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Report examines how to stop preschool expulsions
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Detroit Free Press
DETROIT — Teachers need help from child behavioral and mental health experts, smaller class sizes and regular breaks from their pupils in order to prevent children from being expelled from preschool and early child care programs.
That's the gist of a report released Thursday that provides policymakers with seven recommendations for addressing the needs of children with severe behavioral problems that often get them booted from preschool programs.
These are kids who kick, bite, scream, destroy property, are impulsive, say and do inappropriate things, have difficulty adapting to changes in their routine, lash out at peers and adults and who have trouble separating from their parents.
"If you don't correct these problems when children are young it creates terrible problems later on," said Libby Doggett, executive director of Pre-K Now, a Washington-based advocacy group.
She spoke Thursday during a conference call to release the report from Yale University's Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy.
Walter Gilliam, author of the study and director of the Yale center, said many states don't have effective programs for preventing expulsions, nor do they have the ability to track how prevalent the problem is.
Two years ago, Gilliam released research that showed a rate of 6.7 expulsions per 1,000 preschoolers enrolled in state-funded programs nationwide, a rate dramatically higher than for K-12 students, which he reported to be 2.09 per 1,000 children. Gilliam said the rates likely are higher in private settings.
-Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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