Asian American and Pacific Islanders Focus of Research Collaboration

LOS ANGELES, April 25, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education (CARE), announced a new collaboration today to collect data to help address the educational challenges and needs of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students. ETS is serving as the lead partner with CARE on the initiative.   

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The announcement was made today at The College Board's one-day conference Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Summit: Educating and Engaging AAPI Students.  The Summit convened educators, community leaders and policymakers to address the challenges facing AAPI students and those who serve them. The summit showcased effective partnerships and highlighted community engagement initiatives and strategies for access and student success. 

"This is a large and growing population in K–12 and higher education," explains lead researcher, Dr. Robert Teranishi, Associate Professor of Higher Education at NYU. "Yet it is wrongfully perceived and treated as a homogeneous group, when in fact it is quite diverse."

"There are a number of subpopulations in this group with significant educational challenges and needs that could be better addressed if data was disaggregated to represent the differences in the population," he adds. "Not doing so makes it impossible for policymakers and higher education practitioners to adequately respond to the needs of the marginalized and vulnerable AAPI groups that are often overlooked and underserved."

The collaboration will offer a data-driven rationale for institutional and policy-level changes for AAPI students, including guidance for schools and colleges, districts and systems, states and the federal government. The project will also convene a national group of experts who will provide guidance on the research, dive deeply into key issues and barriers, and inform the solutions on how to obtain better and more useful data on this population. 

The project will culminate with the production of a report which ETS and the National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education will jointly publish. 

"ETS welcomes the opportunity to provide our research expertise in examining these important issues for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders," says John Young, Director of Research at ETS. "As both an Asian American and a research scientist, this is a matter of both personal and professional interest to me and a topic that has not received the wider attention it deserves." 

ETS is providing financial support for the initiative through its Social Investment Fund.   

About ETS
At ETS, we advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research. ETS serves individuals, educational institutions and government agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification, English language learning, and elementary, secondary and post-secondary education, as well as conducting education research, analysis and policy studies. Founded as a nonprofit in 1947, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually — including the TOEFL® and TOEIC® tests, the GRE® tests and The Praxis Series™ assessments — in more than 180 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. www.ets.org

SOURCE Educational Testing Service