The Racial Positioning of Asian Americans in Education Policy Research: Implications for Practice

How does the education policy literature contribute to Asian Americans’ standing in educational equity discourse? We systematically analyze all articles published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis from 2000 to 2024 to understand the “racial positioning” of Asian Americans: whether they are included in empirical study and alongside which groups they are categorized. We find that Asian Americans are increasingly absent from education policy research, despite population growth, and are instead more likely to be classified alongside White Americans—positionings that fortify Asian American invisibility and model minority tropes. These findings are not artifacts of data availability. We call on researchers to correct the current state of Asian American invisibility in the literature and thoughtfully account for the implications of racial positioning in their work.