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The study also brought to light that these problems are not new. Filipino students have had them for decades. It was also found that the newer immigrant students excelled more than the children who’ve stayed longer or were born in America. Is Americanization of the Pinoy a factor? Perhaps.
Meanwhile, here are NaFFAA’s findings in a study of Filipino American K-12 public school students in a ten city/area-study – Chicago, Honolulu/Hawai’i, Jersey City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle – on a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation, with Dr. Tony Ogilvie as national research project coordinator.
1. In the four city/areas of Jersey City, Miami, New York City and San Diego, Filipino public school students are doing well.
2. In two city/areas of Chicago and Las Vegas, Filipino students appear to be doing well academically, but indicators suggest existing or pending problems.
3. The city/areas of Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle were noted to clearly have significant academic deficiencies among Filipino students.
4. In spite of the good news of exemplary Filipino academic achievement in most city/areas, in California are low numbers of Filipino students going to college and dropping out early, high suicide rates among Filipino teenage girls, and many Filipino teens feeling excessive parental pressure to succeed.
5. The lack of disaggregated statistical data on Filipino students in five city/areas must be addressed in order to verify the assessments based on interviews.
6. The significant academic deficiencies in city/areas where there have been three to four generations of Filipino immigrants and the additional bad news in California are in sharp contract with the avowed high value placed on education by Filipino parents and Philippine culture. Countervailing pressures in American society may be influential in shaping Filipino K-12 student performance.
7. There are a number of university-based programs aimed at recruiting, supporting and retaining Filipino students, but community-based programs serving Filipino youths are for the most part essentially conducted with volunteers. This national study suggests that Filipino students in American public schools are not being adequately prepared for high-demand, high-skills jobs in the current workplace environment.
Recognizing that not all future jobs require college education and that not all Filipino students need to go to college there is agreement among those who participated in the study that if the national Filipino student academic performance is not improved and sustained, the Filipino community will feel the negative consequences locally and nationally.
