Yolanda Anyon

San Jose State University | SJSU · School of Social Work

Demographic and student discipline data were used to examine the influence of multi-level risk and protective factors on exclusionary school discipline outcomes. Participants included all youth (n = 87,997) in grades K to 12 who were enrolled in Denver Public Schools (n = 183) in 2011–2012. The dataset included measures of risk and protective facto...

Objectives: To use a systematic review methodology to describe the state of the youth participatory action research (YPAR) literature and synthesize findings about the youth outcomes reported in these studies. Methods: We screened and coded studies using a process consistent with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Anal...

Districts have been engaged in efforts to reduce "differential processing" of discipline-referred students based on their racial backgrounds. They strive for fair assignment of exclusionary consequences across racial groups. The current study examines discipline records for one academic year in an urban school district (N = 9,039 discipline referre...

Although in-school suspensions may be viewed as less severe than out-of-school suspensions, both discipline consequences limit students’ access to learning opportunities and are negatively associated with a range of educational outcomes. Moreover, if sending students out of class perpetuates the same racial disparities as sending them home, this pr...

Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is an approach where youth and adults partner to identify and address social issues and, in theory, creates conditions for positive intergroup contact. Yet, little is known about how the practices of YPAR facilitators enable or constrain intergroup contact, particularly in racially diverse groups. Using cr...

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ) young adults are overrepresented among young adults experiencing homelessness. Heterosexist and cisgenderist rejection from their families frequently causes and exacerbates this housing instability. Despite these challenges, LGBTQ young adults demonstrate tremendous resilience. U...

This study explores the association between school-level poverty rates and young peoples’ perceptions of student empowerment, drawing on survey and administrative data from a large urban district. Participants included 29,318 diverse youth in grades 6-12 from 211 schools. We used multilevel linear regression models to estimate the relationships bet...

T his article draws on qualitative data from a long-term partnership to exemplify the unique advantages of interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches in community engaged research. We demonstrate how the differing foci and intersecting concerns of our scholarly fields, social work and media studies, benefited our work with marginalized communit...

Objective This study examines the realities of LGBTQ young adults experiencing family rejection, specifically illuminating forms of heterosexist and cisgenderist family rejection and their impact on LGBTQ young adults. Background Extant research indicates family rejection is a driving factor in the overrepresentation of LGBTQ young adults among yo...

In this article, we examine an overlooked issue in research on school discipline: in-school suspension. Using data collected through observational methods, we present a detailed description and analysis of two in-school suspension rooms. These rooms operated in prominent, racially diverse middle schools in a large urban district. Applying critical...

Scholarship on youth digital media literacy programs has focused on how adults practice restraint as a means of allowing young people to exercise agency in decision-making experiences. Yet youth also practice restraint, as we found in a digital storytelling program involving 16 early adolescents (ages 11–14) from economically precarious communities...

Studies suggest that out-of-school suspensions (OSS) are negatively associated with student perceptions of school climate and attitudes toward school. However, this relationship has not been considered in the case of disciplinary approaches such as restorative practices (RP) and in-school suspensions (ISS). Using a sample of 30,799 secondary school...

Background Despite the promise of school-based health centers (SBHCs) as crucial source of mental health care for youth, accumulated literature describing how SBHCs are typically arranged, patterns of service utilization, and, ultimately, effects of services delivered through SBHCs is limited. Objective This study’s aim was as disentangle the type...

Political elections have been shown to influence youth civic development. The election of Donald Trump is historic and has elevated precarity for people of color and immigrants, yet we know little about how young people with these identities experienced this potentially catalytic event. Using ethnographic methods, we examined youth and adult discus...

This study adds to the extant research on the school-to-prison pipeline by investigating how school-based service providers and administrators conceptualize the causal mechanisms constraining and enabling the school-to-prison pipeline in a large urban district. Thirty-three schools were selected for the study based on their suspension rates. Suppor...

Over the last twenty years, research on the impact of engaging children and adolescents in the generation of new knowledge about their lives, schools, and communities, has grown tremendously. This systematic review summarizes the findings from empirical studies of youth inquiry approaches in the United States, with a focus on their environmental ou...

In the field of prevention science, some consider fidelity to manualized protocols to be a hallmark of successful implementation. A growing number of scholars agree that high-quality implementation should also include some adaptations to local context, particularly as prevention programs are scaled up, in order to strengthen their relevance and inc...

