CBO-School Relationships in Urban Southeast Asian Communities

CBO-School Relationships in Urban Southeast Asian Communities

is a project of Program 3: Family, Peers, School and Community . The project addresses the role of Community-Based Organization (CBO)-School Relationships in enhancing Southeast Asian student achievement. It 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 school-based and community-based programs can collaborate to positively impact student achievement. The research focuses on schools and community -based organizations because of the belief that these entities working together have the potential to provide value-added services to students and their families in the target population and also to each other. The assistance these collaborations provide, particularly with issues of language and culture, broker understandings of effective education practice across cultures. The reciprocity which CBO-school relationships foster builds capacity within the multiple cultures of the student for expanded supports for their achievement to high standards.

The Plan of Work

The plan of work of the project engages stakeholders in diverse roles in the lives of Southeast Asian students such as their families/care-givers, community leaders, teachers, and school administrators in collaborative inquiry. The long range goal of the project is to forge collaborations among schools and community-based organizations whose constituencies often include students’ families to support Southeast Asian learners' capacities to: 1) engage fully in the formal education process in the United States, 2) take ownership of their own education processes and 3) achieve to high standards. To this end, we are researching issues such as:

? the expectations for Southeast Asian students held by families and personnel in schools,

? the resources needed by families and schools to support student achievement,

? the consequences for students and their families of gaps in acceess to education, health and social services,

? the impact of CBO-School programs and partnerships on student success

? the role of various networks, processes and linkages in supporting learners

The Time Line

The Time Line in the workscope of the project lists principal activities and expected progress in each of the five years of the project (See Plan of Work, p. 121). Although CREDE’s funding of Project 3.2 CBO-School Relationships... began during CREDE’s Year II (July 1997-June 1998), The Education Alliance at Brown University provided in-kind services during CREDE’s Year I (July 1996-June 1997). Each deliverable (See Plan of Work, p. 122) is aligned with each funded year of the project; therefore, one deliverable has been produced thus far (due June 1998).

The following chart locates the Principal Activity and the Expected Progress for each year of the project within CREDE’s 5 years.

Time Line

	CREDE	Project 3.2	Principal Activity	Expected Progress
July 1996-June 1997	Year 1	In-kind services	Assessment of data with respect to the target population.	Data needs to be identified and analyzed
July 1997-June 1998	Year 2	Year 1	Identify schools and community organizations that address the needs of Southeast Asian populations	Listing of school/community organization in RI
July 1998-June 1999	Year 3	Year 2	Identify the resources within the schools and community organizations which service Southeast Asians	Map of services available to Southeast Asians
July 1999-June 2000	Year 4	Year 3	Identify the gaps in service provision negatively impacting the academic achievement of Southeast Asians	Needs and service gaps analyzed and prioritized
July 2000-June 2001	Year 5	Year 4	Review project and initiatives which support the academic achievement of Southeast Asians	Identify resources which can be tapped or developed for Southeast Asians
		Year 5	Recommend new collaborations among school-based organizations	Comprehensive report of findings

CBO-School Relationships...In-Kind Services: July 1996-June 1997

(CREDE’s Year 1)

The Principal Activity of this year focused on the assessment of data. The Co-Principal Investigators of the project began by assessing the data with which to identify and locate the target population of the study, the K-12 Southeast Asian student populations within the school systems in Rhode Island. The researchers also set out to assess data with respect to the services which community-based organizations provide specifically to the target populations: the Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong and Vietnamese communities in Rhode Island.

The workscope included data collection through 16 formal and informal interviews with personnel in key positions at the State Education Agency, the three Local Education Agencies with the largest Southeast Asian populations: the Providence, Woonsocket and Cranston school districts and selected other school districts in the state. Additionally, staff conducted 4 interviews at 2 community-based organizations closely identified with the target population: The Socio-Economic Development Center for Southeast Asians (SEDC) and the International Institute of Rhode Island (IIRI). SEDC coordinates services to the four largest Southeast Asian communities statewide. IIRI has been recognized as the largest sponsor of refugees and provider of services to immigrant/refugee populations in the state for over two decades. At monthly staff meetings, the project’s researchers reviewed the data from field notes from the interviews and their individual analytic memos in order to develop a summary of emergent findings.

