Lessons on the Contemporary Asian American K-12 Movement

Asian American K-12 statewide policies have been sweeping states since 2020 as one of the primary responses to the rise of anti-Asian discrimination and racism. According to the Stop AAPI Report Card in 2022, the rise of anti-Asian hate reports was in the tens of thousands. Illinois led the contemporary Asian American K-12 movement with the passage of the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History Act (TEAACH) in 2022, which stated: 

“Beginning with the 2022-23 school year, every public elementary school and high school shall include in its curriculum a unit of instruction studying the events of Asian American history, including the history of Asian Americans in Illinois and the Midwest, as well as the contributions of Asian Americans toward advancing civil rights from the 19th century onward.”

The TEAACH Act influenced other states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Florida, and Wisconsin to follow suit. I moved to Wisconsin because I was accepted into a doctoral program at UW-Madison, with a goal of helping communities understand how to translate an ethnic studies policy into culturally relevant and sustaining practices.

Throughout my first year as a doctoral student, I toured the nation with my debut book, “Teaching the Invisible Race: Embodying a Pro-Asian American Lens in Schools.” As a racial justice educator and organizer with a decade of experience, I knew that states with low populations of Asian Americans would need help. Embodying a “pro-Asian American lens” promotes Asian American racial literacy in history and literature courses grounded in pro-Black, pro-Indigenous, pro-LGBTQIA+, and pro-disability theory and practice. According to Columbia Professor Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, “Racial literacy is being able to have healthy and constructive conversations about race, racism, and other concepts and realities that impact our lives.” 

Instead of anti-Asian “hate,” the book examines hate as a symptom of anti-Asian racism and colonialism to help educators get to the root of this issue. I wrote this book to stress that one cannot teach Asian American history without grounding it with a lens of intersectionality, anti-imperialism, and collective liberation since Asian American studies was born in tandem with the fight for Black Studies during the formation of the Third World Liberation Front in the 1960s.

On my book tour, I held talks in California, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Wisconsin. My book talks for Rhode Island and New Jersey were a part of each state’s formal certification program to teach Asian American history in their respective schools, which gave me insight on what states were formally doing to develop their own teachers’ Asian American racial literacy. I approached this tour with a lens of critical ethnography because I wanted to control my own influence within the growing contemporary Asian American K-12 movement. 

Critical ethnography studies culture through a lens of power. Oftentimes, Asian Americans either get misrepresented because our history and culture is taught in a vacuum without consideration of our people’s solidarity and connections with other BIPOC communities; it is taught by someone who has little racial literacy of Asian America; or it is completely omitted when telling stories about our nation. My core question was: “How do practitioners build their Asian American racial literacy?”

At each book talk, I conducted my ethnographic research by writing field notes about what the event was like before, during, and after each event. After each event, I would do a quick round of thematic analysis of all my notes. From this study, here are a few questions and reflections that arose:

1) What does Asian American K-12 policy language ask of teachers?

Policy language is vague or minimal. The policy language that got passed for Wisconsin’s Act 266 states: “At all grade levels, an understanding of human relations, particularly with regard to American Indians, Black Americans, Hispanics, Hmong Americans, and Asian Americans.” Other states like Rhode Island’s S2910A policy go deeper and stipulate the following: 

“…the history of [Asian Americans (AA)] and [Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPIs)] in Rhode Island and the Northeast, as well as the contributions of AA and NHPIs toward advancing civil rights from the 19th century onward. These events shall include the contributions made by individual AA and NHPIs in government and the arts, humanities, and sciences, as well as the contributions of AA and NHPI communities to the economic, cultural, social, and political development of the United States.”

Of the seven states that have passed Asian American statewide policy, the language ranges from extremely broad to including some specifics about teaching local history, which is important. These policies leave us with both a sense of freedom of choice, while also a sense of ambiguity.

2) What does funding look like?

Statewide Asian American K-12 policy mandates require new curricula and training for both teachers and school leaders. Looking toward Connecticut can be a great example since it was the first state to mandate funding for its Asian American education policy. Connecticut policy will provide $150,000 in state funding for a curriculum specialist and other staff to implement this work in 2025-2026.

3) What structures do schools need to teach Asian American education?

When speaking to educators and administrators, responses have varied. I observed a school in Wisconsin that passed a local district policy encouraging Asian American history education, and is translating the policy through a literature elective course. The course curriculum highlights local Hmong American histories, while contextualizing it within the broader Asian American and broader civil rights movements. This method is effective because it enables students to make connections across different ethnoracial protagonists and movements, which helps foster cross-ethnoracial solidarity.

