Early Childhood Education Commons^™

Black Preschool Minds Matter: A Critical Examination Of Preschool Teacher Beliefs About Discipline, Michelle Dejohnette

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Preschoolers are more likely to be expelled than children in any other grade, at more than three times the rate of school-age children. Further, this phenomenon is racialized and gendered. Boys have been expelled at 4.5 times the rate of girls, and Black boys have been twice as likely to be pushed out of their preschool program than their peers (Gilliam et al., 2016). Although Black children comprise only 18.9% of the preschool population, they have been 48% of the total preschool children who received one or more out-of-school suspensions. This unequal suspension rate is one of the most important …