A qualitative comparison of parents’ experiences of early childhood expulsion following a legislative ban

Abstract

Over the past decade, numerous reports have indicated pervasively high rates of early childhood expulsion nationwide. In response, state and federal policymakers have enacted various measures to ban or reduce reliance on such exclusionary discipline. Prior evaluations of the implementation of one such legislative ban on expulsion enacted in Illinois in 2018 showed partial reductions but relied only on program administrator-reported data. Parents (N = 16) of children (43.75% children of color) expelled from Illinois early childhood programs before and in the years since the 2018 legislative ban were interviewed about their experiences. Parents in both groups reported similar incidents regarding how and why children are excluded, how programs communicated with parents about children’s behavioral concerns, and how programs assisted (or did not) with accessing resources and supports that may enable a child to be retained. Findings indicate that expulsions continue to happen despite the ban and families’ experiences were essentially unchanged and negative. Findings hold implications for the implementation of similar policy efforts across the country.

Introduction

Every year, thousands of children are formally or informally expelled from U.S. early childhood education programs for displaying challenging but often developmentally normative behaviors (Zeng et al., 2019). This early childhood expulsion crisis has been well-documented for nearly two decades (Gilliam & Shahar, 2006; Zinsser et al., 2022), and in 2014, federal and state governments began to take steps to curtail these disciplinary practices (McCann et al., 2022). In 2017, Illinois became the first state to pass a comprehensive and progressive ban on the use of exclusionary discipline in all state-funded or licensed programs serving children ages birth–5 years old. Illinois Public Act 100-0105 went into effect on January 1st of 2018, yet, several years after the law went into effect, children are still excluded from care at concerning rates (Silver et al., 2021). The present qualitative study centers the voices of Illinois families whose children were expelled prior to or following the passage of the expulsion ban to further evaluate the implementation of PA 100-0105.

Drivers, rates, and consequences of exclusion

Public preschool expulsions happen at a rate three times that of K-12 settings, with private early childhood education estimates even higher (Gilliam, 2005; Zinsser et al., 2022). In early childhood, children are most often excluded for displaying disruptive (e.g., inattention, noncompliance, or excessive crying) or dangerous (e.g., harming themselves, other children, or staff) behavior (Conners-Edge et al., 2018; Martin et al., 2018; Zinsser et al., 2021). Notably, behaviors deemed challenging by early educators are relatively normative, occurring in 10% to 30% of children between the ages of 2 and 5 (Dunlap et al., 2006; Vinh et al., 2016). More research suggests that teacher characteristics (e.g., workplace stress), not children’s behavior, are often associated with exclusionary discipline rates (Zinsser et al., 2022). Importantly, children’s behavior and teachers’ feelings are not independent. Prior research has shown that teachers’ fear of being held accountable for children who display aggressive behavior is also associated with expulsion rates (Gilliam & Reyes, 2018).

By definition, school exclusion means removing a child from a structured learning environment, thereby decreasing their opportunities to keep up academically (Morris & Perry, 2017). Preschool expulsion is particularly concerning as early disciplinary experiences are associated with an increased likelihood of later school discipline events such as suspension and expulsion (Hwang, 2018). This practice begins earlier than preschool, though, with disciplinary exclusion being employed in infant and toddler care settings (Cutler & Gilkerson, 2002). The earlier this pattern is established, the more likely children are to be expelled in elementary school, resulting in greater losses in cumulative instructional time and greater achievement gaps separating removed children from their included peers, particularly during critical periods of development (Arcia, 2006; Hwang, 2018; Skiba & Knesting, 2001). Children who are excluded lose their affinity for school and decreased motivation for learning (Walton & Cohen, 2007). In older samples, being excluded for behavioral reasons denies students opportunities to practice social skills (Li et al., 2021) and is associated with increased dropout rates (Archambault et al., 2009) and juvenile justice involvement (Shollenberger, 2015).

Further, it is critical to acknowledge that such exclusions are not implemented equitably. Instead, federal and state data show consistent gender and racial disparities regarding who gets expelled. The pattern is so stark that one scholar quipped that the achievement gap and the discipline gap may be “two sides of the same coin” (Gregory & Fergus, 2017). In 2017–2018, boys made up roughly half of public pre-K enrollment, they are upwards of 80% of those who are expelled or suspended. Similarly, Black and African-American children make up less than 20% of public PreK enrollment but are 41% of those excluded. Considering intersectional identities, Black girls are only 19% of female preschool enrollment but half of all girls expelled are Black (Fabes et al., 2021). These rates were wholly unchanged from those reported for the 2012–2013 school year showing that while the 2014 Child Care Development Block Grant may have spurred states and localities to address early childhood discipline and implicit bias, few Black families would have noticed the difference.

Policy efforts to curtail expulsion

In response to sustained high rates and disparities in exclusionary discipline at all ages, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued joint school discipline guidelines in 2014. Then President Obama’s administration placed significant emphasis on understanding and preventing these ineffective behavior management strategies, which spurred substantial shifts in state and regional education discipline policy. For example, North Carolina and school districts in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and LA have imposed restrictions on schools’ use of expulsion and suspension, especially for their youngest students (Grossman-Kahn et al., 2018). Driven by stipulations in the 2014 Child Care Development Block Grant, most states have also enacted policy reforms to reduce exclusionary discipline from early childhood education programs. The present study specifically focuses on one such policy effort to curtail exclusionary discipline in early childhood settings in Illinois.

When it went into effect in January of 2018, Illinois Public Act 100-0105 was one of the most expansive pieces of early childhood expulsion legislation in the nation with regard to the types of programs and children it covers (Loomis et al., 2022; Meek et al., 2020). Specifically, the law applies to any program serving children under the age of five that is either licensed by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) or funded by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE). The law stipulates several requirements, including that: (1) programs are prohibited from expelling children from their program because of a child’s behavior; (2) programs must exhaust all possible resources and supports to retain a child; (3) Programs must document all steps they have taken to address the child’s behavioral needs and to retain the child in their care [through a behavior support plan]; and (4) if the program ultimately cannot meet the behavioral needs of a child, providers must work with the family to identify and transition the child into an alternative and appropriate care setting, such that there is no loss of services to the child (referred to as a planned transition).

Other components of the law specifically call out best practices in addressing expulsion by referencing professional development for providers (including explicit references to implicit bias training), family engagement, and exhausting available resources (e.g., Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (IECMHC), referrals to Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education, and the child’s primary health care provider).

The state of Illinois lacks the data infrastructure to evaluate the law’s impact rigorously, but longitudinal surveys of Illinois childcare and preschool administrators provide some insight into the law’s implementation. Four annual surveys (2018–2021) of administrators from a range of programs affected by the law (child care, preschool, and home-based care) from across the state serving a total of over 7,000 children have shown that, as intended, rates of formal expulsions declined precipitously following the legislation’s passage (Silver, 2021; Zinsser et al., 2021). Specifically, in 2017–2018, administrators reported that 12.61 children were expelled for every 1000 enrolled. One year later, administrators reported a formal expulsion rate of only 2.72 per 1000 and that number held relatively constant for the next two years (Silver et al., 2021).

Despite this marked improvement in formal expulsion rates, we know that children are excluded from early childhood programs in several other ways, and data from these surveys indicate that soft expulsions, where families are coerced to withdraw or transition their child out, have steadily increased. In 2021, more than 33 children per 1000 enrolled were excluded in some way from surveyed Illinois early childhood programs, including formal and soft expulsions or transitions (Zinsser et al., 2021). In line with national trends (Fabes et al., 2021; Zeng et al., 2021; Zinsser & Wanless, 2020), administrators reported in these annual surveys that the children excluded from Illinois early childhood programs were also disproportionately boys and identified as Black or African-American (Silver et al., 2021).

