National Association for the Education and Advancement of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese Americans Summer/Fall 1999 The  Channel
MOVING INTO THE POLITICAL ARENA:	This issue of The Channel is devoted to recent accomplishments of Southeast Asian Americans in the national political arena.

The following report is an abridged version of the report on the 5th annual forum on APA issues held on October 29-30, 1999 in Arlington Virginia. Funded by OBEMLA of the US Department of Education and collaboratively organized and sponsored by OBEMLA, NAAPEA and NAFEA, the forum’s purpose was to articulate clear recommendations to address issues concerning Asian American Communities and students. More information on the forum can be obtained at the APA web-site which is devoted to documenting the forums and providing networking capabilities.
 
 
 

The Channel is Published 3-4 times a year by the National Association for the Education and Advancement of Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese Americans. To submit articles or resources for the Resource Corner contact Leslie Turpin

KimOanh Nguyen-Lam President Center for Language Minority Education&Research CSU Long Beach Long Beach, California 90840 Phone 562-985-5807 Fax 562-985-4528 NAFEA2000@aol.com	Bouy Te Executive Vice-President Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs Department of Education, Washington , D.C. Phone 202-205-9193 bouy_te@ed.gov
KaYing Yang Vice President Fundraising Executive Director, Southeast Asian Resource Action Center Washington, D.C.  Phone 202 667-4690 Fax 202-667-6449 kayingy@aol.com	Dinh VanLo Vice President, Programming DesMoines Public Schools, Project TEACH Des Moines, Iowa 50307 Phone 515 242-7784 Fax 515 242-8266 vanlodi@dmps.des_moines.k12.ia.us		Rose Tran Treasurer Second Language Office SanDiego City School San Diego, California Phone 619-725-7272 Fax 619-284-9822 rtran@mail.sandi.net
Samlong Inthaly Vice President, Programming Minneapolis Public Schools Woodbury, Minnesota 55125 Phone 612-714-3974 Inthaly@aol.com	Leslie Turpin Vice President of Publications School for International Training,  Brattleboro, Vermont 05346 Phone 802-258-3315 Fax 802-258-3316 lmturpin@tmn.com	Chanrithy Uong General Secretary Lowell High School. Lowell, Massachusetts 01854 Phone 978-937-8911 Fax 978-446-7327 Cuong1959@aol.com

Khatharya Um

Immediate Past President

UC Berkely, Department of Asian American Studies

Berkley, California 510 834-9455

Fax 510-763-1490

NATIONAL FORUM ON APA EDUCATION

FACILITATORS:

• Russell Endo, past NAAPAE Vice President, University of Colorado, Denver/Boulder, Colorado
• Leslie Turpin, NAFEA Vice President, School for International Training, Brattleboro, Vermont

• Discuss issues related to research on APA education.
• Provide advocacy for the inclusion of APA data in national studies.
• Identify effective means of disseminating research findings and their implications for APA education.
• Identify needed areas of research.

• There has been an increase in the amount of educational research on APAs over the past 20 years.
• Much research has been conducted on certain topics, APA groups, and regions.
• New and innovative research models have been developed (e.g., ones that involve participatory/community-based research).

• APA populations are relatively small, diverse, and often underrepresented in research.
• Research funding is inadequate.
• Research conceptualizations and/or instruments are sometimes inappropriate for APA populations.
• Research is often too narrowly focused (e.g., few explanatory variables).
• Descriptive statistical analyses often provide a general picture but do not portray the complexity of problems and issues.
• Research is sometimes misinterpreted because researchers lack cultural and linguistic sensitivity to the APA groups they study.
• More trained researchers are needed to work within APA communities.
• Research results are not well-disseminated.
• More research is needed in many areas, for example:

• Relationship between APA heritage language maintenance and academic and social well-being; consequences of language loss
• Second language acquisition by APA students
• Linguistic and academic needs of less-frequently studied
• APA groups
• Effective programs and strategies to increase the number of APA educators
• Language instruction and materials
• Assessment standards
• Issues and needs of nonimmigrant APA students (e.g. second and third generation)
• Linguistic and academic needs of less-frequently studied
• APA groups and APA students from less-researched regions
• APA learning styles and motivation styles
• Best instructional practices that link theory directly to
• practice
• Characteristics of effective bilingual and ESL teachers
• Home-school collaboration efforts
• Impact of political initiatives such as Proposition 227 in
• California
• Value-added educational outcomes
• Professional development (including mentoring)
• Careers of APA educators (including issues of burnout)
• Factors that promote APAs into leadership roles
• Effects of community and school-level factors on APA achievement
• Impacts of education on APA families, cultures, and communities
• Issues in higher education including APA student achievement and APA faculty hiring and promotion/tenure
• APAs lack an infrastructure for addressing research concerns.
• APAs need to gain greater support for APA education outside their communities (e.g., among other researchers, educators, policymakers, etc.).

