Last month, the Annie E. Casey foundation released the “Race for Results: Building a Path to Opportunity for All Children” policy report. This report explored the intersection of kids, race and opportunity and debuts the new Race for Results Index. Over the past several weeks, Voices for Children has featured a blog series investigating how kids in Nebraska of each of the 5 featured racial groups are doing. 
So far we have explored the Race for Results Index scores for African-American children, American Indian children, and Latino children. Today, our series will continue with a look at how Asian children in Nebraska are doing.
While Asian kids in Nebraska have the highest overall score among racial groups in Nebraska, with an index score of 750, they are falling short of the average score for Asian kids nationwide, with an overall score of 776. Asian children in Nebraska score below the national average on 5 of the 15 indicators for which there is a large enough population to measure in our state. See the chart below to compare the scores and see where we are falling short.
Nebraska’s Asian kids do score quite high in each of the indicators, and do not see a large disparity in many indicators like we saw in the data of the racial groups already explored. However, when we break down this racial group even further into children in immigrant families, and children in U.S.-born families, we see some disparities emerge. While data is not available in the Race for Results Report at state level, a comparison is made at the national level. This data shows us that while 59% of U.S. born Asian kids are reading at grade level in 4th grade, only 15% of their immigrant counterparts are. The same is true of math, with 65% of U.S. born Asian 8th graders doing math at grade level and only 20% of immigrant Asian kids scoring proficient in math at this age. It is important to note that we can do better for all our kids in Nebraska in order to build the best possible pathway to opportunity for our children.
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