An inclusive definition of exclusion

Although the terms expulsion and suspension are commonly used in K-12 settings, the exclusion of children with challenging behavior in birth-5 programs is often described by a variety of terms. In the present study, we follow precedent (Zinsser et al., 2022) and use the term “exclusion” to refer to any time a child is separated from their teacher and classmates and misses out on learning time. While children are sometimes temporarily excluded from classroom activities (e.g., sending a child to the director’s office, or sending a child home for part of the day), this study focuses on permanent exclusions from ECE settings. As was recently summarized in a systematic review of the early childhood literature, permanent exclusions include formal expulsions, soft exclusions, and transitions (Zinsser et al., 2022). Formal expulsions in ECE are akin to those in K-12 settings where a family is formally notified that their child cannot return to school. Soft expulsions encompass exclusions where a family is coerced into withdrawing their child (e.g., being told that the program is “no longer a good fit”) and are left to find alternative care arrangements on their own. Planned transition describes a coordinated effort by a program (with the family’s consent) to identify and enroll a child into a more suitable program (e.g., public school special education program). In practice, the distinction among these exclusions may be less clear, with families and providers possibly even disagreeing on exactly how an exclusion occurred.

According to the Illinois expulsion legislation, planned transitions are only supposed to occur after a program has addressed shortcomings in their own practices and attempted to utilize all resources available to retain a child. While there are numerous behavior resources and professional services that would likely reduce incidences of challenging behavior (e.g., infant–toddler specialists, quality coaches, behavioral screenings, and specialists like occupational or speech-language therapists), there is presently no rigorous experimental evidence connecting these interventions to reduced expulsion risk (Zinsser et al., 2022). Similarly, a handful of correlational studies have shown associations between Pyramid model implementation and lower reported disciplinary actions by programs (Clayback & Hemmeter, 2021; Vinh et al., 2016), but the model is not widely available in Illinois and difficult to implement fully without supports (e.g., practice-based coaching; Hemmeter et al., 2016). Likewise, infant and early childhood mental health consultation (IECMHC) has a large literature base (for a recent systematic review, see Silver et al., 2022) but the evidence of its direct impact on expulsion rates is mixed (Gilliam et al., 2016; Hoover et al., 2012; Reyes & Gilliam, 2021).

In the absence of multiple known and accessible evidence-based prevention strategies, teachers and program administrators are often left to use their own best judgment. At best, these judgement calls likely result in uneven responses to children’s challenging behaviors and reliance on unproven strategies. At worst, relying on individuals’ judgment can open the door to bias, with responses to behavioral needs depending on discriminatory perceptions of children or their families.

Families’ experiences of early exclusions

Student outcomes, whether they be short or long-term, and research exploring teacher and administrative perspectives of expulsion have dominated the field of early exclusion (e.g., DeMatthews et al., 2017; Zulauf-McCurdy & Zinsser, 2022). Yet, the experiences and perspectives of families about their child’s expulsions have been largely understudied (see Gibson et al., 2014). Given that a child’s expulsion can have financial, emotional, and logistical impacts of whole family unites (e.g., parents, siblings, and possibly the extended family), it is alarming how rarely the perspectives of families whose children have been suspended and/or expelled from a preschool are given voice in the research literature. In one of the only such studies to date, Wahman and colleagues (2022) held a focus group with Black mothers of expelled preschoolers. These mothers noted that their children were often suspended without clear communication or documentation about the incident, the teachers lacked training and expertise in addressing students’ behaviors, and they themselves needed guidance on how to support a child with intense learning needs at home.

We can extrapolate from other studies of childcare scarcity that losing reliable care through expulsion or suspension will likely have adverse logistical and financial effects on the whole family (e.g., stress, sibling relationships, and marital discord; Freedle & Wahman, 2022; Sears et al., 2016; Wenham, 2020) and even society more broadly as women leave the labor force due to child care concerns (Women’s Bureau, 2023). Critically absent from the early childhood discipline literature are the voices of parents of children with disabilities. In one study (Bell & Craig, 2023), parents of older children with diagnosed disabilities who had been suspended, restrained, or secluded reported experiencing negative health and financial disruptions (e.g., depression, hypertension, job loss) as a result of their child’s school discipline experiences.

The present study

Most studies of exclusionary discipline in early childhood have relied on data at the school- or program level, and fewer than 10% of published studies have attended to parents’ or families’ experiences (Zinsser et al., 2022). In evaluation theory, Scriven (1973) argues that if a program or policy is effective, it should be clear in one’s conversations with the intended beneficiaries. Prior evaluations of the implementation of PA 100-0105 have identified challenges and inconsistencies in administrators’ reports of their programs’ compliance with the legislation (Silver, et al, 2021). The present study goes directly to the intended beneficiaries of the law (i.e., the families being expelled), to understand how they experienced the stipulations in the legislation, namely the planned transitions and exhaustion of resources to support retention.

Illinois set a high benchmark with the passage of 100-0105 and to date there is some evidence that it has had the intended impact on reducing formal expulsion rates across the state. At the same time, advocates are sounding the alarm about children continuing to be excluded from early learning opportunities. Given the groundbreaking nature of this legislation and the limited existing research on related policy efforts at the national level, it was imperative that we study the implementation of IL PA 100-0105 closely, from multiple angles and perspectives, and over an extended period. Specifically, in the present study we seek to address the following research questions: (1) In what ways do families experience exclusions (i.e., suspension, formal and soft expulsion, planned transitions) prior to and following the passage of the Illinois expulsion ban?; (2) How do parents’ experiences of programs’ responses to children’s challenging behaviors differ following the passage of the expulsion ban with regard to communication, documentation, and resources and supports provided?; and (3) For what types of behaviors are children ultimately excluded prior to and following the law?

Methods

Researchers’ background and role

Best practice in qualitative inquiry includes the statement of researchers’ positionality with regard to the research focus, as their identities, experiences, and world views necessarily influence the research process (Bourke, 2014). The first author is an applied developmental psychologist who studies the systems and policies that impact young children’s social and emotional learning. She identifies as White and is the mother of two young children. While she does not have personal experiences with ECE expulsion, she has had to navigate the Illinois early childhood care system and has experience with a number of childcare settings. She has previously collaborated with advocates and policymakers to evaluate the implementation of the Illinois expulsion law. The second author is the principal investigator of the grant funding this project. She is a human development and family studies scholar who focuses on family engagement among families with young children. She self-identifies as Latina and bilingual (native Spanish speaker). During data collection, the author did not have any children. However, during the data analysis phase of the study, she became a first-time mother. To date, she has no personal experience navigating childcare settings or with ECE exclusion. The third author previously worked in early education and now serves as a Senior Policy Manager at an advocacy organization. She helped draft language for the legislation and self-identifies as White. Given her background in early childhood expulsion, she served as the auditor of this study (Akkerman et al., 2008).

Sample and recruitment

Data used in this analysis are drawn from a larger mixed-method study of parents’ experiences of exclusionary discipline. Recruitment began in February of 2020. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, recruitment and data collection procedures were substantially delayed and revised. Ultimately, parents and caregivers were recruited via listservs, social media advertisements, and fliers posted in pediatricians' offices and neighborhood community centers and social service agencies (e.g., child care resource and referral networks).