• The U.S. Department of Education should provide funding to establish a national APA educational research advisory committee to:

• review existing research and research funding opportunities,
• develop a national agenda of high priority APA education research projects,
• coordinate APA advocacy efforts to secure funding for these projects, and
• provide technical assistance for DOE programs including input on the development of grant programs (including programs relevant for the training of APA researchers) and assistance in evaluating proposals submitted to existing grant programs for funding .

The U.S. Department of Education, as a standard policy in all national-level research, should:

• oversample APA groups,
• identify the specific APA group background and immigrant/nonimmigrant status of all APA students, and
• include APA students with limited-English proficiency in such a manner that APAs in national-level research will be representative of the total U.S. APA population.

• The U.S. Department of Education should provide funding for an APA education research clearinghouse that will:

• collect and disseminate information on past and ongoing research on APA education to educators, researchers, APA communities, policymakers, etc. (e.g., via webpages, e-mail, newsletters, reports, journals, workshops, etc.), policymakers, etc., and
• develop mechanisms for APA researchers and communities to network about research in progress and research issues and concerns (e.g., via Internet, forums, conferences, etc.).

Facilitators: Samlong Inthaly and Ermile Hargrove

OBEMLA Representative: Sharon Saez

Procedure: Round robin: Three sessions. After initial introductions, members at the table were asked to identify key issues which remain to be challenges. Last year's list (Long Beach 1998) was used as the starting point. In a free flow of ideas, issues were generated. Following this free-flow, participants were asked to determine critical needs (i.e., prioritize). From that discussion, participants were led to discuss policy implications (i.e., what changes could be expected to be made based on the issues and needs).

Outcome: Our brainstorming led us down a variety of paths. Each group took a slightly different perspective on the issues and the results were rich and varied. Although each group did not follow the logic laid out in the procedures, we were able to gather enough information from the three groups to put together what we think are issues, needs, and policy implications.

Key Issues:

1. Curriculum, Standards, and Assessment

• Bilingual and ESL curricula and assessment are not well-designed, up-to-date, and/or aligned with the state guidelines and standards.
• APA students are being assessed using standardized tests normed on a non-representative group (i.e., standardized tests are culturally biased).

1. Instruction and Parent Involvement

• The information on existing bilingual and primary language curricula is not clear and concrete enough at classroom level.
• APA parents are not familiar with the mainstream curricula and are not well informed about how the curricula are being used or taught.

1. Decision-making

• APA voices and representatives are often left out from decision- making processes regarding curriculum development and assessment guidelines at district, state, and national levels.
• Aggregating APA students’ data on progress and achievement information confounds critical issues.

1. National APA Advisory Board and Clearinghouse

• Establishment of a national APA advisory board to act as a clearinghouse in identifying, evaluating, and disseminating in formation on promising practices and effective curricular and assessment materials.

1. Alternative Assessment

• Development of alternative assessment tools appropriate to APA students that would better address their educational and linguistic needs.
• Dis-aggregate data so that the different language groups can be identified in order to provide appropriate curricular materials and deliver appropriate instruction for greater accountability.
• Use a variety of assessment tools to better understand APA students and their educational needs.

1. Curriculum and Instruction

• Develop appropriate bilingual and primary language curricula and instructional practices that are responsive to and inclusive of APA historical and cultural heritage.
• Provide professional development for bilingual and mainstream teachers using the same instructional materials.

1. Provide funding for research studies exploring the connection between academic achievement, social adjustment, parental involvement, and primary language maintenance among the APA student population.
2. Require allocation of resources for developing curricular and assessment tools in the APA languages, especially for less common languages in all projects funded at state and federal levels.
3. Require the participation of APA representatives in making curriculum and assessment policies at district, state, and national levels.