These interim findings indicate that identification of K-12 students in the target population is impossible without generating additional data. Data identifying the number of Southeast Asian students according to ethnicity in individual schools in school districts does not exist; neither does educational data disaggregated by ethnicity on data such as graduation rates, drop-out rates, or research on student achievement. Data on Southeast Asian students is disaggregated from the Asian Pacific-Islander category only in school districts with English as a Second Language (ESL) programs. ESL program reports disaggregate students receiving services by dominant language for submission on student census annual reports from each city and town to the Rhode Island Department of Education. No directory of services exists statewide indicating agencies or organizations with the capacity, linguistically and culturally, to address the needs of Southeast Asian populations.

In summary, emergent findings indicate that data must be generated in order to proceed in identifying and locating the Southeast Asian populations in the state, especially their K-12 populations, and to identify community-based organizations in proximity to them as potential collaborators. Given that no substantial data for the research exists in the state, as the first activity of Year I, the staff will prioritize generating the data needed for research and for inclusion in the first deliverable (See CREDE Plan of Work, p. 122) due at the end of the project’s first funded year (June 1998).

CBO-School Relationships... Year 1: July 1997-June 1998

(CREDE ‘s Year II)

The project set out to generate the data needed to prepare "a document indicating the schools within the Greater Providence, RI area with Southeast Asian student populations and community organizations in reasonable proximity to these schools" (Plan of Work, p. 122). The workscope included three areas: updating existing data, generating data locating Southeast Asian K-12 students in Rhode Island schools and identifying community organizations in proximity to these students and their families.

The staff now included a co-coordinator from the Cambodian community and a consultant pool of staff from the target populations who work in schools and CBOs. The staff collected and analyzed data from the Rhode Island Department of Education, local school districts, community-based organizations and students, their families and their teachers. Telephone interviews were completed to each of the 36 districts in Rhode Island in order to determine the total number of Southeast Asian students "not in (ESL) program". This information was only available in the city of Providence where student census data identifies the dominant home language of students from each of its 42 schools. Providence is home to 80% of the Southeast Asian student population in the state.

The emergent findings indicate that there are Southeast Asian students in all 42 schools in Providence. Approximately 1/4 of them receive services. Approximately 3/4 are in mainstream classrooms or other placements. No lists exist from which to specifically identify these students in individual classrooms. The other school districts in Rhode Island have even less information.

The staff also conducted on-site interviews at 22 CBOs identified by Southeast Asian community members who had supplied the names of these CBOs in response to the open-ended question, "Who helps you and your children?" These interviews replicated a method used to elicit from a target population the identification of exemplary local youth organizations in a study of inner-city youth (Heath, 1996, p. 227). Interviews will be ongoing as additional sites of service provision are identified. Since there is no directory of CBOs in the state with the capacity to serve Southeast Asians, the project is developing the first such database with this information.

The first deliverable of the project: Southeast Asian Students in Rhode Island Schools and Community-Based Organizations in Proximity to Them is the first document specifically to address locating K-12 Southeast Asian student populations in Rhode Island’s public schools. It provides a summary of the emergent findings with respect to issues in their identification, the districts and schools with the largest concentrations and the beginning of a comprehensive list of proximate agencies/organizations which provide services to families in the target population. This document demonstrates the accomplishment of the "Expected Progress" of the project at the end of funded Year I. While the document begins to identify the context for the research, it also demonstrates 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.

These emergent findings of the research during Year 1 (CREDE’s Year II) confirm that two issues remain central to the ongoing research: 1) collecting data for investigating Southeast Asian student achievement and 2) studying effective community relationships that support the education needs of students and their families, such as partnerships among schools and community-based organizations. Additionally, the research evidences that the resources of institutions of higher education also play a significant role in the effectiveness of these partnerships/collaborations between CBOs and schools.