Families completed an online screener to determine eligibility and were screened out if (1) children were born before January 1st, 2012; (2) families lived outside of Illinois, or; (3) the child ultimately left the program for a reason other than behavior, such as failure of payment or moving away. Children born in 2012 would have been of age to attend childcare or preschool from 2014 to 2017, the years directly preceding the legislative ban going into effect in 2018. Eligible families were then asked to complete a short online survey that included a variety of forced-choice, Likert-style, and open-ended questions about their childcare or preschool enrollments (length of enrollment, program type, etc.). At the end of the survey, parents indicated whether they would be interested in participating in a follow-up phone interview. All recruitment materials, surveys, and consent forms were available in both English and Spanish.

In the larger study, a total of 27 families were recruited. The analysis sample for this study (N = 16) consists only of families who completed both the online survey and telephone interview (see Table 1) and whose child was excluded from a childcare program due to behavioral concerns prior to or following the 2017–2018 school year, given that the legislative ban was implemented mid-year. While the research team aimed to recruit from diverse populations, the switch to primarily virtual recruitment due to COVID-19 yielded a sample of parents that was mostly White, highly educated, and considered middle to upper-middle class. However, almost half of the children in our sample identified as either Black (25.0%) or Latino (18.75%), which is slightly higher than the percentage of children under 5 in the State of Illinois who are Black or Latino (38%; IECAM, 2023). Families lived in a mix of urban, suburban, and rural communities across the state of Illinois, with only 2 families living within the Chicago city limits. Children attended a mix of non-profit and private tuition-funded childcare and preschool programs, all affected by the legislation (see Table 1).

Table 1 Family demographics (N = 16)

Data collection

In the initial online survey, parents reported on the dates of their child’s enrollment in care arrangements, whether and how programs adapted and responded to their child’s behavioral needs, and any resources provided by the program (e.g., refer for evaluation, change classrooms, acquire a behavioral aide). They also completed free response items the number of incident reports received, and their description of their experiences of the exclusion process. In the follow-up interview, researchers probed for additional details on many topics.

Phone interviews took place between June 2020 and January 2021. Phone interviews ranged from 90 to 120 min. All parents conducted the interviews in English, although Spanish interviewing was available. We used an interview guide with topically organized, open-ended, and semi-structured questions developed based on substantive and theoretical literature on young children’s exclusion (Patton, 2014). The interview guide was piloted with a non-Illinois parent previously known to the researchers who had experienced multiple early childhood expulsions (Roller & Lavrakas, 2015). Following the pilot, the guide was revised to enhance clarity and consistency in language and probes. The interview included questions on parents’ accounts of their child’s exclusion and the process they experienced. The second author conducted each interview in a conversational tone and actively listened while still following up on relevant topics. She further used probes to generate detailed descriptive accounts of their expulsion(s) (see Rubin & Rubin, 2005). Member checks were also conducted with each study participant through question–answer–validity. Question–answer–validity is when researchers during an interview engage in real-time paraphrasing of interviewee’s comments to confirm or clarify intended meaning (Hill et al., 2005; Roller & Lavrakas, 2015; Taylor et al., 2015). This technique has been found to be critical during the data-gathering phase since the researcher interprets the responses made by the participants in real-time and engages in follow-up questions to help clarify inaccuracies, which aided in the analysis process (see Cresswell & Miller, 2020). Although the same interview protocol was used for all participants, it was still flexible, allowing parents to talk about the particulars of their families’ experience. A member of the research team assisted during each call, taking interview notes, managing audio recording equipment, and ensuring adherence to the interview guide.

Ethical considerations

Before the start of the interview, parents were electronically sent a consent form to sign and review. To ensure all participants understood their rights as well as the study goals, the researcher verbally explained their rights. At the conclusion of the interview, all families were given information about the legislation and contact information for their local child care resource and referral agency (if they need assistance finding more care). As a token of our appreciation, families received a $100 electronic gift-card. The University’s Institutional Review Board approved all procedures. Pseudonyms are used throughout to preserve confidentiality.

Data analysis

Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. One participant declined to be audio recorded and, in this case, extensive notes were taken including verbatim quotes. Prior to coding, team meetings were held to discuss substantive literatures/debates on early childhood expulsion and to review the practices of analysis. The Rigorous and Accelerated Data Reduction (RaDaR) technique was used to analyze the data (Watkins, 2017). The RADaR can be an individual or team-based approach to coding and analyzing qualitative data that utilizes tables and spreadsheets to develop all-inclusive data tables that undergo multiple revisions. We began by first ensuring that all data transcripts were formatted similarly. The research team then created data reduction tables or data displays in Microsoft Word containing data only from the family’s first expulsion experience (the focus of this study). All tables included the participant identification number, question asked, and participant response. Tables were not separated by the timing of expulsion (pre- vs. post-legislation) and all transcripts were considered together during the initial data reduction. We used profile, proximity, and conceptual data display tables (Bernard et al., 2016). These types of data displays promote the examination of data, the making of comparisons, and the identification of themes or patterns (Williamson et al., 2005). For example, profile data displays promote the examination of data (e.g., type of exclusion experienced) and focus on how things are related to one another. Proximity matrices includes data about how similar or dissimilar a set of responses are (e.g., programs’ responses to challenging behavior). Lastly, conceptually ordered matrices bring together items that “belong together”, such as the engagement (or not) of professional resources.

With each new round of data analysis, additional tables and matrices were further developed, creating shorter and more concise data tables. These visual representations were used to reduce data and aid in data analysis by only focusing on data that were relevant to the purpose of the study, helping summarize and identify patterns in the data, and further assisting in the development of interpretations. At later stages in data reduction, tables were created separately for families excluded prior to and following the legislation. A second research team member screened all data, and then during our weekly meetings, each table was discussed. As a collective, we went through each row of tables and omitted text that was irrelevant to the research questions of interest for this study. Trends in the data were discussed and used for coding purposes.

Our coding began with a priori codes derived from guiding questions and substantive literatures and served as sensitizing concepts (Charmaz, 2005). For example, for the question, “What resources, if any, did the program offer you?” we developed a classificatory resource code (Resor). Similarly, we developed codes on whether families were offered resources (OffResor +) or not (OffResor-) and whether the program recommended resources (RecResor +) or not (RecResor-). Codes such as these were further complemented with new or emergent codes during multiple rounds of data analysis (Rossman & Rallis, 2017).

Managing data quality

Multiple strategies were used to ensure data quality. First, we used a protocol based on the first author’s long-term experience studying early childhood expulsion and the second author’s experience working with families from urban, suburban, and rural areas. The semi-structured interview ensured that all participants were asked the same question, while still allowing for their experiences to be highlighted (Schensul & LeCompte, 2012). Second, all interviews were transcribed verbatim and then re-checked for accuracy by a research team member. To enhance the reliability of the coding process, coding by consensus (Hill, 2012) was used. Coding by consensus is a systematic way of examining the representatives of the data by using multiple researchers and at least one auditor (third author). The auditor’s role in this study was to help the main researchers correct their interpretations and present more trustworthy findings, to offer additional perspectives, and serve as a protection against group-thinking (Hill, 2012). The auditor received numerous reiterations of our findings, where she provided feedback and clarity and assisted in resolving disagreements to help ensure that our interpretations were as accurate as possible. Disagreements about the name of the codes or meaning of the codes, for example, were resolved through discussion until there was an agreement about the most appropriate code, thus, reaching a consensus on the meaning of the data. While labor intensive, this rigorous method allowed us to think and talk about the complexities and ambiguities of the data with the other members and come up with more thoughtful and accurate conceptualizations of the data. To further analyze the interviews, data displays were used to identify patterns within the data. Another mechanism used was peer debriefing (Brantlinger et al., 2005). Colleagues who had expertise in the method and subject area provided feedback on the process, description, analyses, and interpretations of the data.

