WASHINGTON (AP) — Majorities of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders say U.S. schools should teach issues about race, and they also oppose efforts to limit what can be discussed in classrooms, according to a new poll.
According to a survey by AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Policy Research, 71% of AAPI adults support teaching the history of slavery, racism and segregation in K-12 public schools. The same percentage also support teaching the history of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in the United States, and about half also support teaching issues related to gender and sexuality.
AAPI Democrats are more in favor of teaching these topics in the classroom than AAPI Republicans.
Still, only 17% of AAPI adults believe school boards should be able to limit what students and teachers talk about in the classroom, and about a quarter of AAPI Republicans support such restrictions.
Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Riverside and founder of AAPIData, said the results suggest efforts to politicize education through culture war issues have not fully penetrated Asian American communities. Across the country, conservative state legislators and local school board members have tried to limit teaching about race and gender in the classroom.
“Parents are interested and involved in K-12 education in many ways, but the culture wars are not something that resonate with Asian American parents,” he said. “This is important because there’s been a lot of coverage and a lot of policy activity on this topic.”
AAPI Americans are a rapidly growing demographic, but their opinions often go unanalyzed in other surveys due to small sample sizes and language barriers.
Glenn Thomas, a 53-year-old Japanese-American, white man who identifies as a political independent and has three children in public school, said he doesn’t oppose topics like race and gender being covered in classes, but they shouldn’t be the sole focus of curriculum design.
“I have this old-fashioned idea of reading, writing and math,” he said of how schools address topics like gender and race, “and I don’t think they necessarily need to be taught as separate curricula.”
Thomas, whose family has lived all over the country because of his military career, said the influence of politics and outside actors on public schools varies greatly depending on where you live. In Florida, where he now lives, he believes the state government has too much influence over local schools.
Nationally, 39% of Asian American adults say they follow news about their local school board, while only 13% have attended a local school board meeting and 18% have had in-person or online contact with a local school board member. When it comes to elections, 28% have voted in local school board elections.
These percentages are roughly in line with the general public, although AAPI adults are slightly less likely to say they voted in their local school board elections.
Ramakrishnan said many Asian Americans are immigrants and therefore did not grow up in a political system like the U.S., where there is more local control and influence over schools. A lack of outreach from mainstream educational institutions could also be a factor in low engagement, he added.
“It takes a lot of effort to learn how the system works and how to influence that system,” he said. “Given that (Asian American and Pacific Islander) parents have a high interest in education, we expect participation rates to be high.”
Barisa Patrapong, a Thai-American mother of two children in California public schools, said she always votes in local elections, which play a key role in making decisions that affect schools. In Cerritos, where she lives, candidates tend to host events and send out mailings during election season, reflecting the vigorous campaigns for school committee seats.
Patraporn said she keeps in contact with school board members but doesn’t attend them, in part because the meetings are held in the evenings, making it difficult for parents with young children or other commitments to attend, she said, meaning parents who attend and speak can have a disproportionate influence.
Ms. Patraporn said she wants the school’s curriculum to be more diverse and inclusive, despite opposition from parents who don’t want racial issues discussed in the classroom. She said she frequently provides supplemental reading to expose her children to a wider range of perspectives beyond what they get in their homework.
“Those conversations are starting, but there’s a lot of resistance to it in our community,” she said. “There’s a lot of resistance in terms of fear of what it means to actually talk about race.”
Ramakrishnan said the poll data shows an opportunity for Asian American communities to become more closely engaged with their local educational institutions. About two-thirds of Asian American adults believe the school their children attend is extremely or very important to their success as adults, according to the poll. And about half, like the general population, say parents and teachers have too little influence over public school curriculum.
“We believe that college access remains an advantage and an important path to mobility and success in our region, and we are also concerned about the quality of K-12 education,” he said. “When it comes to education policy, we have a tremendous opportunity to increase inclusion and engagement of the Asian American Pacific Islander community.”
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The poll was conducted April 8-17, 2024 among 1,068 Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander U.S. adults using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based Amplify AAPI Panel. The panel is designed to be representative of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population. Online and phone interviews were offered in English, the Chinese dialects Mandarin and Cantonese, Vietnamese and Korean. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.
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