Hirono & Heller Champion “All Students Count” Amendment

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Senators Mazie K. Hirono and Dean Heller (R-NV) introduced the bipartisan All Students Count Amendment to the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA). The Hirono-Heller amendment would better highlight the needs of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students by requiring school districts with more than 1,000 AAPI students to report disaggregated data by the major race categories in the Census, such as Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Native Hawaiian, and Samoan.

“Today’s federal ‘Asian/Pacific Islander’ category hides the differences in our diverse AAPI community. This bipartisan amendment would shine a light on hidden achievement gaps facing AAPI students by reporting disaggregated data, revealing how different AAPI student subgroups are doing,” said Senator Hirono. “The Hawaii Department of Education is already a national leader in collecting and using detailed AAPI data to best use resources and help high-need students improve. As we’ve seen in Hawaii, this detailed data is critical to help educators, parents, and communities ensure that each and every child receives the support they need.”

“Nevada’s Asian American and Pacific Islander community continues to grow year after year. Having more data at our fingertips is critical to understanding how well our students are doing. While this student category appears to perform well overall, increasing transparency will help address achievement gaps facing subgroups in this community. With better analytics, parents, teachers, and administrators will be able to target students who need the most help. I’m proud to join Senator Hirono in a bipartisan manner to offer this important amendment,” said Senator Heller.   

Both Senators Hirono and Heller will take to the Senate floor during this debate to fight for the All Students Count Amendment and highlight the ways it would help schools and AAPI students across the country.

The Hirono-Heller amendment will require school districts to collect and publicly report data on the major AAPI subgroups so that teachers, parents, principals, policymakers, and community organizations can target support to the students who need it most. The All Students Count Amendment is supported by more than 100 organizations, including the National Education Association (NEA), National Associations of Elementary and Secondary School Principals (NAESP and NASSP), and AAPI, Latino, and African-American civil rights groups.

“CNHA applauds Senator Hirono's work on the Hirono-Heller amendment to disaggregate data for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders,” said Michelle Kauhane, Executive Director of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement (CNHA). “This is definitely a step in the right direction to articulating achievement gaps and disparities among Native Hawaiian students. Data disaggregation will provide new opportunities to meet the educational needs of our students.”

“Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities are incredibly diverse and many groups face significant educational challenges, including language access, poverty and disability. Without disaggregated data, educational disparities of AAPI students remain concealed behind the model minority myth. We thank Senators Mazie Hirono and Dean Heller for their leadership in pushing for better data that aligns with U.S. demographics so that all students count and can have equitable access to the resources they need,” said Gregory Cendana, chair of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans and executive director of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance.

To download a fact sheet on the All Students Count Amendment, click here.