Findings

Types of exclusions relative to the passage of PA 100-0105

Our method centers families’ accounts to provide a depiction of their expulsion experience, regardless of when the expulsion occurred, and we used these accounts to offer explanations of these experiences (Rossman & Rallis, 2017). To address our first research question regarding families’ experiences of exclusions prior to and following the passage of the Illinois expulsion ban, we examined the survey data and interview transcripts for indications of the timing and method of exclusion. Of the 16 families in our analysis sample, all experienced forced or soft exclusions. As can be seen in Table 1, five families were excluded before the law went into effect (between 2014 and 2017), and the remaining 11 families were expelled between the Fall of 2018 and 2021 when data collection concluded. Notably, no families in this study described procedures or practices that are indicative of a planned transition as stipulated in Illinois Public Act 100-0105.

We further explored the use of partial-day or full-day suspensions in this sample. These are times when a program sends a child home for part of a day or one or more days as a way of managing their behavior. Only one parent (Carmen) reported that their child was suspended or asked to stay home for one or more days due to challenging behaviors.

Requests for a child to be picked up early were equivalent across the two groups. In the sample excluded prior to 2018, two parents reported being called to pick their child up early. Patrick described the experience saying, “[The program] called us, it was usually around noon or so and they said Daniel’s been hitting or biting children and staff. He needs to be sent home.” From the post-legislation group, four families shared that they were called to collect their child early for behavioral reasons. Notably, the frequency of such calls was much greater in this sub-group. For example, Carmen shared that between “between October and November of 2020 the school called approximately twice a week to pick up [Yolanda] early” before she was ultimately excluded, amounting to upwards of 16 days in which Carmen had to leave work early.

Program responses to challenging behavior relative to PA 100-0105

In examining how programs responded to children’s challenging behaviors prior to and following the legislative ban, we considered two types of responses: communication among parents and programs and engagement of resources and supports. In each of the following sections we provide a summary of themes within and across those excluded prior to and following the ban.

Communication among parents and programs

We examined three ways that programs communicated with parents about children’s challenging behavior: informal verbal updates, formal written incident reports or notes, and meetings with program staff.

Verbal updates

Most parents of children expelled before the law went into effect received verbal updates and had meetings with program staff prior to their child’s expulsion but only two families in this group received formal incident reports concerning their child’s behavior. Two families received no informal or formal communication from programs about their concerns until the expulsion was imminent. Prior to the legislation’s implementation, when verbal communication did occur, one parent reported receiving phone calls, but other families received regular verbal updates during pick-up or morning drop off times. Charles reported getting these updates: “Pretty much every day. I mean dropping Liam off and asking how things are going…it was never really a positive feeling.” Similarly, Sadie received “comments here and there, about how Sean’s really busy or how he would have an accident” Further, because of the mismatch of teacher and parent work schedules, these informal communication formats could lead to messages being received second or third hand. As Sadie explained:

I work 9 to 5. So, when I’d be picking him up, and often would not be the same folks that were actually teaching him during the day. It would be, whoever was sort of there from 3 to 6. They would, sort of, give you the secondhand reports. Sean had a really hard time sitting still today or Sean wouldn’t participate in circle time or Sean is not following the program.

Among those expelled after the law went into effect, informal communication about behavior during pick-up and drop off was similarly prevalent. In several instances, parents described these informal communications as downplaying the severity of the situation. Carmen said that the informal communication she received about Yolanda was vague and lead her to think that there was nothing to be concerned about at first: “They said that they were minor. The episodes were minor. I don’t see, I don’t know what they mean by that.” Carmen tried to call and speak with one of Yolanda’s teachers but frequently wouldn’t receive a callback.

Maria explained how she was caught off-guard when the informal communication seemed to downplay the severity of the teachers’ concerns:

Maybe we would stay a bit longer talking if something had happened… they didn’t make concerning at all. It was totally random…. But it never felt like this is going out of control… The first time we heard [that Luis was hitting] was on that Friday. And, they said this has been happening for around 5 to 6 weeks… And three days later they said, ‘We can't deal with Luis anymore. It's got gotten worse. You need to find someone, that somewhere else would take him’.

In this group, we also saw an instance of these informal exchanges being used to convey the threat of a child’s temporary exclusion if behavior did not change. Chole said that the informal communication about behavioral concerns started on Gavin’s first day at the preschool and messages were conveyed through the car window at pick up:

[During] COVID times, they had you just pulled up in the parking lot in a circle and you picked up your child and on day one, they were already talking to us about, ‘well, his behavior was a bit much and Gavin wouldn’t listen very well and he wasn’t staying with the group, and I should review the consequences of these actions because they would have him stay home for a week if he couldn’t listen and follow the directions.’ I was like, ‘Dude, it’s day one. He’s very excited.’

Incident reports

In Illinois, programs licensed by the Department of Children and Family Services are required to record reports of incidents and injuries involving children and must notify the child’s guardian of the incident. In many cases, this notification takes the form of a written incident report which outlines what happened and how the staff responded to the acute needs of the injured child. Among those excluded prior to the ban, only two parents reported receiving formal incident reports prior to their child’s expulsion (a third parent was given retroactive written reports of prior incidents only upon notification of the decision to expel). Both Samantha and Charles shared that these reports tended to follow externalizing incidents where their child was injured or injured another child or staff member. Samantha said:

Well, they would give you a written slip, if Legend had been bitten or injured by another kid, or if he had bitten or injured another kid. And then there was, at least one time, where they gave us a report because he, I think he like hit the teacher.

Similarly, Charles described what would result in a report being sent home about Liam, “[We got reports] 3 or 4 times. They said you know that he was out of control, this escalated, he hit a teacher, you know just very much has documentation like that.”

Six families in the post-legislation group received incident reports prior to their expulsion. While Carmen clearly remembers receiving 4 or 5 reports, Nick’s mother, Mary didn’t receive any:

“I don't think we ever received an incident report. We just got told maybe once, I don't remember.” Maria said they were only handed one during the meeting in which Luis was formally expelled.

Meetings

The final form of communication we examined as part of the exclusion process was meetings among parents and staff. We considered whether and how many meetings occurred, who initiated the meeting request (parents or programs), and when those meetings occurred relative to the child’s exclusion in addition to the types of information conveyed in the meetings.

Families who were expelled prior to the law going into effect all reported meeting with the program administrators or teachers about their child’s behavior. In many instances, parents or teachers requested an initial meeting early in a child’s enrollment based on observed behaviors and then a second meeting was scheduled by the program in which the administrator communicated the decision to expel.

For example, Samantha shared:

We had meetings with the administration right around Thanksgiving. And then another one in late January....When problems started to arise in the early part of Legend’s time there, we asked for a meeting and when we met with the vice director and the teachers.... The first one we had because we felt like when we came at pick up time… they were telling us that he had some behavior issues. He wouldn’t sit in circle time. That he wasn’t engaged in the activities, he was having a lot of trouble with the routines. And not napping. We asked to have a meeting to be like are there things we could do, to get a better idea of what was happening? And to see if there was something that we could do together...

Then Samantha shared that the program staff “requested the meeting with us in January, basically to say that the interventions that they were using weren’t working.” At this meeting the staff were “characterizing his behavior as more, sort of, aggressive…” before ultimately telling her that Legend could not return to the program.