1) Policy Makers at all levels

2) Grant Managers/Funders at all levels

3) Practitioners at all levels

The following are random notes from the groups.

Group 1:

• ESL/Bilingual programs are transitional with little or no interface with content areas or standards. Identity issues are not addressed. There is no systems connection. There are not cultural references. There is a lack of rigor.
• Standards at the State level are abstract but at the school level should be practical.
• There are special pathways for second language learners.
• In California English Language Development standards have been established.
• Effective practices are not being documented for replication.
• There is a need for a bilingual and ESL curriculum with textbooks in the primary language and standards and alignment. Instruction should be appropriate to language group.
• APA voices are being left out of decision making.
• When APAs are mainstreamed, there should be special approaches to integration.
• Teachers need to feel empowered. They need professional development. APAs should be recruited and trained as teachers.
• Student voices need to be heard and students need to be involved in the articulation of the educational process across grade levels.
• Accountability for curriculum, rigor, effective program design.
• Assessments should be appropriate and aligned to student achievement and the standards.
• Some of the assessment tools should include instruments which provide data which can be used for comparisons.
• Professional development should be aligned with the curriculum and standards.

• Large-scale assessments are generic, inherently biased, and use cultural referents from the dominant culture. Who's making the assessments? Who is being addressed? There's only one set of norms. Alternative assessments are needed.
• Policy makers don't recognize teacher assessments. Performance-based assessments are at different levels: classroom, district, state. Only the state level is valued.
• When kids are excluded we get a skewed view of education. (Second language learners are often excluded from large-scale assessments.)
• Is teacher preparation appropriate for today's and tomorrow's classroom?
• What are the best practices for the new demography?
• How is the data researched and interpreted for APA students? Dis-aggregate data to support classroom decision making about student learning (i.e., use data as diagnostic). Aggregated data now used for high stakes accountability and sorting schools. Test items have cultural referents which APA students might not know.
• Is lack of English proficiency/fluency criteria for special education? How many special education students are APAs? What instruments are used for APA students? Is there appropriate identification? What about the dyslexic? What about gifted?
• Practitioner-made assessments are aligned to the curriculum.
• Parents have a range of issues they are interested in from literacy to curriculum development and alignment regarding their child's background and strengths.
• Teacher quality is variable.
• Model minority image inhibits support to APA students.
• English Language Development assessment is a standardized test. How will it align with standards?
• There is a lack of diversity, a kind of homogeneity.
• Standards are supposed to be world-class but are they equitable?

• Are APA students being fully included in issues of curriculum and assessment?
• There is a need for performance standards by grade level for APA students, as defined by when they entered school.
• APAs should be involved in discussions about standards. Currently there is only 1 APA educator in the curriculum development project for San Francisco even though 65% of the student population is Asian.
• Can standards be written to be culturally neutral? Presently they represent the dominant culture through schemas and language.
• Social studies topics do not include APA.
• A public relations campaign is necessary.

• Training with Title 1; link with Hispanics; build partnerships with Special Education and the mainstream.
• Move from a reliance on standardized tests to a range of assessment tools which can be used for comparative purposes and are aligned with the standards but are appropriate.
• Teachers need to feel empowered around standard setting. More professional development activities are needed. Train teachers to adapt curriculum, instructional approaches, content.
• There needs to be some kind of articulation with the mainstream.
• Consultants should be hired to adapt the curriculum to APAs.
• Create a community that understands the issue and can access information. A clearinghouse would support educators.

Facilitators:

• Sally Chou, past NAAPAE President, Assistant Superintendent, San Francisco Unified School District, California
• Dinh Van Lo, NAFEA Vice President of Programming, Des Moines Public Schools Systems. Iowa

• Not a unified voice in APA communities
• Lack of leadership skills and knowledge
• Need for collaboration with other organizations for networking and political advocacy
• Use different avenues to develop leadership
• Need for network, resources, and communications
• Need more APA’s in leadership roles (appointed or elected)
• Need to advocate and locate and make recommendations for appointment
• Make mainstream folks knowledgeable about APA issues
• Need to better advocate for us
• Need to break down the model minority stereotypes, see diversity in the communities
• Mentoring of activism; advocate for low-incident/small clusters schools for Title VII funding

• An action plan will be developed with identified priorities and strategies for leadership development and political advocacy.

