ACADEMIC-ACHIEVEMENT OF VIETNAMESE AMERICAN ADOLESCENTS - A COMMUNITYPERSPECTIVE

This article investigates influences on academic achievement among Vie tnamese American high school students. Theorists have offered a variet y of explanations for Asian American academic success, and characteris tics of individual families have received particular attention in many of these explanations. Here, it is argued that the academic success o f Vietnamese American students may be understood as the product of ''s ocial capital,'' or tightly integrated sets of associations, within Vi etnamese American communities. If this is the case, it is further argu ed, high levels of scholastic performance among Vietnamese American yo uth should be proportionate to their involvement with an ethnic commun ity. The article uses data from a specific Vietnamese American communi ty to find whether community involvement by adolescents and their fami lies is in fact associated with academic achievement Participation in an ethnic church, proportion of friends who are Vietnamese, and attend ance at after-school Vietnamese classes are used as indicators of adol escents' community involvement. Membership in ethnic community organiz ations is used as an indicator of parental community involvement. Find ings support the contention that the involvement of Vietnamese America n adolescents and of their parents in the ethnic community are strong predictors of academic achievement and that the structure of individua l families promotes scholastic performance primarily by promoting comm unity involvement.