Empathy, Not Expulsion

In her February 20, 2015 New York Times article, "Empathy, not Expulsion, for Preschoolers at Risk," Sara Neufeld reports that "preschoolers are expelled at three times the rate of children in kindergarten through 12th grade, with African-American boys being most vulnerable.

"Walter Gilliam, a Yale professor [began] conducting preschool expulsion research. After releasing a landmark report in 2005, he convened focus groups of teachers to find out why, in mixed-age classes, he was seeing 4-year-olds expelled at higher rates than 3-year-olds. The replies were consistent: Teachers perceived the 4-year-olds as more likely to hurt someone because they were bigger. 'That's when it dawned on me that expulsion is not a child behavior,' Gilliam said. 'It's an adult decision.'

"For the problem to be resolved, he realized, teachers needed to learn how to make different decisions. That meant learning how to help troubled children. The model of consultation with an expert has proven to be promising and cost-effective: In a Connecticut study, Gilliam found that it reduces preschool expulsions by half. Consultation also has been shown to improve the emotional well-being of all children in the pivotal years before kindergarten and to boost staff retention and job satisfaction in an industry with very high turnover."

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