Giving Compass' Take:
- Cassie Walker Burke discusses how an Illinois law seeking to decrease expulsions of preschoolers has been successful, but excludes children under five years old.
- Why are Black children, children with disabilities, and boys overrepresented among children formally expelled from programs in Illinois and nationally? What consequences could expulsion have for these kids?
- Learn about how leaders can improve equity for young children of color.
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A state law that limits when children can be expelled from preschool programs has reduced formal expulsions, but emerging data show that programs still find other ways to exclude children under five for behavior issues.
A new report from the University of Illinois at Chicago also shows that boys, Black children, and youngsters with disabilities continue to be overrepresented among children who are formally expelled from programs in Illinois, as they are in national data.
Kate Zinsser, an associate psychology professor who led the study at the Social-Emotional Teaching and Learning Lab at UIC, said it was good news that an Illinois law enacted in 2018 has led to sharp decrease in formal expulsions, but that more research — and better data — is needed to address the number of behavior-related withdrawals that families make after meetings with administrators.
Pushing out families or urging them to transfer to other programs is a practice that researchers call soft transitioning, or counseling out.
“We know that inconsistency and change are especially difficult for young children, and yet the kids who need the most support get churned through two, three, four child care centers in a matter of a few years,” said Zinsser. “The disruption to them and their families is only further exacerbating children’s nascent abilities to regulate their emotions and behaviors. But it’s also costly and exhausting for teachers who have to start from scratch building relationships.”
Zinsser’s team found that when Illinois children were “transitioned” out of a program, one in five did not re-enroll elsewhere and instead just returned home under the care of a relative or neighbor.
“You think about the stress that families have been under and now a kid is sitting on the sidelines of preschool,” she said. “That means some children will enter kindergarten or first grade with no early learning experiences, or a very negative one.”
Read the full article about the formal expulsion of young children by Cassie Walker Burke at Chalkbeat Chicago.