Charles and Sadie also had two meetings each with their respective programs. For Charles, these meetings were program initiated and in response to Liam’s behavior. In Sadie’s case, the first meeting served as their family’s orientation to the program, and it was during this meeting that they learned about the program’s probationary period policy which ultimately led to Sean’s exclusion. A few weeks after Sean started in the class, the program requested a second meeting. Sadie remembered being caught off-guard by the decision to exclude her son:

There was this probation period and they said, after a few weeks we'll let you know how he's doing. We thought we were going in for a checkup. And, I was like, ‘Oh God, I hope this goes well’ given the sort of the looks on their faces, and kind of the feeling, the vibe I was getting when I would pick him up. But never did it really occurred to me that they would say, you can’t. You know? ‘Go find someplace else.’

Seven parents of the 11 families in the post-legislation group described formal meetings with the program staff about their child’s behavioral concerns. In most cases, these meetings were initiated by the program staff, but for Gabriel’s parents, they requested a conference after receiving multiple notes from teachers about behavior within only a few weeks of his enrollment. The meeting helped them understand how much their child was struggling: “Gabriel would throw materials off the shelves; he would reach out and hit a kid walking by” but also how limited the program’s response was, “they didn’t say what they did to support him other than physically stop him…. They didn’t mention anything that stimulated the behavior like another child saying something.”

As in the pre-legislation group, for several families excluded after the law went into effect, the meeting only occurred when the program was ready to expel the child. As Carmen explained, after her daughter Yolanda had an incident during naptime and was sent home early, she was suspended for a day, and a meeting was requested for the following (final) day:

The only time was when she had the last episode is when they told me they needed a meeting, and she couldn't come the next day, and then she went back I think the second day and then they called me to tell me she was expelled.

Nick’s parents both attended the meeting in which their child was formally expelled. His mother, Mary, described how prior to the meeting, the program had been informally encouraging them to disenroll voluntarily. However, she was taken by surprise because she believed there were still strategies they could try. She shared:

The program was implying to us that this may not be the right environment for Nick, and maybe it was my sort of unwillingness to admit that and have to start the search all over again for a school or maybe it was that I really wasn’t sure that that was the case at the time. I mean, if it was ever clear to me that it is not the right environment, I would have of course like taken action sooner, but I thought we were in this together, I thought we were operating on a different plane where we were still trying strategies and figuring things out.

Nevertheless, Nick’s parents were asked to come meet with the classroom teachers, the Occupational Therapist, the Director, and the Assistant Director. Nick’s mother described it as,

A weird Mafia movie moment where they like brought us into this room and you know gave us the news... they were very solemn. Everyone was very quiet. It was the director who spoke, and it was super awkward for us, because she delivered the news and everyone kind of stared at us…. I think she was trying to be very polite, or you know, as she could about it. So, she would say just like ‘this may not be the right environment for Nick’ and then ended there. And then I had, I asked her explicitly like…’Are you asking us to leave?’ And she would say ‘Yes.’ She very much directly answered that question. ‘Yes.’

Engagement of professional resources

Families were asked about the type of support and resources the program offered them, as well as the program’s role in acquiring said support and resources. The program’s role was divided into three categories: active involvement (the program identified a specific service and helped/arranged for the child to receive such services); passive recommendation (the program recommended a resource, but the parent was the driving force for acquiring and implementing the resource/support and); None/Parent initiated (parents identified and sought out a resource/support or they had already arranged support for their child prior to enrollment). Overall, across both groups, the program’s engagement of professional resources was minimal and passive at best.

Of the five families whose child was expelled before the legislative ban, three reported that the program played no role in acquiring resources and instead the parent(s) had already secured or sought out supports on their own. For example, Jackie said: “Jacob had already been evaluated by Early Intervention…. He was already receiving occupation and behavioral therapy, social work, and speech therapy.” Patrick whose child, Daniel, needed “medical and therapeutic resources” did the “reaching out” on his own with no support from the program. Samantha shared that Legend was partaking in the Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) but the expelling program provided “no assistance…Any of the resources that we found like the therapist or the PCIT training, we did that.” She recalled that the preschool’s parent handbook even aligned with the legislation by saying that the program “will work with you [parents] to find another situation that fits” if theirs was not the best program. Yet, in Samantha’s view, the program “did nothing.”

Samantha did not have many details about what interventions the program was implementing. According to her, there was no indication that Legend had been transferred to a new classroom, paired with an aide, or placed on a behavioral reward program. The program did mention that they were going to have him observed (ostensibly by an IECMHC) but he was expelled before that occurred “They did mention at one point that they had someone who was going to come in and observe him, but as far as we know they never followed through on that.” Charles reported that their program provided Liam with a “semi-retired” social worker without their consent, but did not report any obvious impact of their involvement.

Among the pre-legislation group, another two families reported receiving passive recommendations for services. Sadie was the only parent in the study to receive a business card but only after probing and asking “What do you suggest we do as a next step? How do we help our kid?” When asked to elaborate, she said:

He [program director] scrambled and dug around his desk and found a card. …handing me this card of this person, someone who was somewhere [downtown]. I put it in my pocket. I was like I’m not going straight to a child psychologist, that seems extreme.

Eight of the 11 families excluded following the legislation reported that their child’s program provided no assistance. Two families received passive recommendations of resources. One family indicated that their child’s program played an active role in identifying and arranging some resources for them.

There were several children from the post-legislation group in our study who were already receiving some form of Early Intervention (EI) services when they were expelled. These parents reported that the expelling program made no efforts to suggest or provide additional resources or services. For example, Elijah, who was enrolled for approximately four hours before the program called his parents to pick him up because “he was too much work” was already receiving speech, physical, occupational, and behavioral therapy as well as social work sessions. When Danielle went to the center to pick Elijah up, she reported that “no one would talk to us.”

Similarly, Lino “was already in EI. We already had services” and thus, the program did not suggest additional services to his parents. Gabriel’s preschool also knew that he was “getting speech therapy from the school district at the time of enrollment” but when he continued to struggle behaviorally his mother, Sarah, hired a private occupational therapist. To her dismay, the program would not allow the occupational therapist to meet with Gabriel at the school, thus limiting the impact of the intervention. In contrast, Jessica reported that Vasha’s therapists were welcome to attend the school, however the teachers rejected their recommendations. Jessica said:

I hired an ABA therapist to come into the classroom and be Vasha’s one-on-one…. Her [occupational therapist] came in observed and consulted…. Her occupational therapist was introducing the idea of coregulation and that being what Vasha needed. And the teacher basically said ‘I can’t do that. I’m not doing that. I don’t believe in that’ .... I mean the occupational therapist and I both felt exasperated!

When Chloe was asked about the program's role, she did not hesitate and said: “They did nothing. They just said our kid’s not a good fit. They were not going to make any changes to anything that they did or any way they did anything.” After telling Victoria that “Mario can’t stay here…we don’t know how to really help him” they told her “You should look for something else…Yeah, and that was it.” Similarly, when Carmen went to pick up Yolanda after receiving a phone call that it “was her last day”, she shared that “no one came to talk to me…I picked her up and they gave me her belongings…. Where’s the support?”.

Unlike most families in the post-legislation group who experienced no support from the program in acquiring resources for their child, two families shared that the program offered passive recommendations, but provided no assistance. For example, Mary said: “They asked us to bring on an occupational therapist, which we did, and then they said we should consider a social worker.” But the program did not assist Mary with identifying or accessing any of these specialists. Londra also “arranged all the consultations” after the program suggested speech therapy for Jamal but “did not help with anything else.”

