The Campaign for College Opportunity has published the report The State of Higher Education in California: Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders. The report relies on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Center for Education Statistics, the California Department of Education, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, the California State University Division of Analytic Studies, and the University of California Office of the President.

The full report can be found at http://collegecampaign.org/our-publications/

The section of the report of most interest to college writing teachers is the discussion of English Learner (EL) students and the recommendations for improving college success in the first year. The report emphasizes that EL students get tracked into less rigorous and non-college preparatory tracks, and do worse on standardized writing tests. The report points out that over sixty percent of Cambodians, Filipinos, Samoans, and Laotians test into pre-college level coursework, and it makes two primary recommendations for improving this situation: using multiple measures of assessment and placement and streamlining more students into college-level work. The report also emphasizes the importance of disaggregating data to meet the needs of specific Asian American groups.