Fear of Competition? Research: When Asian Students Move In, White Families Move out

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Asian Americans increasingly find themselves at the center of scorching debates over educational opportunity and fairness, whether related to admissions practices at highly selective colleges or pressing concerns over social exclusion in school.

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Now research evidence demonstrates that they face racial isolation simply by entering the classroom. A recent study of wealthy California suburbs finds that white families drift away from public schools as more Asian students enroll in them — and fears over academic competition, rather than outright racism, may play the biggest role in driving the departures.

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Circulated this summer by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the paper offers an unusually granular view of population-level changes in a highly affluent and desirable milieu. It also reveals a stark and somewhat disturbing response to the presence of Asian Americans, one of the fastest-growing and highest-achieving ethnic groups in the United States.

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In measure after measure, Asian Americans are shown to be America’s top-performing student racial category. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal standardized test often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card, has historically found large gaps separating Asian students from their white, African American, and Hispanic peers. Asians achieved similar results on college entrance exams, tallying 43 percent of all test takers scoring over 700 on the SAT math section while making up less than 6 percent of all K–12 students.

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