Team led by Dr. Sireen Irsheid awarded an NYU research grant to untangle structural forces impacting school to prison pipeline and mental health.
The NYU Discovery Research Fund for Human Health awarded an interdisciplinary team led by NYU Silver Assistant Professor Sireen Irsheid a two-year, $300,000 grant that will examine structural elements of the neighborhood, access to mental health supports, and resource allocation in schools to disrupt a phenomenon known as “school pushout.”
Structural racism and the systemic disinvestment in historically marginalized Black and Brown communities have been shown to drive inequities in health and educational outcomes. Living in historically-disadvantaged neighborhoods or attending under-resourced schools increases the risk that students will be “pushed out” of school by suspension or expulsion rather than offered access to needed resources and mental health supports. Specifically, elements of the built environment, such as parks, green space as grocery stores, as well as other factors associated with the social and economic health of a neighborhood, like housing affordability and homeownership, are interconnected with school engagement, educational attainment, and behavioral mental health.
“Understanding and illuminating both the structural assets (e.g., access to mental health supports) and inequities (e.g., unaffordable housing) in a young person’s context, and considering how individuals understand and navigate their experiences and structural constraints, alike, can inform policy and practice solutions, including those at the systemic level,” said Dr. Irsheid.
Dr. Irsheid’s co-Principal Investigator on the project is Dr. Cheri Fancsali, the Executive Director of The Research Alliance for New York City Schools at NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Xia Li, a Research Associate at The Research Alliance for New York City Schools, is the Project Manager and Dr. Andrew Cleek, the Deputy Executive Director at the NYU McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research, is an advisor.
“Although prior research has examined how policy, school, and neighborhood level factors influence adolescents’ outcomes, relatively few are school studies that methodologically and theoretically disentangled these complex relationships,” said Dr. Irsheid.
The collaboration between NYU schools and centers will develop an unprecedented dataset linking community-level data with school record and mental health data over time. The researchers will use a multi-layered approach to analyze the various factors that drive school pushout in order to understand and address it at the systemic level. The project builds on Dr. Irsheid’s groundbreaking work to identify and understand the various mechanisms contributing to the approximately two million, disproportionately Black and Brown, students being pushed out of school each year.
“By understanding how and where structural racism and systemic disinvestment causes inequities in opportunities and outcomes, we will identify transformative policy and practice levers to disrupt negative outcomes and promote healthy youth development,” explained Dr. Irsheid. “Our findings will inform the development of targeted supports and interventions to improve mental health and educational outcomes in NYC and across the U.S.”
The interdisciplinary project team includes researchers in social work, education, psychology, sociology and public health. They have expertise in mental health, trauma, schools, advanced applied statistics, structural racism, race/ethnicity, policy, health and education inequities.
About NYU Silver
Founded in 1960 and renowned for a strong tradition of excellence in direct social work practice and dedication to social justice, NYU Silver has provided rigorous training to more than 20,000 social work practitioners and leaders in every area of the field, making it the leading destination for students who want to become innovative practitioners at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels of social work practice. The School has four campuses in the heart of New York City, Rockland County, Westchester County, and Shanghai.
About The Research Alliance for New York City Schools
The Research Alliance conducts rigorous studies on topics that matter to the City’s public schools. It strives to advance equity and excellence in education by providing nonpartisan evidence about policies and practices that promote students’ development and academic success.
About the NYU McSilver Institute
The NYU McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research is committed to creating new knowledge about the root causes of poverty, developing evidence-based interventions to address its consequences, and rapidly translating research findings into action through policy and best practices.