Perspectives on Race and Educational Opportunity Among Asian Americans at Unscreened High Schools

• In Event: “Spoilers” for or Against Equity? Implications of Asian American Racialization Across Regional and Institutional Contexts

Abstract

Objectives: The overrepresentation of Asian American students at selective schools, and the underrepresentation of Black and Latinx students, has inspired much debate about race and educational opportunity. However, relatively less research examines Asian Americans attending “unscreened” schools—those that admit students regardless of their prior academic records. Focusing on New York City (NYC), I ask: How do Asian American students attending unscreened public high schools in NYC make sense of the racial disparities across screened and unscreened schools? What do their perspectives reveal about their understandings of race, achievement, and educational opportunity?

Theoretical Framework: I employ literature on how Asian immigrants and Asian Americans frame, or make sense of, race, achievement, and educational opportunity. Many Asian immigrants employ color-evasive meritocratic frames to explain the overrepresentation of Asian Americans at selective high schools and universities in terms of Asian American exceptionalism (Fu & Blissett, 2024; Liu et al., 2023; Park et al., 2022). Such framings reinforce a culture of poverty frame in suggesting that cultural shortcomings explain the underrepresentation of Black and Latinx students at selective schools (Poon et al., 2019; Warikoo, 2016). By contrast, fewer Asian immigrants employ a power analysis frame, recognizing the structural barriers experienced among Black and Latinx students and the need for a “systemic transformation” (Poon et al., 2019; Warikoo, 2016). Related scholarship illustrates how Asian immigrants attempt to protect their children from potential racial bias by adopting a success frame, which emphasizes attaining an elite education as a pathway to a high-status profession (J. Lee & Zhou, 2015)

Data and Methods: This project is a qualitative case study employing semi-structured interviews with 20 ethnically diverse Asian American students, ages 14–18, attending unscreened public high schools in NYC. All participants identify as 1.5- or second-generation immigrants and qualify for free lunch.

Preliminary Findings: Although they themselves arguably do not benefit from it, most interviewees largely accepted and supported NYC’s existing two-tiered system of screened and unscreened schools. In doing so, they employed color-evasive meritocratic frames to argue that a hierarchical school system is necessary to sort students “who work hard” from those who do not, as numerous participants described. Additionally, interviewees employed a success frame to argue that Asian American overrepresentation at screened high schools is rooted in their immigrant parents’ desires for their educational and economic mobility. By contrast, few participants recognized or critiqued the systemic factors underpinning racial disparities in elite school admission. Although many participants recognized that NYC disproportionately invests in its screened high schools, few called on policymakers to remedy this inequity, and instead argued in favor of policies, such as free test preparation, that would enhance access to screened schools.

Significance: Participants’ acceptance of screened admission demonstrates the persistence of race-neutral neoliberal ideology and its emphasis on choice, competition, and the individual purposes of education (Lipman, 2011; Scott, 2013). Relatedly, interviewees’ acceptance of these logics reflect the persistence of the model minority narrative and their own limited access to alternative framings to explain racial disparities in selective school admissions.

Author

• Elise Castillo, Trinity College