian American Social and Cultural Capital: Exploring Asian American Access to Selective Public Schools (Poster 15)

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

"Segregation has long persisted in New York City (NYC), where a mandatory public high school choice system includes numerous schools that “screen” students based on test scores and grades. Relative to their Black, Latinx, and poor peers, white and affluent students enjoy greater access to the resources needed to navigate NYC’s screened admissions system and, as such, are overrepresented at selective public high schools (Pérez, 2011; Sattin-Bajaj, 2015). Alongside white students, Asian American students attend NYC’s selective public high schools in large numbers, though research as yet under-examines the factors explaining Asian American access to such schools.

Therefore, I ask: How do Asian American public high school students and recent alumni explain their experiences with navigating high school choice in NYC? What do their explanations reveal about the factors underpinning Asian American access to selective public high schools?

Drawing on interviews with 47 ethnically and socioeconomically diverse Asian American high school students and recent alumni, I argue that NYC’s screened admission system and hierarchy of educational opportunity align with the social and cultural capital of many Asian immigrant parents. NYC’s Asian immigrant communities maintain rich information networks regarding screened high school admission, which resembles test-based school admission in many Asian immigrants’ home countries. By centering the experiences of diverse Asian American students, findings contribute to empirical research at the intersection of competitive school choice and segregation. Additionally, findings build theory by highlighting the distinct forms of social and cultural capital that undergird the Asian American and Asian immigrant experiences."

Author

• Elise Castillo, Trinity College