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For her first few years in New York City’s public school system, Kai Kraft thought she was “the only Asian kid in the Bronx.”
Through elementary and middle school, she had teachers from diverse backgrounds — but none who identified as Asian American or Pacific Islander.
And as a result, Kraft, who is Filipino American, often didn’t feel comfortable confiding in her teachers when she experienced discrimination from her peers.
“I let a lot of casual racism slide, even until middle school, because I didn’t have anyone to look up to or tell me that it was wrong,” she said. “I just had to endure it.”
Today, Kraft is a high school senior at the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics. Since transitioning to high school in Manhattan and joining the Asian American Student Advocacy Project, a program run by the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, she has found other Filipino and Asian American students among her peers.
But Kraft has encountered relatively few Asian American or Pacific Islander teachers — and none who identify as Filipino American.
“I still struggle to find teachers that I can relate to,” she said.
There’s evidence that employing teachers of color can result in improved test scores and graduation rates among students of color, while also being associated with lower rates of chronic absenteeism and suspension, according to a 2019 report from the state’s Education Department. Staffers who share the specific racial or ethnic background of their students may be better able to forge connections that benefit kids academically and emotionally, educators, researchers, and students said.
But as the Asian American share of New York City’s student population has continued to grow, the percentage of Asian American educators has lagged far behind. (City data does not provide specific numbers for students who identify as Pacific Islander.)
Nearly 1 in 5 students in New York City identified as Asian American during the last school year, while roughly 8% of the city’s teachers did. The gap is even wider for school administrators: Just 5% of principals in New York City are Asian American. Those numbers are up modestly from a decade ago, when 6% of city teachers and 3% of principals identified as Asian American, according to the Education Department.
Fewer than 1% of teachers identified as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander last school year, Education Department officials said.
Just a quarter of the city’s nearly 1,600 public schools had five or more Asian American teachers during the 2022-2023 school year — by far the lowest percentage for any of the four largest racial groups. Fifty-five percent of schools had at least five Black teachers, 60% had at least five Hispanic teachers, and 91% had five or more white teachers, a Chalkbeat analysis found.
New York City’s gulf reflects national trends, with about 5% of the country’s students and 2% of its teachers identifying as Asian American or Pacific Islander in the 2020-21 school year.
May Hara, a professor of teacher education at Framingham State University in Massachusetts and former New York City teacher who taught in the South Bronx, said the demographic gap can hold “serious implications for students.”
“The research is very clear,” she said. “There are a wide range of benefits to having a racially and ethnically diverse teaching staff.”
Those benefits extend to both students and teachers, Hara added.
The city Education Department is pushing to give all students “access to teachers who reflect their background and community experiences” and “equip our schools with resources that support inclusive recruitment and hiring practices,” said spokesperson Onika Richards.
She pointed to several programs including NYC Men Teach and NYC Teaching Fellows that offer alternative pathways into the teaching profession and additional support, and have been successful at recruiting teachers of color.
The city’s ongoing efforts come at a moment when teacher diversity initiatives are under attack at the federal level. President Donald Trump’s administration has warned districts that efforts to recruit teachers of specific racial backgrounds could face civil rights investigations, though experts have challenged the legality of the guidance.
In high school, Kraft said she’s been able to connect with Asian American educators for the first time. She noted her health teacher, who is Chinese, sometimes speaks Tagalog with her at school, helping to make her feel more welcome.
“Even though they aren’t Filipino … I just feel more comfortable,” she said. “I don’t feel as alone as before.”
Asian American educators bust, and confront, harmful stereotypes
Asian American educators can play a critical role in breaking through harmful stereotypes and relating to Asian American families and students in ways other adults may not, teachers and students said.
Jakoub Chen, an 11th grader at Curtis High School in Staten Island, still has yet to have an Asian American teacher in the public school system.
Chen, who is Chinese and Taiwanese American, said he’s at times felt impacted by the “model minority myth” — a harmful stereotype that depicts Asian Americans as inherently successful, often in comparison to other minority groups.
Over the years, Chen said he’s encountered peers who assume they can turn to him to get answers on their assignments in math or science classes.
“I didn’t really have someone that I can talk to about what I’ve been going through and what I’ve been affected by,” he said. “I don’t have a teacher or an adult I can share my experiences with.”
