Study
finding high pre-K expulsion rate
attacked
Educators say Jersey results at
odds with school practices
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 • BY PEGGY O'CROWLEY •
Star-Ledger Staff
A national study that found children in
pre-kindergarten are expelled from programs at much higher
rates than those in kindergarten through high school is
drawing fierce criticism from early education experts in New
Jersey, who question the data gathered here.
"The reason I'm so upset is that we don't
allow expulsions," Ellen Freede, the state's assistant
commissioner for early childhood education, said of
state-funded pre-kindergarten programs. "This is shoddy
research."
According to the study, released
yesterday by the Foundation for Child Development, New
Jersey's pre-K expulsion rate was 15 times higher than its
K-12 expulsion rate. And the state ranked 21st out of the 40
states in the U.S. that fund pre-kindergarten. Eight percent
of New Jersey pre-kindergarten teachers said a 3- or
4-year-old student had left their programs without a plan to
transfer to another within the past year.
The results also were questioned by child
care researchers, advocates, directors and teachers in many
state-funded programs who maintain few, if any, children are
ever kicked out of pre-kindergarten.
Freede said regulations governing
programs in the Abbott districts -- the low-income
communities where pre-kindergarten is free -- forbid
expulsion of children without evaluation and referral to a
more appropriate setting.
Instead, said Freede, child care
directors can call on special teams within public school
districts that can evaluate a child's behavior and help the
teacher come up with solutions. "We're right in the middle
of an intensive training in working with children with
challenging behaviors. We are educating master teachers who
then educate staff," she said.
Walter S. Gilliam, the study's co-author
and an assistant professor at the Yale University Child
Study Center, stood by the study's findings. "Just because
something tells us something we don't want to hear doesn't
mean it's shoddy," he said in response to Freede's comments.
"Just because something is illegal doesn't mean it doesn't
happen. We collected data in New Jersey in 2002-2003. Are
these relatively new regulations, do they include all
programs in all the Abbott districts?"
One point of controversy is over the
wording of the survey question used to determine expulsion
rates. Teachers were asked whether a child had ever been
required to terminate participation or be enrolled in a
different program due to behavioral problems. They were
asked not to count children they knew were being transferred
to another setting .
"They never used the word expulsion," in
the survey, said W. Steven Barnett, the director of the
National Institute on Early Education Research at Rutgers
University.
Gilliam said he deliberately did not use
the word expulsion because many pre-kindergarten teachers
might not be familiar with it and because the definition
differs among public school districts.
"I'm surprised to hear this, because he
(Barnett) reviewed the study before we went to the field
with it, and his organization funded the study," Gilliam
said of Barnett, who is married to Freede.
Ellen Boyle, an attorney and a preschool
advocate for the Education Law Center, which led the fight
to create the Abbott districts, said she has not heard from
parents saying their children are being expelled from
preschools. "Several years ago, when the program just
started, I did get calls about kids getting thrown out," she
said. "But I haven't for years because it's now viewed as an
entitlement."
But Diana Autin, the co-director of the
Statewide Parent Advocacy Group, said she has heard of
children who are asked to leave a program because of their
behavior. Many times, she said, the parents are too
embarrassed to challenge the program's decision, or to let
an advocacy group know about it.
Child care directors contacted in a
random sample by The Star- Ledger said they did not expel
children. Mary Smith, executive director of Babyland Family
Services in Newark, which runs seven child care centers with
750 children, said her group has a policy against expelling
children. Staff work with parents instead, she
said.
"We've never expelled a child in 30
years," said Gayle Kloepfer, director of the Sarah Ward
Nurseries in Newark, which runs three centers with 300
children.
Harriet Lerner, the president of the New
Jersey Child Care Association, a group of private day care
directors and owners, said in her three centers she has
asked only three or four parents to remove their children in
the last 30 years.
"If this were a problem, it would be
coming up at our meetings. It's not something I'm hearing
about or we're getting requests to deal with at
conferences," she said.
The study, which collected information
from about 12 percent of the nation's 40,000 pre-K
classrooms, found that boys were four times more likely than
girls to be expelled and African-Americans were more than
twice as likely to be expelled than white or Latino
children. Expulsion rates were lowest in classrooms located
in public school districts and Head Start
programs.
Experts said the study pointed to a need
for better support for teachers, staff and parents to help
manage young children with behavioral problems. That would
include smaller class sizes, more training and early
intervention services, Gilliam said.
© 2005 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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