Maria was the only parent in both groups who experienced a program identifying and arranging a specific service, although their support was inconsistent. She said: “They connected us with someone in Illinois of Mental Health and Family Services…. They gave him a weighted blanket during story time and it seemed to sooth Luis.” While the weighted blanket helped, the program also told Maria that Luis needed occupational therapy. However, she received no help from anyone in the program in accessing therapy services:

I had to find the OT myself, so I went to my pediatrician, but she couldn’t refer me to an OT. So, she referred me to a different expert in child behavior, which was another set of struggles to get appointments and filling more forms!

When Maria finally got access to an ABA therapist, “it was a three-month waitlist after struggling to get them on the phone.”

Final behavioral triggers

To address our final research aim, we examined parents’ reports of the types of behaviors that programs indicated finally triggered the child’s expulsion. Broadly we identified three themes of final trigger behaviors across the full sample: externalizing, internalizing and difficulty complying with classroom expectations. Notably, here we are focused on the behavior that immediately preceded the child’s expulsion, not necessarily accounting for all prior behavioral patterns.

Externalizing behaviors, such as biting and hitting, are prevalent both among those expelled before and after the legislation went into effect, and children reportedly displayed aggression towards other children and teachers in both groups. Across both groups, only one child was excluded for displaying internalizing behaviors and that occurred prior to the law’s implementation. However, after the law went into effect, children continued to be expelled for displaying developmentally appropriate non-compliant behaviors such as struggling to share or follow directions.

Prior to the law’s implementation in 2018, two out of the five children in our sample were ultimately excluded following displays of externalizing behaviors. Patrick shared that his son Daniel accumulated three strikes for hitting and biting staff and children in his classroom. Jackie reported that her son Jacob was ultimately expelled because other parents complained about him harming other children. She explained that the program was afraid they would leave:

When I went to pick him up on Thanksgiving Eve—you know it was that Wednesday night. I went to pick him up and they said, ‘By the way he can’t come back’ and I was like ‘Uh, why?’ And it was because they had another parent that complained and said, ‘If your son comes back, because your son hurt my kid, then we're not going to come back anymore.’ But at that point, I had no idea that that was going on.

Two children were excluded prior to the legislation for not adhering with classroom expectations. Sean did not pass the probationary period at his preschool because, according to his parents, he had a “really hard time sitting still” or “wouldn’t participate in circle time” or did not “follow the program expectations” according to teachers. Samantha said that Legend was expelled for mooning his classmates:

They told me to come down, that he had done something in class, and that I needed to pick him up. It was explained to me later that he and another child had pulled down their pants and mooned the classroom. And they just told me to come get him because he had misbehaved in class.

Finally, one child in the pre-legislation group, Liam, was ultimately excluded for crying too much. According to his parents, when Liam was upset and hiding under a chair, the program responded with threatening to call the cops. As his mom described:

He was out of control—he was overstimulated, and they took him to the office, and he was continuing to be out of control, and [the director] said, ‘Liam you need to calm down or we’re going to have to call the police on you and the police are going to have to come down here.

Liam’s father was so shocked when he heard this and asked [the director], ‘Was he hitting you? Was he throwing stuff around the office?’ She said, ‘No, he was just crying and hiding under the chair.’ So that was just mind-numbing to me.” Liam was the only child in this sample expelled for displaying internalizing behavioral problems.

Among the sample of children excluded after the expulsion ban went into effect, six of the 11 ultimately left following displays of externalizing behaviors. Mia explained that Lino’s behavior was becoming increasingly severe over time, “I think that it's just escalating and nothing seems to be helpful to calm him down. I mean, he was pushing kids off the slide and… Fighting, pushing, not wanting to listen to the rules that he knew that they knew he knew, because he had followed them [before].” Some parents acknowledged that their child’s externalizing behavior seemed to overwhelm the teachers. Mary described her son Nick’s self-regulation needs as requiring too much from the staff. She shared the following:

The feedback was that he needed more one-on-one time, more tools for self-regulation, that teachers needed more support for helping him, than what they could provide…. It was that he was hitting other students without a trigger that they could see.... They would just say out of nowhere that they would be walking to the park and he would push someone.... He requires redirection, often. His peers do too, but he just required much, so much more of it that the teachers could not focus on the rest of the classroom adequately with him there.

In addition to typical aggressive behaviors like pushing, some parents describe more concerning patterns. Sarah shared that her son Gabriel was ultimately excluded following an incident in the hallway when Gabriel “was hitting a kid constantly and was nonresponsive to the kid saying it hurt.” Gabriel’s apparent lack of empathy was alarming to the program, and they shared that their hands were tied to try to find a solution, saying “if it wasn’t COVID we might be able to try moving him into a new room to see if that helps” but this was presented only at the time of expulsion not discussed earlier as a possibility.

The remaining four children excluded after the law went into effect were cited with not complying with behavioral expectations. Danielle said her son, Elijah, was excluded “Because of his behavior. I guess to be fair he requires too much one-on-one attention, that they were not able to provide.” Ultimately, she was told that the final trigger was his unwillingness to share the slide with another child on the playground. Chloe similarly received the feedback that her son’s needs were overwhelming staff and depriving other children. The program told her that:

There’s just really not enough supervision for Gavin. And if the supervision that he needs, we can’t really provide. In order to provide his amount of supervision, then the other kids, it’s not really fair to them because they’re not getting the attention that they need and that their parents are paying to have. …They said that they would have to have one of the teachers would have to be with him the whole time. Then it wasn’t working for the other kids because they didn’t have enough staff to devote to just him.

As for his behavior right before he was excluded, the program told Chloe that “He didn’t really listen very well today. He was running away from the class. He’s got to learn to stay with the group or he can’t really stay here because we can’t do safe. We can’t maintain safety.”

Finally, Victoria shared that her son Mario was excluded in 2019 from a private Montessori program because he was not able to keep up with the program’s expectations. In this case, however, the exclusion was not framed as related to his behavior, instead the program cited about Mario’s capacity to keep up academically and could not be accommodated in the classroom for his age group. Victoria was told that they “gave him a puzzle to do and he couldn’t do the puzzle. And so that's something he’s going to be doing in the three-year-old room.” Later in the conversation, they additionally added that because he had previously pushed an object off a shelf, they were worried he couldn’t be trusted not to break objects in the older classroom. The director concluded by saying “I don't know, I don’t think we can really help him.”

Discussion

To the best of our knowledge, this qualitative comparison of the experiences of families excluded prior to and following the Illinois expulsion ban, PA 100-0105, is the only study to utilize parent data to evaluate expulsion policy implementation. Our study yielded several key findings. Firstly, it is notable that exclusions continued to occur in the years following the ban’s implementation and no families in our sample, regardless of timing, described experiencing the planned transition stipulated in the law. The ways in which and frequency with which programs communicated with families about their children’s behavior was nearly equivalent across groups. Parents in both groups received frequent informal verbal updates but they differed in perceived urgency. Fewer families received formal incident reports before the law went into effect than after. Most, but not all families in both groups, had formal meetings with the program but these tended to immediately precede the exclusion and focused on justifying the child’s exclusion rather than seeking collaborative solutions. Children excluded after the law went into effect appear to have accessed a variety of behavioral resources, but parents were the driving force behind acquiring such supports. Finally, while many children were excluded for displaying externalizing behaviors, those excluded following the ban were also commonly excluded for developmentally appropriate non-compliance (e.g., struggling to share), and parents received messaging that their child’s behaviors were an inconvenience for staff. While these data were collected in a unique context, the situations described by these families are not exclusive to Illinois. In this discussion we will further describe these findings and identify possible next steps and recommendations for advocates, policymakers, and professionals working with or on behalf of young children and families.