• School district and CBO’s need to be trained in the APA communities to cultivate a cadre of leaders and to achieve political advocacy and mobilizations

• NAFEA and NAAPAE should provide data to policy makers from stakeholders to be presented at institutes, posting on the website, and submit to US Department of Education decision-makers.

• Educators should go to the communities to provide leadership training and to recruit people into the profession and create career ladders.

• Update website for information sharing and access.

• Give OBEMLA staff more opportunities to access the communities; use APA educators to present at conferences and management institutes.

• Have decision-makers provide data on grant awards based on communities and underrepresented groups.

• Develop political strategies to articulate needs and follow up for accountability to APA’s: learning about the media and its effectiveness.

• Provide input to media organizations to work in our favor; training the media on the communities and provide advisory groups for input; mentoring leadership development; have students be the reporters.

• Development of mentoring programs for cultural adjustment, take risks; family and social context in leadership development, training parents and youth about activism; mentoring of students to become teachers; equitable funding of Title VII projects to APA communities in need.

• Rally other organizations together including youth groups in high school and college. Leadership development should continue after college.

Facilitators: Steven K. Lee, NAAPAE Treasurer and Ki Lee, OBEMLA Education Specialist

Purpose:

To discuss issues related to challenges in soliciting funding to implement projects to increase educational services for the Asian Pacific American communities.

Procedure:

Led by the facilitators, three one-hour sessions were held with members participating in the forum. Participants included several representatives from the OBEMLA office. Comments were recorded (in writing) and reported to all forum participants following the conclusion of the third session.

Key Issues:

1. The public is unaware of the educational needs of the Asian Pacific American groups due to the model minority image.
2. The aggregation of the Asian Pacific American groups results in lack of support for the communities in need of additional educational assistance.
3. The Asian Pacific American communities lack resources to tap in to various grants and financial sources available at the local, state, and federal levels.
4. There is lack of data assessing educational achievement of LEP and non-LEP Asian-Pacific American students.

The public continues to over-generalize Asian Pacific Americans as successful in the mainstream schools. Although many of them are high achievers, studies seem to indicate growing evidence of significant disparity within the APA group. However, because of the prevalence of this stereotype, it is generally difficult for educational organizations to solicit grants and other financial sources to initiate projects to help the disadvantaged communities within the APA group. Also, there is severe limitation in the APA communities’ ability to identify funding sources to assist in implementing educational projects due to lack of experience in grant writing, public relations, etc. Further, the lack of longitudinal studies on LEP and non-LEP APA students, documenting their pattern of academic progress, limits educational organizations’ ability to approach potential funding sources for financial assistance. One particular weakness noted is the failure to fully utilize computer technology to establish contacts with and engage in public relations with both the public and government sectors.

Recommendations

1. Encourage research projects that dis-aggregate Asian Pacific American groups so that appropriate educational needs can be identified.
2. Disseminate the results of such studies to the public to assist them in better understanding the unique needs of individual APA communities.
3. Establish partnerships with school districts to identify key issues for the APA students.
4. Seek support from private corporations, including foreign-based companies.
5. Collaborate with the Department of Education to provide mutual benefits.

Due to immigration, Asian Pacific American group is expected to continue to grow well in to the next millenium. The major challenge faced by the APA communities is the lack of identity; that is, the public’s failure to recognize the different educational needs within the group makes it difficult for the sub-groups to receive appropriate support for various educational programs. The under-representation of APA in discussions of language and cultural support, as well as issues related to attrition and college admissions remains a key challenge for the future.

Recommendations to OBEMLA:

1. Recognize the diversity with the Asian Pacific American group.
2. Recognize the unique educational needs within the Asian Pacific American communities.
3. Provide support for research studies on APA to develop appropriate educational projects and programs.
4. Develop increased activities with APA organizations to encourage grant writing.
5. Provide technical assistance to APA organizations to utilize computer technology in educational activities.

