California preschools are mirroring an alarming national trend, suspending or expelling children from preschools far too frequently. This is the judgment of a group of state educators, policymakers and representatives of public agencies, including the California Department of Education, who are working on a proposal that will offer solutions.
The group is an unofficial committee that grew out of a project involving the Department of Defense and the WestEd Center for Child and Family Studies, an education policy and research organization. This winter they plan to issue policy recommendations governing the suspension and expulsion of preschool students.
Linda Brault, who heads the group forming the recommendations, said that they will likely include measures such as: lower child-to-teacher ratios; data collection and tracking; and training to recognize unconscious biases that often lead to unfair assumptions about different children. Brault is a project director at the WestEd Center for Child and Family Studies.
[For more of this story, written by Jeremy Hay, go to https://edsource.org/2016/grou...l-suspensions/571186]
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