The next steps for the project during Year 2 (CREDE’s Year III) address these central research issues of data and collaborative relationships. Activities which have begun in these areas are ongoing. They include:

1) generating additional data to identify more precisely the students from the target population (Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong and Vietnamese students) who are not identifiable in the student census because they are in mainstream classrooms,

2) expanding the current database of community-based organizations,

3) convening individuals from the Southeast Asian communities who are service providers and prospective educators to act as resource persons for the research and, at the same time, forming a support group for their professional endeavors,

4) publishing and disseminating materials ,

5) training Southeast Asian trainers who will assist others providing community education vis-a-vis the communities of the target population. 6) entering into relationships initially with the Socio-Economic Development Center for Southeast Asians (SEDC) and eventually with other selected CBOs, whose programs provide activity settings for the research.

This project will continue to generate, collect and analyze data to assist in identifying resources for Southeast Asian populations at schools and CBOs. This research data will be compiled in a document which is the Year 2 deliverable (Plan of Work, p. 122).

CBO-School Relationships...Year 2: July 1998-June 1999

(CREDE’s Year III)

The staff members of the project proceed with activities of Year 2. The research staff continue to generate more precise data on the target population and expand the database of community-based organizations through formal and informal interviews. In order to assist with this work, the project has convened two meetings with the elected leaders of the 4 Southeast Asian communities and a representative group of service-providers and educators from the communities for purposes of information dissemination, leadership development and community support. Work is underway on the publication of a community member’s manuscript, the first autobiographical essay in a series entitled "Learning from the Communities". The series will provide a professional development tool for teachers and their students, theoretically based on the "funds of knowledge" approach to literacy instruction (Moll, 1989). Assisting Southeast Asian individuals in preparing interactive presentations for providing community education vis-a-vis the Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong and Vietnamese communities also continues.

The Southeast Asian Summer Academy, coordinated by SEDC, provided the first activity setting through which the Year 2 work proceeds. The academy, the culmination of after-school clubs and tutoring programs for 50 Southeast Asian middle school students statewide, represents a CBO-School District partnership with a 7 year history. It has targeted at-risk students and convened them for a program using the facilities of a higher education institution in Providence, and recognized by the Providence school district as a "summer school " to make up failed grades. Unlike the traditional summer schools for Providence students, the academy is free of charge and integrates study, recreation (swimming and soccer), field trips and cultural activities into its academic program.

The collaborations around the academy activities connect the key players in the multiple contexts of students’ lives. The SEDC administrator and staff, instructors who are non-Southeast Asian credentialed Providence teachers and family members who take part in students’ field trips and cultural activities invite study of the personal, social and community planes occurring in sociocultural activity. Two of the research project consultants from the Cambodian community assumed the role of participant observers and eventually acted also as program analysts during the 8 week session. Their field notes and responses to open-ended questions on surveys of students demonstrate that this academic activity setting incorporates CREDE’s five generic principles at various stages of development in many components of its program. Activity as this research site brought the project into collaboration with students, their families, officials of their schools, staff and administration from the sponsoring CBO and other higher education institutions. Research of this effective CBO-school relationship is ongoing. It continues through the upcoming study of one of the after-school programs for participants from the Southeast Asian Summer Academy , located on-site at a middle school.

Program Themes

The unifying themes of Program 3 - the academic pipeline, family involvement and linkages with the community - recur in the workscope. Project 3.2 staff select activity settings in which the potential exists for opening the academic pipeline to the at-risk Southeast Asian student populations through their engagement in productive activity around their schoolwork and which also connects their families with personnel from their schools and community-based organizations. The Southeast Asian Summer Academy (Year 2) exemplified an activity setting in which the expanded linkages to the larger community and its organizations provide reciprocal gains for all parties. Additionally, staff collaborate with school districts and CBOs, responding to requests for presentations at professional development programs and for technical assistance with respect to issues impacting Southeast Asian populations.

Center Unifying Themes

The Center themes underly all project activities. Socio-cultural theory provides the framework in which a "funds of knowledge" approach taps the collective wisdom of key players in the lives of the Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong and Vietnamese students in the target population. The research staff studies the enactment of the five generic principles in its selected activity settings or identifies the potential for their development . As suggested in "At-Risk, But Rising" (Tharp), the project staff has committed to "unpacking" two of the five generic principles - facilitating learning through joint productive activity and engaging others in dialogue, especially the instructional conversation - throughout all of the collaborative activities of the project. Presentations to groups and designs for professional development proceed by enacting these principles. New collaborations, more engaging professional development activities and evidences of diverse cultural constructions emerge in the documentation of activities applying these principles.