Facilitator: Bounlieng Phommasouvanh, Ph.D., NAFEA Advisory, Minnesota Public School Systems and Robert Gibson, NAAPAE Council member, University of Hawaii

Key Issues:

1. There is a critical shortage of APA teachers and staff.
2. Teachers do not have sufficient training to fully understand education reform initiatives, standard-based education and the implementation thereof.
3. Teachers do not know how to use student assessment data effectively to improve their classroom instruction.
4. The majority of APA students across the nation is scattered in small numbers and placed in classrooms where their needs are not even known or addressed.
5. Many new teachers lack appropriate and relevant knowledge and skills to be effective and responsive to APA students’ social and academic needs.
6. Career ladder programs are not properly preparing APA paraprofessional and non-certified staff to become qualified and certified teachers.
7. Most alternative certification programs currently in place are not properly designed to address the shortage of APA teachers.

1. Professional staff development must address the need for training teachers to understand and implement education reform initiatives and standard-based education. This problem must be addressed in pre-service training at institutes of higher education as well as in-service training at the district level.
2. Teachers need t be trained in the area of student assessment and self-assessment of their classroom instruction as well as on how to use the data to improve their instruction.
3. All teachers and school staff, not only APA teachers, need to be trained on how to better serve APA students by developing knowledge and skills about the diversity of APA populations in terms of language, culture and learning styles.
4. The practicum teacher trainees receive must be relevant and related to their teaching conditions, and the mentoring process must be conducted by mentors experienced and qualified to prepare the trainees to help APA students succeed.
5. The critical shortage of APA teachers and staff needs to be addressed immediately.
6. School districts should develop career ladder programs to help paraprofessional and non-certified staff to become competent and certified teachers.
7. Alternative certification programs currently in operation should be re-evaluated and revamped so that they produce teachers competent and prepared to meet the challenge.

1. APA leadership and their advocates should be involved in the decision-making process concerning teacher certification, testing and assessment
2. US Department of Education and OBEMLA should encourage institutions of higher education develop pre-service training programs that embrace education reform initiatives and standard-based education by providing funding as an incentive.
3. US Department of Education and OBEMLA should fund fellowship programs and scholarships designated specifically for APA teacher trainees.
4. Career ladder programs should be encouraged to be integrated and consistent with the school district’s professional standards and teacher performance in order to prepare paraprofessional staff to become competent teachers.
5. Establish intern and mentoring programs for APA trainees and new teachers at the state and local level.
6. Recommend that NCBE set up a web site of best practices for educating APA students to benefit all teachers.
7. Alternative certification programs must be based on successful models in order to meet the APA teacher shortage.

6. Home-School-community Collaboration

Facilitators: Mutsuko Tanouchi, Hongthong Niravahn & Rose Tran

Key Issues:

1. Underrepresented voices and perspectives: APA parents and community’s voices and perspectives continue to be underrepresented in all school and district governance. There are a number of reasons that perpetuate this situation ranging from cultural and linguistic differences to misperception of APA students’ academic attainment.
2. Lack of representation at all levels: There is a lack of school personnel from administrative, to certificated and classified staff levels who are representative of APA populations or knowledgeable of the APA cultural and educational values to advocate for more inclusive participation of APA communities.
3. Ineffective and invalidating Parent Involvement Programs: Past and present home-school-community efforts do not take into consideration the knowledge, commitment and experience of APA parents and community members in educating their children. Too often, parents engage in one-way lectures and informational sessions filled with educational jargons in which they feel powerless and useless. APA parent volunteers are often assigned meaningless tasks based on perceived communicative limitation.

Critical Needs:

1. Active and committed outreach to include APA parents and community leaders to participate in schools and districts’ governance at all levels. This includes ways to identify existing APA community leaders as well as opportunities to develop leadership in APA communities.
2. Special efforts made to encourage more APA to enter the education profession. Identify existing APA administrators, teachers and give them more flexibility and resources to outreach, network and represent their APA communities.
3. Develop two-way home-school-community partnership models in which immigrant parents and community members have opportunities to contribute meaningfully to school governance including curriculum selection and revision, and program evaluation. Parent involvement programs must help immigrant parents and school personnel to learn from each other and support one another in their shared goal of students’ success.