Bobson Wong, a math teacher at Bayside High School in Queens, said he has encountered harmful assumptions based on the model minority myth during his time as an educator. Some people, for example, have assumed that when Asian American students struggle in class, it stems from laziness.
“When you say that an Asian kid is lazy, the subtext is they know it, they just choose not to do it,” he said. “Maybe they just don’t know how to do it because no one taught them.”
Wong, who is Chinese American, noted his school has a significant number of Asian American students, with nearly half of the student body identifying as Asian American. Still, in his time as a public school teacher, he’s seen relatively few other Asian American teachers.
“I do find that they are able to identify with me more easily,” he said.
Yeou-Jey Vasconcelos, a long-time former teacher and administrator in the city Education Department who now leads a charter school, began her career as a teacher and assistant principal at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Manhattan — where she worked on new ways to engage the school’s many Chinese-speaking families.
Vasconcelos found that many of her colleagues assumed that Asian families were not getting involved with school because they were too busy, uninterested, or only wanted to hear about academic issues rather than behavioral or emotional ones.
But as Vasconcelos, whose family is from Taiwan and Japan, began communicating with families in Chinese and building relationships, she discovered that they were eager to get more involved in all aspects of their kids’ school experiences.
“The Chinese-speaking families would just say, ‘I want what’s best for my kid, and I just want them to be happy. I don’t need them to get the perfect grade,’” Vasconcelos recalled. It was “a very different outcome than what was culturally expected.”
That special connection persisted when Vasconcelos became principal of Manhattan’s LaGuardia High School, the city’s highest-profile performing arts school, where 21% of students are Asian American.
On her first day in the school, a line of Asian American students formed outside her office, eager to meet her, talk about their family backgrounds, and discover commonalities, she said.
Despite her efforts to break through stereotypes about her Asian American students and families, Vasconcelos herself faced some of those same stereotypes from colleagues and families — particularly as a principal.
There were “all different layers of microaggression,” ranging from people assuming that she was not the person in charge or didn’t speak fluent English, to colleagues who attempted to compliment her by calling her “Tiger principal,” a reference to the strict version of parenting popularized in a 2014 book by an Asian American law professor, Vasconcelos said.
Pipeline challenges contribute to representation gaps
When it comes to recruiting and retaining more Asian American and Pacific Islander teachers, Hara noted, it’s critically important to consider the “huge heterogeneity in Asian American populations” and tailor efforts to recruit and retain Asian American educators to those specific backgrounds.
“That, I think, is something that is often overlooked in conversations about this,” she said. “In popular culture, there is not a lot that points to the socioeconomic, educational, and wealth gaps that exist within Asian American groups in this country.”
“The unsatisfying answer” to recruiting and keeping more Asian American educators “is that we really need to begin by asking people about their experiences and not assuming that we know, or that they all share the same experiences,” Hara said.
Several Asian American educators in New York City said the challenge often begins with not seeing or hearing about education as a viable career path growing up.
“No one that I grew up with who were Filipino or any other type of Asian went into the field,” said Nico Victorino, a former New York City teacher and current principal of P.S. 150 in Manhattan, who is the son of Filipino immigrants. “The expectations at home at the time were you were going to go into a field that was going to make money, because you have to support your family back in the Philippines and care for your parents when they get older.”
The pipeline narrowed even further when Victorino began considering the switch from classroom teacher to administrator. He had “no role models” of other Asian American school administrators, “no one to support you in that way.”
When he eventually landed his job as principal, Victorino developed a close relationship with the other Asian American administrators in his district, and they still share a group text thread. He even went on to write his doctoral dissertation at New York University about the lack of Asian American school administrators.
For Wong, it’s been a challenge at times to work in a field with so few Asian American colleagues. He said he’s found community by connecting with Asian American educators online and through Math for America, a fellowship for math and science teachers.
“When you look at why teachers are leaving, they feel overwhelmed or they feel unsupported — it all boils down to a lack of community,” he said. “To not just to attract more Asian American teachers, but also to retain them, we need better communities to support them.”
To Hara, developing systems and policies that allow more Asian American and Pacific Islander teachers to flourish can also have compounding benefits for the teacher pipeline — with students who see themselves reflected in their educators potentially being more inclined to enter the field in the future.
“That’s just a hypothesis,” Hara said. “But it’s not as though Asian American teachers appear out of nowhere. They were once Asian American students.”
Thomas Wilburn contributed.
Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.
Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.
