Conference: STATS-DC Data Conference
Date: July 2019
Presenters: Kerry Friedman, Lisa Backer, and Susan Zeiders

Preschool children are expelled at three times the rate of K-12 students with African-American children and boys expelled at disproportionate rates.  States have been implementing strategies to address these troubling statistics but collecting reliable data is challenging.  There are no common definitions for what constitutes suspension or expulsions for young children and the issue of “soft suspensions” (e.g., asking a parent to pick up a child early) can be overlooked.  This presentation provides an overview on definitional issues, and two states discuss how they are approaching obtaining high quality data on this important issue.

Collecting High Quality Data on the Suspension and Expulsion of Preschoolers