Policy Implications/Recommendations:
 
 

1. Teacher preparation must include a component on building partnerships with immigrant parents and parents of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Currently, many teacher education programs have not included this component. It is recommended that Title VII and other educational programs allocating special funding to help in-service teachers acquiring knowledge and skills in this critical aspect.
2. Although most categorically funded programs include a parent involvement component, many projects have treated parents as rubber stamps. Parents are often asked to affirm what has been planned and ready to be implemented. More stringent criteria is needed to ensure meaningful and authentic parent participation and contribution to categorically funded educational projects. This requires building background knowledge of immigrant parents of the U.S. school system as well as of school personnel on APA educational values and practices.
3. Special funding is needed to recruit, prepare, and retain more APA candidates into the teaching profession. This may include mentorship program between APA teachers and APA high school students and APA community members. More funding is also needed for research inquiries into the most inclusive collaboration models for involving immigrant parents into school governance.
4. To actively seek out and fund APA parents and community members to participate in leadership development institutes or conferences who will serve as advocates for APA educational communities.

1) Policy Makers at all levels

2) Grant Managers/Funders at all levels

3. Practitioners at all levels

This year’s NAFEA Annual Conference will be held on May 18-20, 2000 in Anaheim, California. The focus of this conference is to commemorate the 25 years since the existence of our first Southeast Asian communities and to validate NAFEA’s past 20 years of leadership and service to the Southeast Asian American Students and families.

Bouy Te, a survivor of the killing fields of Cambodia who later taught bilingual education in Minneapolis and was the No. 2 official of a national student advocacy group, has been appointed deputy director of the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs (OBEMLA).

"Bouy Te brings valuable experience in connecting with students whose English is limited," said U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley. "His background will help guide us as we promote education excellence for all students."

As deputy director, Te will serve as the second-ranking official for the office that helps school districts meet their re to provide equal education opportunities to limited English proficient students. Before joining the U.S. Education Department, Te was deputy director of the National Coalition of Advocates for Students (NCAS), a nationwide network of 23 child advocacy groups. In that role, he also served as director of the NCAS National Asian Family/School Partnership Project, focusing on Asian families and educational issues.

Born in Cambodia, he escaped the horrors of the Pol Pot regime and settled in 1981 in Minneapolis.

There he spent eight years with the Minneapolis Public Schools as a Title VII bilingual resource teacher for secondary schools, bilingual teacher (junior high and high schools), parent program developer, and teacher on special assignment. "I’m very honored to be appointed to work on and support the president’s sound education agenda," Te said. "I want to emphasize quality and equity in education for all children. the bottom line is, one child who fails or one child who is denied an equal opportunity to learn and succeed is one child too many."

Hiep Chu was appointed to replace Bouy Te as Project Director of the National Asian Family/School Partnership Project National Coalition of Advocates for Students. Look for more information on what he is doing in the next newsletter
 
 
 
 

Election Results in Lowell, Massachusetts (Much of the information for this story was taken from the Article "Immigrant Story wins with Lowell electorate" by Brian Mooney. Boston Globe November 3, 1999)

The November election brought good news in Lowell, Massachusetts. Chanrithy Uong, NAFEA’s Board Secretary, was one of nine people elected to City Council. Rithy Arrived in the U.S. in 1981 and moved to Massachusetts from Texas in 1983. He has lived in Lowell for the last 10 years. He attributed his success to having a campaign platform that reached everyone: services for the elderly, stregthening community and youth efforts to make safe streets and neighborhoods, and census 2000. "Lowell needs new faces who can speak to everyone who didn’t have a voice before and who are able to bring people to work together to make Lowell a better place for all."

According to the Boston Globe coverage of the election, Chanrithy is the first Cambodian-American elected to city council in New England. While Lowell is home to over 20,000 Cambodian, several thousand Laotian and a smaller number of Vietnamese Americans ( 25 to 30 percent of the city’s population), Southeast Asians are only 3 percent of the registered voters. According to Boston Globe reporter, Brian Mooney, Lowell has "long been an inward-looking place, its progressive strains overshadowed by ethnic rivalries, slow to accept dramatic social change...More than a mere symbol, Uong a 39 year-old guidance counselor at Lowell High School, is a leader in the community, a bridge builder, a consensus seeker." Rithy has proven this.

in his long-standing commitment to Lowell. He is President of the city’s Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association and has been an active participant in creating an Asian task force to address gang violence.

Rithy says, "people are starting to realize their important duty as citizens, that its important to be part of this greatest democracy, and that they not take it for granted." His message has been an inspiration for the city and for us.