This qualitative study identified nonpunitive and nonexclusionary discipline strategies used in schools with low out-of-school suspension rates. Interviews and focus groups with 198 educators from 33 low-suspending schools in a large urban district were conducted to learn more about the approaches that were essential to their school's success. Data...

Transgender people have entered an unprecedented moment of visibility in American society and across the globe. However, transgender and gender expansive youth remain vulnerable to family rejection, harassment at school, and discrimination in healthcare and employment. Positive Youth Development (PYD) is an established framework for strengths-based...

This pilot study explored the impact of a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project on early adolescents’ perceptions of youth voice and adult support in an after school program (ASP).

A recent report from the Fordham Institute investigated the impact of a reform in the School District of Philadelphia that eliminated suspensions for certain low-level misbehaviors. The report considered whether the policy change was associated with any of the following: (a) district-wide out-of-school suspension rates, (b) academic and behavioral...

Purpose: School discipline reformers have presumed that such work is largely a technical task, emphasizing discrete changes to discipline policies and protocols. Yet prior theory and research suggest that emphasizing technical changes may overlook additional and important aspects of reform, namely, the normative and political dimensions within whic...

The Whole Child Observation Tool is an assessment of school staff members’ use of practice strategies and approaches commonly implemented within Denver Public Schools related to discipline, social-emotional learning, and school culture. It is made up of 7 observational categories of general practices that are often utilized by teachers, administrat...

This mixed methods study assessed the most common practices implemented in Denver Public Schools related to Whole Child initiatives and school-wide culture. Fifteen observations each (150 total) were conducted in ten focal schools with varying suspension rates and student demographic profiles. These observations were complemented by survey data fro...

Photovoice is a participatory action research method that empowers participants to photograph their everyday lives as a means of documenting and advocating for their needs; it has rarely been utilized with young people experiencing homelessness. The current study examined the feasibility, accessibility, and preliminary outcomes associated with part...

A growing body of research indicates that exclusionary school discipline practices disproportionately impact students of color. Some scholars have theorized that racial disparities likely vary across school sub-contexts, as implicit bias in perceptions of student behavior may be more influential in locations where students and adults have weaker re...

A large urban district (N = 90,546 students, n = 180 schools) implemented restorative interventions as a response to school discipline incidents. Findings from multilevel modeling of student discipline records (n = 9,921) revealed that youth from groups that tend to be overrepresented in suspensions and expulsions (e.g., Black, Latino, and Native A...

This mixed methods study draws on district discipline data, interviews, and focus groups to identify characteristics of DPS schools who met the district’s discipline goals of a 0-3% suspension rate for their student population overall and for Black students in particular during the 2014-2015 school year. Quantitative Findings Statistical analyses...

This study examines racial differences in students' connectedness to school adults and considers the possibility that disparities in exclusionary discipline practices may reduce all students' sense of connection to educators, not just those who have been disciplined or are from racial groups overrepresented in out-of-school suspensions. Data source...

Using Critical Race Theory and Critical Race Feminism as guiding conceptual frameworks, this mixed-methods empirical study examines Black girls’ exclusionary discipline outcomes. First, we examined disciplinary data from a large urban school district to assess racial group differences in office referral reasons and disparities for Black girls in ou...

Schoolwide interventions are among the most effective approaches for improving students’ behavioral and academic outcomes. However, researchers have documented consistent challenges with implementation fidelity and have argued that school social workers should be engaged in efforts to improve treatment integrity. This study examines contextual infl...

Through interviews and focus groups with staff members at three Denver schools that have successfully implemented restorative practices (RP), four essential strategies for taking this approach school-wide were identified: strong principal vision and commitment to RP; explicit efforts to generate staff buy-in to this conflict resolution approach; co...

Youth leadership program shows promise as a strategy to increase youth involvement at Bridge…. Overview of Youth Engaged in Leadership and Learning YELL is a youth lead leadership program that provides Bridge middle school students with opportunities to develop skills and knowledge needed to be leaders through involvement in a community change proj...

Executive Summary • While DPS student enrollment has increased over the past five years, the use of out of school suspensions and expulsions has decreased. This trend has benefited students of all backgrounds. • Disparities for African-American students, as compared to all other student ethnicities, remain the district’s most significant challenge...

This study drew on epidemiological data from a large urban school district to evaluate the implementation of a school-based mental health (SBMH) prevention initiative at 15 high schools. The purpose of this research was to measure the prevalence of student risk factors and protective factors by race and ethnicity and assess the engagement of Asian...

