New Report: Reducing Exclusionary Discipline Practices in Early Childhood Education

Despite being ineffective, developmentally inappropriate, and potentially harmful, data reveal that young children continue to be suspended and expelled from early education programs at high rates. The data are particularly troublesome because of the significant disparities in exclusionary discipline practices for boys, Black children, and children with disabilities.

Young children are usually removed from the classroom because teachers consider their behavior to be challenging, disruptive, or dangerous. However, teachers’ perceptions of what constitutes challenging behavior differ substantially, often depending on their own stress levels, well-being, and implicit biases. These issues have become more urgent during the COVID-19 pandemic, as mental health and well-being for children and adults have suffered.

Policymakers at the federal and state level have taken steps to address exclusionary discipline practices in recent years, with 29 states now having early childhood expulsion or suspension policies in place. Policies that ban or limit exclusionary discipline are important, but to see meaningful change, these policies must also equip early childhood educators to better serve their students.

This week, New America’s Early & Elementary Education Policy program released a new report, Reducing Exclusionary Discipline Practices in Early Childhood Education: Perspectives from Practitioners in Illinois and Colorado. We conducted virtual listening sessions with over 30 classroom teachers, program administrators, and mental health consultants in Colorado and Illinois to learn how recent policy changes have impacted practitioners. We share dozens of quotations from these listening sessions in the report.

Both Illinois and Colorado have taken steps to limit the use of such practices and provide appropriate supports to educators that allow them to better meet children’s needs. Most practitioners we spoke with did not have direct experience with suspending or expelling young children. Others felt that the likelihood of removing a child from a program varied based on the type of program, as one administrator expressed below.

States have taken different approaches when it comes to recommending or requiring alternative actions for early childhood programs to use when avoiding exclusionary discipline. Our research focused on two strategies that have received significant traction: early childhood mental health consultation (ECMHC) and training for educators on children’s social-emotional development.

ECMHC places mental health professionals in early childhood settings and elementary schools to work with educators to address challenging behaviors. In Colorado, early childhood mental health consultants shared that they are often focused on helping teachers deal with their own stress rather than concentrating on student behavioral challenges.

ECMHC is intended to be a preventative measure to improve educator practice, but practitioners in both states expressed that it is often used as a reactive strategy. Programs often do not seek out consultation until they have exhausted other possible strategies for dealing with a child’s behavior. And because programs often wait until they are in “crisis mode” and need immediate support, practitioners in both states expressed concerns with long wait times to access mental health consultants.

Practitioners also shared that they had found multiple professional development opportunities and resources helpful for dealing with challenging behaviors and supporting children’s social-emotional development, including the Pyramid Model, which has been associated with lower rates of expulsion. Several teachers and administrators shared that they have had success in their classrooms using the model, and emphasized that its successful use requires ongoing professional development and in-person coaching.

While both states have made significant investments in this model, it can still be difficult for some programs to access. Public pre-K programs and Head Start programs often have the funding to provide intensive professional development, whereas private child care providers often have to pay for trainings out of pocket, which can be prohibitively expensive. As one teacher explains below, she could not recall receiving any professional development around ​how to support children’s social-emotional growth or handle behavioral challenges after more than five years at her private child care center.

In the report we offer 10 takeaways and recommendations for states pursuing reform in early childhood discipline policies and working to help educators address challenging behaviors. These include ensuring that states are collecting accurate data on discipline practices, acknowledging the unique challenges of family child care providers in accessing supports, engaging families as partners in navigating children’s behavior, and more.

These issues are becoming harder to ignore with the pandemic’s impact on mental health and teacher turnover. As states continue to tackle exclusionary discipline on a policy and program level, they must think beyond banning practices and focus on how to better support both educators and children.

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