Community-Based Organization-School Relationships in Urban Southeast Asian Communities

Final Report Executive Summary Co-Principal Investigators: Adeline Becker – Brown University Francine Collignon – Brown University Introduction Project 3.2 CBO-School Relationships in Urban Southeast Asian Communities is a project of CREDE’s Program 3 : Family, Peers, School and Community. Project 3.2 addresses the role of Community-Based Organization (CBO)-School Relationships in enhancing Southeast Asian student achievement. The project targets the academic achievement of Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong and Vietnamese students in Rhode Island schools. These students are at risk of educational failure because of incongruences between the academic pipeline and their languages, cultural practices, poverty and other legacies of war in their families' homelands. The major research questions examine 1) which factors in the multiple cultures - home, school and community - of Southeast Asian students in Rhode Island prevent or promote their achieving to high academic standards and 2) how can school-based and community-based programs collaborate to positively impact the achievement of at-risk students? This research focuses on these two entities - schools and community-based organizations - and their potential for collaboration in service provision to the Southeast Asian students in Rhode Island. Southeast Asians, predominantly Cambodians, Laotians, Hmong and Vietnamese, began arriving in Rhode Island in the mid to late 1970s as a consequence of the April 30, 1975 fall of Saigon, considered a defining moment in the conflict in Southeast Asia. The languages, cultures and resettlement needs of the refugees from Southeast Asia were new to the region. During the twenty-five years since their arrival, data collected and published about various areas of their lives has continued to inform the public about various features of their struggles and successes in a new land (p. 10). However, prior to the start-up of this project, research to address specifically the education of Southeast Asian students from four communities with languages and cultures distinct from one another, and vastly different from that of schools in the United States, did not exist in the state. Neither did strategies for involving family and community members in their learning. By investigating what promotes or prevents their achievement to high academic standards also required generating missing data about them and their own voices, missing from most accounts. Purpose While there are success stories in the Southeast Asian communities which seemingly confirm the notion of students as model minorities, there are also reports of high truancy, escalating drop-out rates and gang involvement which suggest the challenges of Southeast Asian students. The purpose of this project is to construct a research design which will engage Southeast Asian students themselves in collaborative action research with members of their families, school personnel and community representatives. We worked to respond to the research questions with respect to supports for academic achievement with an underlying emphasis on the potential of school-based and community-based partnerships to support learning. In order to accomplish this study, project staff identified who the target population was; that is, clarified who the Southeast Asian communities are with some specificity as to the diversity within them with regard to language, culture and background. It has been our purpose also to address some of the generalizations which tend to blur the possibilities for educators responding to individual needs in each of the diverse communities in the study (pp. 7-9). Research Design Sociocultural theory frames the research (pp. 11-13). Researchers combined quantitative and qualitative measures to study the interactions among students, families, community members and educators in the multiple cultures of students (p.9). The Principal Activity of Year One focused on the assessment of data with which to identify the population and to determine already-existing services from community-based organizations to Southeast Asian communities. Sixteen formal and informal interviews with personnel in key positions in Rhode Island and with local school districts, as well as a telephone poll of the 36 school districts in the state confirmed the data gaps with respect to Southeast Asian student populations. Given the findings of Year One, it became clear that the workscope of Year Two must focus on generating data statewide and compiling the deliverable: Southeast Asian Students in Rhode Island Schools and Community-Based Organizations in Proximity to Them. (pp. 13-14). The document established the context for the research while also demonstrating the significant information gaps with respect to the Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong and Vietnamese student populations and the need to foreground educational research with Southeast Asian students in Rhode Island (p. 14). In Year Three, using newly generated data, project staff addressed education issues and collaborative relationships through selecting a community-based organization (CBO) as its case study (pp.10-11).The research site for the next two years was the CBOs summer academy, an activity setting rich in cultural constructions and partnerships that crossed generations, ethnicities and cultures (page 19). Project staff became participant observers. Their detailed observations informed the research. As relationships grew, research staff were invited to convene focus groups of parents to assist with their participation in larger educational issues. The under-representation of Southeast Asian individuals in the teaching force in the state came to the foreground. Based on data from the project, Brown University received Career Ladder funding in two consecutive years specifically to address the shortages in the Southeast Asian teaching force revealed from qualitative and quantitative data of this project. Benefits to the research came also from cross-talk with researchers in Project 3.3 also working with youth in a community project who introduced our staff to mixed method data collection and analysis using the Bridging Multiple Worlds research tool kit (E. Dominguez &C.R. Cooper, 2000). Besides baseline data from all the participants in the summer academy, this protocol guided case studies of 8 participants through 2 school years. The unifying themes of CREDE Program 3 — the academic pipeline, family involvement and linkages with the community — frame the study. Conclusions The research set out to identify factors that prevent or promote the academic achievement of Southeast Asian students. At the same time, it studied the role of community-based organization-school partnerships. In order to do this, Project 3.2 generated data about the Southeast Asian communities in Rhode Island which were not previously accessible. Also, the data documented clearly the support and strength to speak and act that came from students, their families and community members engaging in mutually productive activities. Our work foregrounded this CREDE principle, highlighted in examples written by the staff, in "Finding Ways In: Community-Based Perspectives on Southeast Asian Family Involvement With Schools in a New England State" (Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 6(1&2), 27-44). Implications Implications for the research continue to emerge in four areas: data, academic achievement, teacher preparation and communities/collaborations. The challenge to generate accurate data, especially in the climate of data-driven school reform has implications for communities whose voices are missing from the table of school reform. Without community members represented adequately in the teaching force of the nation’s schools, the resources they bring from their diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds are lacking in classrooms. Without the infrastructure needed to support community-based organization-school partnerships, value-added services they contribute will remain elusive. The research clearly points to the need to forge new and sustainable relationships for supporting not only Southeast Asian students, but all students’ academic achievement to high standards.