Why Are Good Grades a Negative Stereotype?
by Rie Kim, Reporter
Opinion/Editorial
What Happened?
Back in November of 2020, North Thurston Public Schools in Lacey, Washington released a school report excluding Asians from the “Students of Color” category and instead grouped them with white or “high achieving” students to manipulate school statistics. This school report, “Monitoring Student Growth,” was released in order to highlight the difference in academic performance and growth to boost the growth rate of underperforming groups. In other words, the school district perceived Asian students to be performing too well to be considered students of color, implying that students of color experience opportunity gaps and struggle with academic performance growth compared to white students.
So, are Asians Not POC?
No, Asians are people of color. The fact that Asians perform statistically successfully in school compared to other groups of students does not ignore the years of racism and oppression Asians have and still face today. Asians do not benefit from white privilege and they are still a minority group in the United States, thus it is inappropriate and unfitting to group Asian and white students together.
What Does the Data Say?
A statement released by the school district said, “One of our district's Strategic Plan goals is Continuous Growth — All Students, All Subjects. One of the outcomes we are working towards in this goal is to have an increased growth rate of underperforming groups eliminating achievement and opportunity gaps. For this reason, in one of our online documents from 2019, titled 'Monitoring Student Growth,' we evaluated the achievement data by 'Students of Color' and 'Students of Poverty.' In the document we grouped white and Asian students together.”
Including Asian students’ statistics in the “Students of Color” category would show a narrowing opportunity gap, conflicting with the district’s suggestion that all students of color are victims of inequity. Without representing Asian students, the data displayed a wider opportunity gap for minority students, therefore supporting their argument.
However, by separating the data of white students and students of color altogether, the data falsely insinuates that white students are doing better than they actually are. Take a look at the following picture:
This is data from the district’s diversity report, specifically highlighting student growth by demographics. Washington State utilizes student growth percentiles (SGPs) to measure growth in students’ math and English language arts (ELA) skills from one grade to the next. A student with a 60 SPG had a growth greater than 60% of students with a similar test score in an earlier grade.
As you can see above, white students’ growth is nearly equal to that of Black/African American and American Indian/Alaskan Native students in ELA. However, they are outperformed by not only Asians, but also American Indian/Alaskan Native and Hispanic/Latino students in math.
The bottom line is that minority students fare similar academic growth compared to white students (in the North Thurston Public Schools), destroying the stereotype that white students perform academically better than students of color.
By manipulating this data, NTPS is not only covering up white students’ struggle in academic growth but also denying their needs. The goal of this data and report is to help “All Students, All Subjects,” which would include white students as well. Denying any suggestion of academic struggle in non-POC students is doing a disservice to students who may need the most help to achieve academic success. Nevertheless, the data above presented a narrative institutionalized racism has yet to acknowledge: why is the standard still “white”? If minority groups demonstrate and surpass white academic achievement, why is the data presented as “Students of Poverty” (students of color) compared to “White/Asian Students”? Above all, why is the goal of high academic achievement tied to a racial group anyways?
The school district should be less concerned about highlighting education disparities between races in an age of progressive racial justice, and instead truly focus on student growth for all students— in addition to ensuring nothing like this ever happens again. By skewing data about Asian students, the North Thurston School District played into the Model Minority Myth.
What is the Model Minority Myth?
According to The Practice by Harvard University, the term “model minority” has often been used to refer to a minority group perceived as particularly successful, especially in a manner that contrasts with other minority groups. The term is often applied to Asian Americans, who are praised for apparent success across academic, economic, and cultural domains compared to the perceived achievements of other racial groups.
Why is the Model Minority Myth Bad?
Asia is a diverse continent, encompassing many different ethnicities, languages, and religions across various socioeconomic backgrounds. The journey to America also looked different for many people: indentured laborhood, seeking refuge, immigration, etc. Yet, once in the U.S., many are attracted to the hope of achieving the American Dream— the belief that anyone, through hard work and dedication, can attain their own version of success in the social mobile society of America.
However, in any situation, it is wrong to generalize anything about any large group of people. According to Pew Research Center’s analysis of the United States Census Bureau data, Asian-Americans are now the most economically divided racial or ethnic group in the country, displacing African-Americans. In New York City, the “land of opportunity,” Asians experience the highest poverty rates of any immigrant group. How does the model minority myth sound now?
Despite having the highest median income of any racial group, by 2016, Asians in the top 10th of the distribution income earned about $120,000 more than those in the bottom 10th. Those in the top 10th earned 10.7 times as much as the bottom 10th compared with 9.8 for Black earners and 7.8 for both Hispanic and white earners.
According to The New York Times, disparities among Asian-Americans are primarily driven by the different levels of education, skills, and English-language proficiency. Those from India and China have higher incomes compared to others from Southeast Asia because on average, they have higher levels of education. As seen in the chart below, Asians are anything close to being a monolithic group. The large continent of Asia presents over 4.5 billion people of various cultures, languages, and religions. Such diversity and disparity cannot be generalized under a model minority myth.
The model minority myth is also effectively used to minimize the role racism plays in the persistent struggles of other racial and ethnic minority groups — a racial wedge especially against Black Americans. It’s inequitable to ignore the systematic racism other minority groups face because one minority group seems to be defying the odds. Although the racism experienced by Asians is different from what Black people have experienced, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that both groups still suffer from holes in the American system. From slavery, to incarceration camps, citizenship, and police brutality — all forms of discrimination — why is Asian-American “success” an indication of a better, less prejudicial world for all minority groups?
What Now?
In response to the backlash of grouping Asian students with white students, NTPS officials promised to change their ways of observing achievement data in an apology issued on the district website:
“Upon reflection and response by members of the Asian-American community, we will change how we look at achievement data and appreciate the feedback we received. We apologize for the negative impact we have caused and removed the monitoring report from our website.
We feel it is important to continue the practice of disaggregating data, so we make equity-based decisions. It shows that currently our Asian and White students are showing continuous growth while our system is not meeting the instructional needs of our Black, Indigenous, Multi-racial, Pacific Islander and Latinx students. The intent was never to ignore Asian students as ‘students of color’ or ignore any systemic disadvantages they too have faced. We continue to learn and grow in our work with equity as a public-school system and we will ensure that we learn from this and do better in the future.”
Categorizing any large group of people into a stereotype that seems harmless can have profound effects. Expecting the “Asian kid in the classroom” to do well on a test simply because they are Asian is a form of racism that has been all too socially conditioned and accepted in our society.
While stories of success should be recognized and celebrated, they should not and cannot define and measure the likelihood of success for all people of a certain group. An A+ is the fruit of labor, not predetermined by a racial background.
DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the various authors in this paper do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of Kamiak High School or The Gauntlet.