Background: Recent studies of school-based prevention programs have illustrated the potential for propensity scoring methods to establish links between service use and student outcomes, but few have used this approach to test program impact on youth development assets. Moreover, it is unclear whether the relationship between school-based service us...

Positive Youth Development (PYD) is a framework used to design and guide programs and services for children and youth. PYD emphasizes the relationship between young people’s strengths and resources and their capacity to live healthy and productive lives. The underlying tenets of PYD suggest that healthy child and youth development is characterized...

Purpose: Emerging research indicates that participation in school-based health centers (SBHCs) is positively related to student attendance and grades. One recent study documented positive relationships between SBHC utilization and youth development assets (e.g. caring adult relationships), suggesting they may be a key mechanism through which SBHCs...

Background and Purpose While the issue of youth gang involvement has received considerable attention in academia, there is a paucity of research assessing the evidence base of interventions targeting this vulnerable population. Similarly, although the phenomenon of child soldiers has gained global awareness, there remains a gap in knowledge regard...

Executive Summary of the Fall 2013 Research Report • While DPS student enrollment has increased over the past four years, the use of out of school suspensions and expulsions has decreased. This trend has benefited students of all backgrounds. • Despite these reductions, district-wide racial disparities in rates of office disciplinary referrals, sus...

This article examines whether school contextual factors, such as referral practices and peer dynamics, contribute to Chinese American students' underrepresentation in school health programs. Data from the 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (N = 1,744) as well as interviews and focus groups (N = 51) with Chinese American users and nonusers of high scho...

To examine the relationship between student-reported, school-based health center utilization and two outcomes: (1) caring relationships with program staff; and (2) school assets (presence of caring adults, high behavioral expectations, and opportunities for meaningful participation) using a school district-wide student survey. These relationships w...

Background and Purpose: In contrast to the “model minority” myth, a growing number of studies document high rates of depression among Asian American adolescents. Key risk factors for depression in this population are stress at school and intergenerational family conflict at home. However, there is limited research on the factors that protect Asian...

Background: An increasingly popular approach to preventing and reducing psychosocial problems among underserved youth of color is to offer mental health prevention and early intervention services in educational settings. School-based mental health (SBMH) programs clearly reduce practical barriers to adolescent help-seeking such as cost and inconven...

Background and Purpose: Drawing on an ecological framework for adolescent service utilization (Cauce, et al., 2002) this study considers individual and institutional correlates of health and social service use in schools. Previous research in this area has collapsed all types of school-based services together into one measure, and/or failed to acco...

Background: Unlike community-based settings, where youth often enter services via parents' initiative, school staff serve as the primary referral source for school-based health centers (SBHCs).1 However, a growing body of literature indicates that school staff perceptions of students' health concerns and behaviors are often racially biased.2,3 Purp...

Background and Purpose: School-based health centers are an increasingly popular strategy to improve youths' access to care, particularly in low-income communities of color where students' unmet health needs have been linked to school dropout, youth violence, delinquency, and suicide (Mulye et al., 2009). Such programs clearly remove structural and...

Background and Purpose: Population-based studies show associations between adolescent health risk behaviors, developmental assets, and academic performance (Hanson &Austin, 2003). Research indicates that addressing what are conceived as malleable, school-based assets (caring relationships with an adult at school, opportunities for meaningful partic...

This report presents a new vision for integrating school reforms with support services. It argues that a shift away from a deficiency perspective to a discourse about the capacities all students need is necessary for successful integration. The report reviews evidence that school practices, comprehensive health services, and after-school programs a...

Background: School based health centers are an increasingly popular strategy to reduce unmet need for mental health treatment. This trend is evident in San Francisco, where a local initiative established Wellness Centers at every high school. Since their inception, however, Chinese American youth have been underrepresented in the population serve...

Many researchers have applied sociological theory to concepts of physical disability, leading to the “social model” used by disability advocates and activists, but less work has been done to provide a sociological frame for learning disabilities. Students with learning disabilities have constituted the fastest-growing special education population i...

Universities across the nation face the charge of enhancing their intellectual capital as a learning institution while also contributing to the greater social good. While there is great potential for universitycommunity partnerships to generate lessons for youth workers and policy makers, create powerful new knowledge for the academic field, and pr...

This issue brief addresses the benefits and challenges of sponsoring a youth-led research project in a school where students and their friends, families, and teachers confront daily the demand-ing challenges posed by poverty and its attendant ills. It finds that a youth-empowerment framework has particular value in this context, but poses unique ch...