On paper, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders appear to be a high-achieving bunch with few of the challenges faced by other racial and ethnic minorities in US schools.
Break these populations down into their many ethnic groups, however, and stark disparities emerge.
For example, between 2006 and 2010, about three-quarters of Taiwanese-Americans and more than half of Korean-Americans aged 25 and older had earned bachelor's degrees, but only 10 per cent of Samoans and 12 per cent of Laotian-Americans in that same age range had done so, large gaps that frequently go unseen.
The Asian population expanded more than four times faster than the overall US population between 2000 and 2010, according to the Census Bureau.
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders increased more than three times faster than the US population over that period, Census officials reported.
Asian-American and Pacific Islander professionals spent two days in Washington last week puzzling over these types of disparities, and how schools and educational institutions can best deal with them. Some groups are so small in number that gathering data on them can inadvertently violate the privacy of specific children and their families, said Don Yu, special adviser to Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Last year, the Education Department sent out a request for ideas on how to best tease out and collect data on the many Asian-American and Pacific Islander ethnicities, as well as information on what is already being done in some states, cities and school districts. Those ideas were discussed during the meeting.
Asian-Americans are often very visible academically, such as the spelling bee champion whose family emigrated from India, the class valedictorian of Japanese descent or the Chinese-American champion at the science fair. But such successes mask the academic woes of others, such as Cambodians and Native Hawaiians, said Kiran Ahuja, executive director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Unlike blacks and Hispanics who often emphasise success stories within their communities to dispel stereotypes, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders find they must draw attention to the less-successful among them to move beyond the "model minority" myth so struggling groups can get the help they need, said Robert Teranishi, an associate professor at New York University.