Children continued to be excluded despite the ban

In line with prior evaluation data from Illinois early childhood programs, parent-reported experiences presented here indicate that children were still being excluded despite the legislative ban enacted in 2018. Interestingly, while prior administrator reports have indicated an increase in planned transitions for children whom they could not adequately support (Zinsser et al., 2021), parents in this sample did not indicate experiencing any such planned transitions. As has been discussed elsewhere (Silver et al., 2021; Zinsser et al., 2021), this may say more about administrator confusion around what constitutes a planned transition, indicating a need for greater clarity in agency rules as well as education and communication for parents and providers state-wide about viable evidence-based interventions and resources.

When examining why children were asked to leave programs, parents in both groups reported that children struggled with common externalizing behaviors such as biting, pushing, and hitting. Such aggressive behaviors were slightly more common triggers in the post-legislation group (54.5% post vs. 40% of those before 2018) and are akin to those observed by researchers and clinicians in prior studies (Perry et al., 2008; Petitclerc et al., 2015). The exclusion of children who display aggressive behavior has been tied to teachers fears of being held accountable if another child or teacher is injured (Gilliam & Reyes, 2018). As Martin and colleagues (2018) described so clearly in their expulsion process model, when faced with a behavior they find distressing and dangerous, teachers rely on training, tricks, and tools that have worked for them in the past. Without the addition of new or more effective techniques for managing and redirecting unwanted behaviors, teachers feel frustrated and begin to make negative accounts of children and attribute problems back to the parents. Once this cascade of negative attributions has begun, Martin argues it is unlikely to be reversed and the child will ultimately be asked to leave.

In this sample, parents also frequently reported children being excluded for non-aggressive behaviors which seemed to pose little danger to child and adult safety, but instead were inconvenient or frustrating for teachers. Moments of non-compliance or poor impulse control accounted for a sizeable proportion (40–50%) of exclusions across both groups and appear developmentally appropriate and expected for this age group (Gebbie et al., 2012). As such, these children’s removals may be more indicative of teachers’ unrealistic behavioral expectations due to insufficient training, high teacher–child ratios, or poor access to or use of supports, all of which are associated with higher expulsion rates (Gilliam & Reyes, 2018; Hooper & Schweiker, 2020; Miller et al., 2017; O’Grady & Ostrosky, 2023; Zinsser et al., 2019a, 2019b). Despite the ambitions of the Illinois expulsion ban, in the absence of significant changes to the structure and working conditions of early childhood education, teachers will likely continue to experience higher than average rates of stress, depression, and burn out (Roberts et al., 2019) which have been tied to greater expulsion risks as well (Gilliam & Shahar, 2006; Zinsser al, 2020; Zinsser et al., 2019b).

Continued communication challenges

When, how, and what information was shared between programs and parents about children’s behavior prior to their expulsion was another focus of the present study. In many instances, parents expressed feeling caught off-guard or being surprised when their child was expelled because there had been little communication. Such experiences of surprise have been reported elsewhere, as have issues with the logistics and emotionality of parent–teacher communication in preschool (Henneman, 2014; Martin et al., 2018; O’Grady & Ostrosky, 2023; Zulauf-McCurdy & Zinsser, 2022). Parents in this sample described most formal communication as coming too late and after the program has seemingly already decided to disenroll a child. Even when teachers shared informal reports, they tended to occur in passing during pick-up or drop offs and occasionally were given by less familiar assistant teachers. Unlike their early elementary school peers, early childhood educators rarely have protected paid time for planning and communication with families. Further, while many initiatives, including those following the passage of PA 100-0105, emphasize the need for greater family engagement, teachers have received little guidance about exactly how to go about this, especially without dedicated time and resources to support such efforts. Efforts to communicate with families were undoubtedly complicated by precautions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic (Silver & Coba-Rodriguez, 2022). Given the lack of vaccines for children under 5 for the first two years of the pandemic, childcare and preschool programs severely limited who was allowed to enter school buildings. Face-to-face interactions with classroom teachers was greatly reduced, undermining the formation of cooperative relationships, and de-personalizing communication efforts.

One intriguing theme that emerged from these data was that parents felt teachers comments about their children’s behavior minimized the severity of their concern which only later amplified their feelings of being blindsided by their child’s expulsion. One possible interpretation is that teachers were attempting to use strengths-based approaches—focusing primarily on areas of growth or improvement—to both build rapport and give parents a sense of what they look for and value in the classroom. It is also possible that parents misheard, misunderstood, or did not pick up on a teachers’ subtle attempts to raise concerns. This would especially make sense if messages were being passed through third-parties or were happening during the chaos of pick-up when everyone is tired and thinking about getting home.

Slightly more parents reported receiving more formal incident reports following the legislation ban than before its implementation. This could indicate a shift in program policies in response to the language in the legislation emphasizing documentation. Unfortunately, it appears that such incident reports are still inconsistently used and at times are only presented later as evidence justifying the program’s decision at the meeting in which a child was expelled.

Meetings among parents and program staff were ubiquitous in the pre-legislation group and most of these families had more than one meeting. By comparison, nearly 40% families excluded after the legislation reported no meetings with the program staff. When meetings did occur, it was often only a single meeting in which the decision to expel was conveyed. Understandably, these parents were more surprised and upset by the sudden decision and manner of notification. This, too, may be a situation where we are seeing the impacts of COVID-19-related changes on family interactions. Parents excluded during the pandemic made up a sizeable proportion (over 40%) of those in the post-legislation group and potentially experienced different approaches to engagement. Considering the severe staffing shortages in early care and education following the pandemic’s peak (Goldstein, 2022), program administrators may struggle to find time to meet with parents on their own, let alone in combination with classroom teachers. This is extremely regrettable because teachers’ interactions with, and decisions about children who are at risk of being expelled are closely tied to their perceptions of parents (Martin et al., 2018; Zulauf & Zinsser, 2019; Zulauf-McCurdy & Zinsser, 2020, 2022) and greater proactive relationship development would likely have facilitated more collaborative engagement from all sides.

Program responses and efforts were not transparent

The legislative ban in Illinois specifically indicates that programs must exhaust all available resources and supports in efforts to retain a child before they pursue a planned transition. Unfortunately, the language in this legislation lacks specificity around exactly how those resources should be engaged. Findings from this study indicate that the engagement of resources was frequently outsourced to families both before and following the legislation. Parents in both groups reported doing the leg work to get their children evaluated for additional services such as speech or occupational therapy, and navigate the convoluted process of finding, retaining, and collaborating with these experts. We found only one incident across both groups where a program actively sought a specific resource (in this case a weighted blanket) and implemented it in the classroom. Unfortunately, even in this family’s case the more effortful assistance needed (finding and engaging an occupational therapist) was left up to the child’s parents with no assistance from the program.

Without parallel reports from teachers, we cannot speak directly to what efforts were made that were not shared with parents. In only one interview did a parent share that, had it not been for the COVID protocols in place at the time, the program normally would have tried transferring their child to another classroom to see if it better suited his needs. There were few other indications in these interviews of parents being aware of such internal retention efforts. Teachers sharing with parents some of these internal efforts (e.g., changing routines or room assignments to accommodate a child, providing additional support during challenging transitions, or seeking input and guidance from professional coaches or consultants) may have helped parents feel “read-in” and ultimately less surprised and resentful, even if the expulsion outcome was the same.