4) What does the curriculum and teaching look like?

Creating an Asian American K-12 curriculum requires an ethnic studies lens that amplifies our accomplishments and our darkest truths. Speaking to the recent Wisconsin legislation and the history of Hmong migration to Wisconsin, we must acknowledge the impact of colonialism as the reason why Hmong Americans are in Wisconsin in the first place. This means ensuring that educators interrogate the Secret War, which took place from 1961 to 1975. During this time, the U.S. CIA recruited Hmong men and boys to fight a secret war against communists in Laos, violating the Geneva Accords and leaving Laos the most bombed country in history. 

When it comes to teaching Asian American history, we must teach what’s happening in the world. On tour, my most popular training was on teaching through a lens of multi-partiality. Multi-partiality means that we teach multiple truths, while centering the most marginalized stories per respective topics. This sounds easy, but in practice is actually very challenging. This is relevant if we think about teaching important West Asian American history pertaining to Palestinian genocide and mass displacement. 

5) How do we evaluate effectiveness?

Advocates of Asian American K-12 policy have not focused on the effectiveness of Asian American racial literacy education and learning as they have with executing the policies. Schools are left with a lot of questions at multiple levels. Administrators are grappling with what types of structure work best: embedding Asian American history in other courses or creating an entirely separate course altogether? 

Educators are asking how to evaluate students’ retention of the curricula: Would Asian American racial literacy translate into naming and discussing a certain number of core Asian American social movements, leaders, and concepts that have impacted Asian Americans, and to what extent?

Looking Forward

The Asian American K-12 movement is emergent. Coalitions across the nation are piloting myriad practices to figure out what works and what doesn’t with regards to systematic policy implementation. Below are a few leaders and organizations to learn from across the U.S.: 

• In Illinois, Asian American Advancing Justice (AAAJ) Chicago provides renewal professional development hours for educators who attend their learning series.
• In Connecticut, keep your eyes on the Asian American Institute at University of Connecticut. The institute hires Asian American education practitioners called “Activists-in-Residence” to train educators on AAPI education curriculum. 
• In New York, the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF) works with educators to co-design lesson plans and curricula for the state. New York also has the Hidden Voices curriculum aimed at teaching AAPI stories through social studies.
• In New Jersey, AAPI New Jersey (formerly AAPI Montclair) developed a companion guide to the Hidden Voices curriculum.
• In Wisconsin, Freedom Inc. and the AAPI Coalition of Wisconsin are two of the many organizations already running programming focused on Hmong and broader Asian American history and racial literacy. As a member of the AAPI Coalition of Wisconsin, we are also training our education leaders in the local history of Wisconsin, in order to ensure that our impact is authentic and relational. 

These leaders and organizations are on the ground helping communities figure out how to translate Asian American K-12 policy to practice in an era marred by attacks on ethnic studies, book bans, and “anti-woke” policy. Because of political tensions, some organizations are not waiting for policy passage to teach Asian American studies in their state. Texas does not have a statewide Asian American K-12 policy, yet organizations like Asian Texans for Justice, which houses the Learn Our Stories Coalition, focuses on bringing Asian American education to their community through the creation of an Asian American Studies Academy and a year-long elective course in partnership with the University of Texas Austin’s Center of Asian American Studies and Round Rock High School. 

The passage of Asian American K-12 policy can also signal a red flag, especially if leaders who advocate for Asian American education simultaneously attack other social justice education causes. We can see this stark contradiction with Governor Ron DeSantis’ leadership in Florida. While DeSantis passed Asian American education policy, he attacked AP African American history and LGBTQ+ education. 

Time and time again, Asian American narratives have been wedged between other minoritized communities, reinforcing notions of the model minority myth. One can track this racial wedging from the late 1960’s Japanese “success” stories proliferated in New York Times and with the recent Supreme Court affirmative action case. The contemporary Asian American K-12 movement is not invincible to racial wedging or cooptation, which is precisely why I wrote a book defining how “Pro-Asian American” education theory and pedagogy is inherently a tool for solidarity. 

Anyone immersed in the contemporary Asian American K-12 movement must embody a collective liberation approach. If passing Asian American policy is a form of healing, then in the words of bell hooks: “Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”

Cover: Kenny Eliason / Unsplash