[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-590391-105":59,"doc-detail-590391-en":134},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":127,"head_meta":129,"extra_data":131,"updated_unix":133},105,"en","de-facto-suspensions-informal-exclusionary-discipline-practices-in-public-preschool-and-early-elementary-settings","De Facto Suspensions - Informal Exclusionary Discipline Practices in Public Preschool and Early Elementary Settings","","Following discipline reforms that reduced formal suspensions and expulsions, this qualitative study examines informal exclusionary discipline practices that have emerged in public preschool and early elementary settings. Using interviews with 63 parents, teachers, administrators, and behavior specialists, it documents exclusion occurring within classrooms, within schools, and outside school. When limits on formal discipline lack resources for restorative alternatives, the practices disproportionately affect racially and economically marginalized children, reproducing disparities and causing lasting harms to learning, employment, and belonging.",{"@graph":69,"@context":126},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/de-facto-suspensions-informal-exclusionary-discipline-practices-in-public-preschool-and-early-elementary-settings/590391/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/de-facto-suspensions-informal-exclusionary-discipline-practices-in-public-preschool-and-early-elementary-settings/590391.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Pentious","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-04","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":34},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118,122],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What does the study investigate about discipline in early education?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It investigates the kinds, causes, and consequences of informal exclusionary discipline practices that arise in public preschool and early elementary settings.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How was evidence gathered for these findings?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The study draws on interviews with 63 parents, teachers, administrators, and behavior specialists.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"Why do informal exclusionary practices emerge even after formal suspensions decline?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"They occur when mandates to reduce formal discipline are not paired with adequate resources for alternative restorative behavior management approaches.",{"name":123,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":124},"What harms result from these informal practices?",{"text":125,"@type":113},"They disrupt children’s learning, affect parental employment, and undermine children and families’ sense of school belonging, while reinforcing educational inequities.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":128,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":130,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":132,"site_id":62},590391,1792161676,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":135},{"doc_id":132,"user_id":136,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":137,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":138,"file_id":139,"file_url":140,"file_type":141,"file_size":142,"view_count":34,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":143,"language":144,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":145,"faqs":146,"seo_title":147,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":148,"read_time":26,"preview_page_count":4},1374404730887,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_6f874abed73319feea01a86fa6f0fab8","AERA Open  \nJanuary-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1–24 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584251375062  \nArticle reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero)  \nDe Facto Suspensions: Informal Exclusionary Discipline Practices in Public Preschool and Early Elementary Settings  \nLily Steyer  \nCalifornia Department of Education, Stanford University  \nMaya Provençal  \nFrancis Pearman  \nJelena Obradović  \nStanford University  \nFollowing recent discipline reforms, formal suspensions and expulsions have declined nationwide. This qualitative study investigates the kinds, causes, and consequences of informal exclusionary discipline practices that have inadvertently emerged in public preschool and early elementary settings. Drawing on interviews with 63 parents, teachers, administrators, and behavior specialists, we provide evidence of within-classroom, within-school, and out-of-school informal exclusionary discipline practices. We find that these practices occur when mandates to reduce formal discipline are not paired with adequate resources for alternative restorative behavior management approaches. By disproportionately impacting racially/ethnically and economically marginalized students, informal practices reproduce formal school discipline disparities and contribute to further educational inequities. These practices have lasting harms, including disruptions to child learning, parental employment, and child and families’ sense of school belonging. Findings underscore the need to systematically document and address informal exclusionary discipline practices, which remain invisible in administrative records but constitute increasingly common forms of racialized exclusion in contemporary early education.  \nKeywords: early childhood, educational policy, equity, race, classroom management, in-depth interviewing, qualitative research, suspension, expulsion, school discipline, racial disparities, exclusion, informal practices  \nThe U.S. public education system suffers from stark, longstanding racial/ethnic disparities in exclusionary school discipline (i.e., suspensions and expulsions) .1 Black students in particular face disproportionate risk; though Black children comprise 15% of total K–12 enrollment, they account for 36% of students expelled and 44% of students receiving multiple suspensions (U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2014) . Moreover, experiences of exclusion are disturbingly common in early childhood educational settings. Despite their vulnerability to nondevelopmentally appropriate punitive discipline, in recent decades, preschoolers were expelled more than three times as often as students in grades K–12 (Gilliam, 2005; U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2014) .  \nIn the early 2010s, the Obama administration’s Departments of Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services jointly sounded the alarm about the prevalence and racial disproportionality of exclusionary discipline, calling  \non states and local governments to reduce suspensions and expulsions (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services & U.S. Department of Education, 2014; U.S. Department of Justice & U.S. Department of Education, 2014) . A decade later, many school districts have adopted reforms to reduce exclusionary discipline and related racial inequalities among young students, as reflected in declining aggregate rates of formal K–12 suspensions and expulsions (Leung-Gagné et al., 2022; Losen & Martinez, 2020a) and in some cases, the outlawing of suspensions and expulsions in preschool and early elementary grades (Loomis et al., 2022; Zinsser et al., 2022). And yet, young children still experience socialemotional challenges at school (National Center for Education Statistics, 2022), educators often lack adequate resources to respond in non-punitive ways ","cbCaipK01gvpquYV","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaipK01gvpquYV","pdf",590286,24,"English","# Research focus and rationale\n## Key question and study definition\n# Methods and evidence\n## Interview-based qualitative design\n# Findings and implications\n## Conditions driving informal exclusion\n## Consequences and equity impacts","[{\"question\":\"What does the study investigate about discipline in early education?\",\"answer\":\"It investigates the kinds, causes, and consequences of informal exclusionary discipline practices that arise in public preschool and early elementary settings.\"},{\"question\":\"How was evidence gathered for these findings?\",\"answer\":\"The study draws on interviews with 63 parents, teachers, administrators, and behavior specialists.\"},{\"question\":\"Why do informal exclusionary practices emerge even after formal suspensions decline?\",\"answer\":\"They occur when mandates to reduce formal discipline are not paired with adequate resources for alternative restorative behavior management approaches.\"},{\"question\":\"What harms result from these informal practices?\",\"answer\":\"They disrupt children’s learning, affect parental employment, and undermine children and families’ sense of school belonging, while reinforcing educational inequities.\"}]","De Facto Suspensions - Informal Exclusionary Discipline Practices in Public Preschool and Early Elementary Settings | PDF",1792069541]