Exclusion from early care and education (ECE) programs creates employment challenges for families and disrupts learning for children, often differentially impacting children placed at-risk due to income, race, and disability. Federal policy guidance and changes in the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Block Grant requirements are meant to influence states to create policies that will both regulate and prevent disciplinary exclusions, especially suspension and expulsion. We present a national census of states’ CCDF plans, center-based child care licensing regulations, and state pre-K policies addressing suspension and expulsion. Using content analysis methodology, we evaluate the presence of key policy components of suspension and expulsion prevention including data collection, parent/family involvement in the process of exclusions, accessing community resources, and the use of developmental information to inform the use of exclusionary discipline. Our results indicate that expulsion and suspension policies vary widely both across states, and within the same state's subsystems. The component found most frequently across all subsystems is an expulsion policy, with noticeable variation in specifying and defining suspension. Our findings also point to a great deal of variance in policy alignment, with pre-K including the most information on expulsion and suspension policies and prevention. As state-level policymakers seek to adopt policies that reduce exclusion in ECE, our findings point to a need to consider the importance of creating policies that protect children, especially those over exposed to exclusionary discipline, and then aligning those components within and across ECE subsystems to promote equitable access to ECE. This is particularly important for low-income families, Black children, children with disabilities, and boys.

中文翻译：

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解决州早期保育和教育子系统停学和开除问题的政策：政策调整和整合的全国普查

被排除在早期保育和教育 (ECE) 计划之外会给家庭带来就业挑战，并扰乱儿童的学习，通常会对因收入、种族和残疾而面临风险的儿童产生不同的影响。联邦政策指导和儿童保育和发展基金 (CCDF) 整笔拨款要求的变化旨在影响各州制定政策，规范和防止纪律排斥，特别是停学和开除。我们对各州的 CCDF 计划、基于中心的儿童保育许可法规以及针对停学和开除的州学前教育政策进行了全国普查。使用内容分析方法，我们评估了停学和开除预防的关键政策组成部分的存在，包括数据收集、家长/家庭参与排除过程、获取社区资源以及使用发展信息来告知排除纪律的使用。我们的结果表明，开除和停学政策在各州之间以及同一州的子系统内都有很大差异。在所有子系统中最常见的组件是驱逐策略，在指定和定义暂停方面有明显的变化。我们的研究结果还表明，政策一致性存在很大差异，学前班包括有关开除和停学政策及预防的最多信息。随着州级政策制定者寻求采取减少儿童早教中排斥的政策，我们的研究结果表明，有必要考虑制定保护儿童的政策的重要性，特别是那些过度遭受排斥性纪律的儿童，然后在儿童早教子系统内部和之间调整这些组成部分促进公平接受儿童早教的机会。这对于低收入家庭、黑人儿童、残疾儿童和男孩尤其重要。