RESOURCE CORNER

On-line Resources

The following on-line resources are available and of interest

APA forum

http://equity4.clmer.csulb.edu/netshare/kclam/APA/index.htm

(for information on APA forum events and for networking with other APA educators)

National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education (NCBE)

www.ncbe.gwu.edu

(this site has on-line links to language and education sites concerning Hmong, Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog Filipino,Lao,Korean Cambodian/Khmer. Link sites include native language learning resources, cultural resources, and specific resource lists)

Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs (OBEMLA)

http://www.ed.gov/offices/OBEMLA/

This site has information on obtaining Title VII grants awarded by OBEMLA in the following areas:

•Program Development and Enhancement Grants (Comprehensive School Grants and Systemwide Improvement Grants• Teacher Training Grants• Bilingual Education Teachers and Personnel Grants• Bilingual Education Career Ladder Grant

• Graduate Fellowships in Bilingual Education Grant

Portraits of Success

http://www.lab.brown.edu/public/NABE/portraits.taf

Portraits of Success is a joint project of NABE, Boston College and the Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University. It is a national effort, supported by a number of experts in the field of bilingual education, to develop a database on successful bilingual education.

Announcing the publication of Current Issues in Asian and Pacific American Education. Edited by Russell Endo, Clara Clark and John Tsuchida. The research and research-based papers in this anthology present recent work on a broad range of topics concerning Asian and Pacific American education. This is an important book for educators, researchers, students and others interested in the characteristics and needs of Asian and Pacific American students as well as beneficial educational practices and policies. $14.95 ISBN 1-879600-90-0. ContactPacific Asia Press Book Order Department 136 North Grand Avenue, Suite 222 west Covina CA 91791 (800) 537-4357 fax: (626) 527-9500
 
 
 
 

Excerpts from Speech delivered by Edward Fujimoto to the APA Forum:

Dr. Fujimoto’s speech drew attention to the contrast between the Executive Order of 1942 (the last presidential order concerning Asian Americans) and the most recent one by President Clinton, copied below):

"...in 1942, Executive Order 9066 forced 120,000 Japanese American men, women and children to become uprooted from their homes and placed in concentration camps located in swamps, desert land, or dust bowl environments.

And as new waves of immigrants such as the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and Hmongs have entered the U.S. as refugee immigrants, their problems have not been properly profiled because "slight of hand" stories are perpetuated only about the success of other Asian groups that have had a chance to assimilate and experienced hard-earned success. The "Minority Myth" problem that APAs consistently try to explain has certainly taken a toll on our recent APA refugee, immigrant populations.

But despite these inequities that APAs have experienced, I concluded that anything is possible in our great nation if we are focused and make our democratic system work for all of us."

Ed Fujimoto

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as amended (5 U.S.C. App.), and in order to improve the quality of life of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders through increased participation in Federal programs where they may be underserved (e.g., health, human services, education, housing, labor, transportation, and economic and community development), it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. (a) There is established in the Department of Health and Human Services the President's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (Commission). The Commission shall consist of not more than 15 members appointed by the President, one of which shall be designated by the President as Chair. The Commission shall include members who: (i) have a history of involvement with the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities; (ii) are from the fields of health, human services, education, housing, labor, transportation, economic and community development, civil rights, and the business community; (iii) are from civic associations representing one or more of the diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander communities; and (iv) have such other experience as the President deems appropriate.

(b) The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (Secretary) shall appoint an Executive Director for the Commission.

Sec. 2. The Commission shall provide advice to the President, through the Secretary, on: (a) the development, monitoring, and coordination of Federal efforts to improve the quality of life of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders through increased participation in Federal programs where such persons may be underserved and the collection of data related to Asian American and Pacific Islander populations and sub-populations; (b) ways to increase public-sector, private-sector, and community involvement in improving the health and well-being of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders; and (c) ways to foster research and data on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, including research and data on public health.

Sec. 3. The Department of Health and Human Services shall establish the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders( Initiative), an interagency working group (working group) whose members shall be appointed by their respective agencies. The Executive Director of the Commission shall also serve as the Director of the Initiative, and shall report to the Secretary or the Secretary's designee. The working group shall include both career and noncareer civil service staff and commissioned officers of thePublic Health Service with expertise in health, human services, education, housing, labor, transportation, economic and community development, and other relevant issues. The working group shall advise the Secretary on the implementation and coordination of Federal programs as they relate to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders across executive departments and agencies.

