Chapter 3: Profiles of Academic Risk: Diversity among Asian American Students

The model minority stereotype often conceals the complex and diverse barriers that many Asian American students encounter. Utilizing latent class analyses (LCA) on a sample of 1,213 Asian American students from the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS: 2002), the present study examined risk profiles that place Asian American students at-risk for academic underachievement. Four risk profiles emerged which characterized different risk groups, some of which differentiated on academic outcomes. Results indicated that there was a group of highly engaged students who, counter to expectations, were not the highest performing on academic outcomes. Instead, a group of students, labeled Low External, characterized by being engaged yet receiving low external teacher praise, was found to perform the highest and have the lowest dropout rate. Our findings underscore the importance of rejecting the model minority stereotype as well as the need for more studies that examine the diverse academic experiences of students in the heterogeneous group of Asian American students.