The many planes of interaction during the research staff’s participation in the Southeast Asian Summer Academy and the ongoing work with the after-school components of that program characterize this project’s commitment to CREDE’s unifying themes. The ethnographic research proceeds by conducting research at activity settings wherein the integration of personal, interpersonal and community planes are accessible simultaneously in order to address key issues and impact school reform.

Implications

The implications for research continue to emerge in three significant areas: data, academic achievement and relationships/collaborations.

The research demonstrates that a straightforward issue such as data, especially the lack of it, can deny students and their families access to basic human services as well as to equitable education. On a systemic level, data helps or hurts the school reform efforts of educators, schools and CBOs. If educators and service providers cannot identify their populations , they cannot address their specific needs adequately. If schools and organizations cannot assess and evaluate the services they provide, they cannot succeed in securing support for increased services.

The implications of the research also point to this project’s challenge, not only to conduct the first educational study of Southeast Asian student academic achievement in Rhode Island, but also, in so doing, to create the infrastructure to support this effort. Building collaborations and partnerships to sustain the capacity to address issues in an ongoing way and sustain the target population’s access to the academic pipeline are essential.

The activities of the research surface the need to forge new relationships which will support the emergence of educational leadership from within the target communities. People who lack voice in decisions and who desire to become change agents come forward seeking assistance with a variety of negotiations which will provide them equitable access to services and professional training.

Reflections

A significant contribution to increasing the knowledge of practice and theory will come from engaging the members of the Southeast Asian communities with those outside of their communities in productive activity and consequent new alliances. Joint reflections on differing cultural constructions and practices can expand the knowledge base of the professional community of educators in addressing ordinary issues in more engaging ways.

The quality of the invitation of the Director of SEDC to students at the opening of the Southeast Asian Summer Academy for middle school students, documented by the project, exemplified one such event, rich for cross-cultural reflection. Rather than any reference to some participants’ academic failures during the school year, the celebratory tone of the leader’s words at the very formal opening ceremonies praised all of the students’ wisdom in committing to such worthwhile activities in the coming days. The message challenged participants by conveying the highest expectations.

Research in the field of professional development is also furthered by the project’s collaboration in the design and field-testing of successful syllabi for graduate in-service courses in issues of language and culture in education. Staff presentations at in-service courses for local teachers use action research methods to engage them in productive activity and instructional dialogues with people who represent the multiple cultures of their students to address cultural issues impacting schools.

Impact seen through connection to other programs

The impact of the research is best demonstrated by a list of selected examples of this project’s connection to other programs and activities during the first half of this funding period:

1. Title VII 5 -year Career Ladder Program award from the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs of the United States Department of Education to The Education Alliance at Brown University, the department which administers this project. This program will assist 15 Southeast Asian prospective bilingual teachers to become credentialed to teach English Language Learners (ELLs) in Rhode Island. (Need established by data from Project 3.2 indicating the under-representation of Southeast Asians in the teaching profession in Rhode Island. Only 6 Southeast Asian individuals are credentialed classroom teachers in Rhode Island although Southeast Asian populations began coming to Rhode Island in large numbers 23 years ago.

2. This project’s participation in work with the Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University requested by the Rhode Island Department of Education to address equity gaps contributing to low student achievement.

3. Work with the Assistant to the President of Brown University for Education Affairs in convening Southeast Asian leaders to provide input to the President of Brown University who is the Chairperson of the Search Committee for a new Superintendent of Providence Schools.

4. Request from the Chief of Staff of the Providence school district to follow the progress during the school year of a sample of students from the Southeast Asian Summer Academy.

5. Requests for professional development with teachers from Providence Schools.

Next Steps

Given the current workscope and the developing relationships among stakeholders in the education of Southeast Asian students, we are positioned to study cultural constructions operating in Southeast Asian activity settings which will further enhance understandings of best practices especially in the enactment of the CREDE’s 5 principles. In local, regional and national collaborations, parallels begin to emerge in our analyses across projects and with diverse participants, specifically as regards the frameworks needed to initiate partnerships, engage participants, qualitatively impact instruction and support sustainability.

©2002 Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence. All rights reserved.