Sec. 4. The head of each executive department and each agency designated by the Secretary shall appoint a senior Federal official responsible for management or program administration to report directly to the agency head on activity under this Executive order, and to serve as a liaison to the Initiative. The Secretary also may designate additional Federal Government officials, with the agreement of the relevant agency head, to carry out the functions of the Initiative. To the extent permitted by law and to the extent practicable, each executive department and designated agency shall provide any appropriate information requested by the working group, including data relating to the eligibility for and participation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Federal programs. Where adequate data are not available, the Initiative shall suggest the means of collecting such data.

Sec. 5. Each executive department and designated agency (collectively, the "agency") shall prepare a plan for, and shall document, its efforts to improve the quality of life of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders through increased participation in Federal programs where Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders may be underserved. This plan shall address, among other things, Federal efforts to: (a) improve the quality of life for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders through increased participation in Federal programs where they may be underserved and the collection of data related to Asian American and Pacific Islander populations and sub-populations; (b) increase public-sector, private-sector, and community involvement in improving the health and well-being of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders; and (c) foster research and data on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, including research and data on public health. Each agency's plan shall provide appropriate measurable objectives and, after the first year, shall assess that agency's performance on the goals set in the previous year's plan. Each plan shall be submitted at a date to be established by the Secretary.

Sec. 6. The Secretary shall review the agency plans and develop for submission to the President an integrated Federal plan (Federal Plan) to improve the quality of life of Asian American and Pacific Islanders through increased participation in Federal programs where such persons may be underserved. Actions described in the Federal Plan shall address improving access by Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to Federal programs and fostering advances in relevant research and data. The Secretary shall ensure that the working group is given the opportunity to comment on the proposed Federal Plan prior to its submission to the President. The Secretary shall disseminate the Federal Plan to appropriate members of the executive branch. The findings and recommendations in the Federal Plan shall be considered by the agencies in their policies and activities.

Sec. 7. Notwithstanding any other Executive order, the responsibilities of the President that are applicable to the Commission under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as amended, except that of reporting to the Congress, shall be performed by the Secretary in accordance with the guidelines and procedures established by the Administrator of General Services.

Sec. 8. Members of the Commission shall serve without compensation, but shall be allowed travel expenses, including per diem in lieu of subsistence, as authorized by law for persons serving intermittently in the Government service (5 U.S.C. 5701-5707). To the extent permitted by law and appropriations, and where practicable, agencies shall, upon request by the Secretary, provide assistance to the Commission and to the Initiative. The Department of Health and Human Services shall provide administrative support and funding for the Commission.

Sec. 9. The Commission shall terminate 2 years after the date of this Executive order unless the Commission is renewed by the President prior to the end of that 2-year period.

Sec. 10. For the purposes of this order, the terms: (a) "Asian American" includes persons having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent; and (b) "Pacific Islander" includes the aboriginal, indigenous, native peoples of Hawaii and other Pacific Islands within the jurisdiction of the United States.

National Association for the Education and Advancement of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese Americans

---

OBEMLA Annual Title VII National Professional Development Institute

February 15-16, 2000 San Antonio , Texas contact OBEMLA (www.ed.gov/offices/OBEMLA)

National Association for Bilingual Education Conference (NABE) February 17 2000 San Antonio, Texas

(contact NABE (www.nabe.org)

National Association for Asian and Pacific American Education 22nd Annual Conference "Reaching Across Cultures in the New Millennium." Kona Surf Resort, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, April 11-15, 2000

LAO AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE

Saturday, July 1 - Sunday, July 2, 2000

Scholarships:

The School for International Training announces SIT Freeman Scholarships available to students from U.S. Public Institutions. Scholarships are available for college semester abroad programs in China and Vietnam. The purpose of the scholarships is to increase the pool of leaders and teachers in the U.S. who have an in-depth understanding of the cultures of China and Vietnam. For information contact Viet Ha, Admissions Office, College Semester Abroad, School for International Training, Brattleboro, Vermont, 05302. (802) 257-7751.