The U.S. Department of Education has awarded a series of grants totaling $836,000 to Washington, Minnesota and Hawaii to fund the analysis of Asian American Pacific Islander students in order to provide them with the best educational opportunities.

The funding is part of the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Data Disaggregation Initiative, an initiative that will provide up to $1 million per year over five years to states to better account "for the diversity in background cultures and languages in the AAPI community, as well as the wide variances in academic performance of those students.”

"The grant program encourages state educational agencies in consortia with local educational agencies to obtain and evaluate disaggregated data on AAPI English learners and AAPI subpopulations. The Department projects this new initiative will impact approximately one million AAPI students in the three states,” the Department said in a statement.

The initiative is one of the final pushes by the Obama administration to provide equity in education to all student groups.

Similar initiatives to elevate the education of minority groups include the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans (also an Executive Order) and the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education.

The funding of data analysis can help states with large populations of AAPI learners to adhere to the soon-to-be-in-effect education legislation, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), that requires states to:

“[s]et long-term goals and measurements of interim progress for academic achievement and graduation rates for all students and separately for each subgroup of students that expect greater rates of improvement for subgroups that need to make more rapid progress to close proficiency and graduation rate gaps in the State."

The latest Department of Education announcement is likely to be one of the last as control switches hands from President Obama to President-elect Donald Trump.

While the Department under the Obama administration has been extremely active, Trump has said throughout his campaign that he intends to majorly cut funding from the Department as well as has admitted a lack of interest in creating federal education initiatives.

Read more about the latest Department of Education announcement here.

Nicole Gorman, Senior Education World Contributor

11/15/2016