More than 1,000 preschoolers were suspended or expelled in each week during 2016, according to a study.
Schools suspended roughly 50,000 preschoolers in 2016 and expelled another 17,000 preschoolers that year, according to the liberal public policy group Center for American Progress analysis of the 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health.
“These disciplinary rates are particularly shocking, since suspending and expelling young children has not been shown to produce positive behavioral results,” Rasheed Malik, a Center for American Progress policy analyst, wrote Monday. “Quite the opposite, such practices can often intensify the challenges faced by these children and their tparents, and have even been discussed as the first stage in a preschool-to-prison pipeline.”
Three and four-year-old children “test boundaries,” Malik argued earlier this year, claiming that correcting rowdy behavior in an empathetic way is more helpful than punishing it.
The center found that, compared with students of another race, black students had more than double the chance of receiving suspensions or expulsions. Boys, comprising 51 percent of preschoolers, accounted for 82 percent of the two disciplinary measures.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to the Department of Education for comment, but received none in time for press.
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