The KAASE Initiative seeks to create an online open-access repository of educational resources that can be used by K-12 educators in Virginia and throughout the U.S, and across various grade levels and content areas (i.e., World History, Geography, Literacy, and U.S. History) to facilitate the greater use of Asian American content. More specifically, the KAASE initiative seeks to create thematic-based material for K-12 educators that includes primary sources detailing local stories and to contextualize these stories within the broader state and national-level historical trends related to immigration, naturalization, and race.

Over the past two decades, Asian Americans have been the fastest-growing racial group in the U.S., growing from about 10 million in 2000 to nearly 20 million in 2020. Yet, despite the growth of this population and the increasing number of Asian American students in US K-12 public schools, there has been a continuing lack of Asian American content in these settings. 

For instance, a recent analysis of history standards in the U.S. showed that half of all states have zero or only one mention of Asian Americans in their content; and that even for those states that do have Asian American content, this has been typically limited to discussions of Asian Americans as victims of nativist sentiment or discrimination (i.e. the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; the incarceration of Japanese Americans). 

While many K-12 educators are interested in utilizing more inclusive content, there are limited resources for these teachers to find useful primary sources or to develop lesson plans based on these sources. Furthermore, for Virginia K-12 educators, there is little content centered on the experiences of Asian Americans in Virginia or in the South.