Notably, several parents indicated that their child was already receiving some additional resources or services prior to the program raising concerns about their behavior. This potentially speaks to a unique -level of pre-existing awareness among parents in this sample. Given that the majority of our participants are highly educated affluent families who are likely well-informed and connected to resources, already, their awareness of their child’s needs and willingness to collaborate with professionals to support their child may not generalize to families with less social capital.

Also notable is the near absence of any discussion of IECMHC by parents. In many ways this finding is not entirely surprising. Unless mentioned to a family by name by a provider, it is unlikely that parents would have come across IECMHC on their own. In part this is because it is explicitly designed to proactively support teachers (not families) in their work with children (Silver et al., 2022). Further, programs may not refer to IECMHC by name but instead tell families they are working with a “consultant” or “social worker” (the common licensure requirement for IECMHCs). Still, only one parent in our sample, Samantha, referenced a “consultant” coming to observe, although it was never scheduled. The fact that few parents referred to their child’s programs making use of IECMHC, despite it being a free service in Illinois, may either indicate that programs are not using the resource or not fully communicating with parents about their efforts. Prior studies of expulsion and IECMHC use in Illinois have found long wait times, especially in rural parts of the state (Silver et al., 2021). Following recent improvements to the IECHMC infrastructure and a doubling of the consultant workforce as part of the 2020 Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund, similar complaints have not surfaced (Zinsser et al., 2021). These results, however, suggest that there continues to be room for improvement.

In the quotes from parents talking about the ways their children’s program did (or did not) offer and provide supports and resources their frustration and disappointment is particularly palpable. Despite being, on average, highly educated and economically well-resourced families, they still struggled to find, qualify for, retain, and work with the types of professionals the programs were indicating they needed. Yet even when parents successfully navigated this gauntlet, many reported that programs and teachers were unwilling to collaborate with or implement the recommendations of these specialists. While the legislation calls for programs to engage resources and supports, it provides no guidance on how to engage them productively and successfully to prevents a child’s expulsion (e.g., dedicating time and resources to establishing clear communication pathways between external personnel and classroom teachers). As an unfunded mandate, the legislation similarly did not provide program staff with additional time or human resources to manage collaborating with these specialists.

Such a system of à la carte behavioral health services for young children is inefficient and emotionally exhausting for programs and parents. Even when done well, it places programs in a position of having to know what types of specialized support a child needs; how a parent goes about qualifying for such supports; who in their area can provide such supports; and how best to integrate recommendations into an already busy classroom schedule. Rather than placing such expectations and demands on programs and parents, Illinois is hoping that by expanding IECMHC and tiered systems of support such as the Pyramid Model (Hemmeter et al., 2016), they can alleviate burdens while better serving children and families.

To be successful, however, initiatives such as these will likely necessitate a state-wide culture and climate for early childhood programs that allows for vulnerability and normalizes asking for support proactively. When an early childhood program is struggling to support an individual child, they may hesitate to alarm a parent, not wanting to offend them or put them on the defensive. They may not have sufficient expertise or in-house resources or even know what is required because the staff lack experience. Such admissions do not make them a bad program but refusing to or failing to seek out freely available resources that would not only benefit the child, but the professionals they employ approaches malfeasance. Finding ways to support program’s vulnerability and proactive help-seeking will likely pay dividends in future reduced rates of expulsion both by parent and program report.

Implications for policy and practice

Although this work describes a specific state context with somewhat unique legislation, states and jurisdictions across the country are enacting various policies limiting the use of exclusionary discipline in early education settings. The experiences shared by families in this study can yield several critical recommendations for policymakers grappling with how to limit expulsions. Firstly, when writing legislation and rules, policymakers should carefully consider the language they use to describe exclusionary practices. From this study, we saw that families and programs often did not use the language of “expulsion” and as such, may not have realized the applicability of new policies to their programs. It is also evident that miscommunications or missed opportunities for communication were fairly pervasive. It is possible that programs were making changes or providing support that parents were never aware of, leaving families caught off-guard by discipline decisions. Programs’ use of communication tools, including apps that allow for asynchronous communication among parents, teachers, and administrators, could (if used proactively and effectively) reduce these errors and avoidance behaviors for parents and teachers. Research into digital communication tools in early education is still in its infancy, but it is worth further consideration (Chen & Rivera-Vernazza, 2023; Jeon et al., 2021; Ni, 2021) in regard to their role in preventing exclusionary discipline.

Struggles with communication likely also speak to broader challenges around family engagement and cultivating positive and productive home-school partnerships. Forthright and honest communication and genuine relationships between parents and teachers can buffer children’s expulsion risk (e.g., Zulauf et al., 2022). Policymakers and program administrators can look to increase opportunities for training and coaching around working with families. In a separate study evaluating the Illinois expulsion legislation, we found that family engagement trainings offered to early educators tend to be short and introductory in nature (Hinojosa-Cabrera et al., 2024). There are limited opportunities for teachers to learn and practice the advanced skills necessary to build collaborative relationships with parents, especially in the face of challenging behaviors or complex learning needs. Likewise, research during the COVID-19 pandemic showed how administrator support for creative approaches to family engagement can play a significant role in helping teachers to build these relationships (Silver & Coba-Rodriguez, 2022). Likewise, guidance and structure for new families to learn when, how, and why to engage with their child’s teacher could enhance the home–school dialogue.

Limitations and future research

The present study was the first to utilize parental report in the evaluation of the implementation and impact of early childhood expulsion legislation, but it was not without limitations. First, we acknowledge that the families in this study do not represent all families whose child have been expelled from an ECE program. It is possible that families who agreed to participate had additional resource-seeking skills or were the more resilient families in the community, thus limiting our generalizability of the findings. Similarly, given our small sample size, it is likely that we have not fully described the myriad of ways that families experience their child’s exclusion. Furthermore, while our sample of excluded children mirrors the racial and ethnic demographics of the Illinois population under the age of five (ICEAM, 2023), parents in our sample were largely White, highly educated, English speaking and well resourced. As with much research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to change our study recruitment and data collection protocols abruptly and radically, shifting from in-person recruitment at family-friendly community events in diverse neighborhoods to social media advertisements. Unfortunately, these strategies were less well suited to building trust with and hearing from families of color (Sha et al., 2017) who were disproportionately harmed by the pandemic (financially, medically, psychologically, etc.; Abedi et al., 2021; Wamser-Nanney, et al., 2023; Willis-Esqueda & Estrada-Reynolds, 2023). Future studies should strive to better elevate the voices of minoritized communities, and of Black parents in particular as they continue to be over-represented among those expelled (Fabes et al., 2021) and underrepresented in research studies. Likewise, it is possible that our use of phone interviews (due to the pandemic) altered the depth of data parents may have been willing to share if our original face-to-face methods were fully realized. Finally, there is a great need for more ethnographic or case-study approaches that include the perspectives of multiple adults caring for such young children.

The unique policy landscape of Illinois may further limit the generalizability of these findings. For example, no children in the sample were excluded from public school programs. This is likely due to policies instituted by the board of education that severely limit the use of exclusionary discipline in prekindergarten and early elementary. Further quantitative and mixed-method work is necessary to replicate and extend these findings and triangulate parent, teacher, and administrator experiences. This analysis was not explicitly designed to capture the family-level impacts of early childhood expulsion. Nevertheless, such disciplinary practices can have financial, logistical, and emotional implications for parents and children. We intend to take up this vital question in future work. Findings from this study shed light on families’ experiences and affirm the importance of including their voices when evaluating childcare policy implementation.