Ensuring Access and Positive Outcomes for All Young Children - Using Data to Understand and Eliminate the Use of Exclusionary Discipline Practices - December 2024

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Callum

This guide supports cross-sector teams across state, territory, tribal, and local levels in early care and education systems to collect and use qualitative and quantitative data. It defines exclusionary discipline, including suspension, expulsion, and “soft expulsions,” explains why shared definitions and consistent measurement are challenging, and highlights disparities affecting Black children and children with disabilities. It also shows evidence-based practices, emphasizing that data must drive policy, planning, and workforce support to eliminate exclusionary discipline.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time35 min

AccessFree to download

What is Exclusionary Discipline?

Context and Framing the Exclusionary Discipline Issue

The Importance of Data

Ensuring Access and Positive Outcomes for All Young Children: Using Data to Understand and Eliminate the Use of Exclusionary Discipline Practices December 2024 This guide provides cross-sector teams at the state, territory, tribal, and local levels with strategies for collecting and using data across the mixed delivery system of early care and education programs. (This guide uses the term “state and local” to refer to all of these levels. ) Collecting and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data can help inform teams to develop policy and practices that will eliminate exclusionary practices, provide the workforce with needed resources and support, and promote improved outcomes for young children and their families. What is Exclusionary Discipline? One challenge to measuring and addressing the use of exclusionary discipline is the lack of shared definitions for exclusionary discipline or suspension and expulsion within the array of settings that provide early education (e.g. , childcare, public preschool programs, Head Start) (Buell et al. , 2024) . For this document, Exclusionary discipline is defined by the Office of Special Education Programs ( U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, 2022) and the Office of Civil Rights ( U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights , 2022) as “the removal, whether on a short-term or long-term basis, of a student from a class, school, or other educational program or activity for violating a school rule or code of conduct.” Exclusionary discipline includes formal suspension and expulsions and the use of soft expulsions. Soft expulsion refers to the creation of conditions that make it difficult for a child to continue in the program by encouraging families to remove their child, reducing the time in the program, requiring the family to pay for additional assistance, and similar actions (Loomis et al. , 2022; Murphy et al. , 2024; Zinsser et al. , 2022) . See also the definitions of Suspension and Expulsion in Early Childhood developed by the National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations (NCPMI) . Context and Framing the Exclusionary Discipline Issue • National data show that young children in public preschool programs experience suspension and expulsion at rates similar to or higher than students in K-12 system. (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, 2021) • Black children and children with disabilities disproportionately experience exclusionary discipline. (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, 2021) • Children who experience exclusionary discipline are more likely to experience future suspensions and expulsions, academic failure, and increased risk of contact with the juvenile justice system (American “Early childhood suspension and expulsion are adultbased decisions.”(Gilliam, 2005) Academy of Pediatrics, 2013 ; Andersen et al. , 2019; Noltemeyer et al. , 2015) . • Many states and federal programs have enacted regulations or program policies to reduce or eliminate the use of exclusionary discipline (Buell et al. , 2024; Loomis et al. , 2022) . • Currently, there is not a regular administrative data source collecting data on the use of exclusionary discipline across the array of early childhood programs, making it difficult to SRI • 333 Ravenswood Avenue • Menlo Park, CA 94025-3493 • phone +1.650.859.2000 • [www.sri.com](www.sri.com) understand the extent of the concern or the effects of efforts designed to address the concern (Buell et al. , 2024) . • Research has shown: – Programs implementing the Pyramid Model are less likely to suspend and expel children (Clayback & Hemmeter, 2021) . – At the program level, the availability and use of early childhood mental health consultation in a program is linked to lower rates of expulsion and suspension (Silver& Zinsser, 2020) . Specifically, Gilliam (2005) reported that programs having an in-house behavior specialist, wh

FAQs

What does the guide mean by “exclusionary discipline” in early education?

The guide defines exclusionary discipline as removing a student from a class, school, or other educational program for violating conduct rules, covering both formal suspension/expulsion and “soft expulsions” that indirectly push children out of programs.

Why is measuring exclusionary discipline difficult according to the guide?

The guide highlights a lack of shared definitions across early education settings for exclusionary discipline as well as for suspension and expulsion, which complicates consistent data collection and analysis.

How does the guide connect data use to eliminating exclusionary discipline?

It emphasizes that collecting and analyzing data can inform policy and practice changes, but only meaningful use of findings supports action planning, awareness of system conditions, and steps to reduce exclusionary discipline.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Callum