But now, bills before the state legislature would roll back these reforms and again allow schools to dismiss children in kindergarten through third-grade. 

Three measures under consideration would strip a prohibition on “disciplinary dismissals” — the removal of children from schools — in grades K-3, loosen the definition of student behavior meriting exclusion from the classroom, end a requirement that schools try non-exclusionary strategies before dismissing a child and let schools once again punish youngsters by denying or delaying their access to lunch and recess.

A separate bill would overturn a ban on seclusion for K-3 students — the practice of confining a child in isolation. Some people believe seclusion should be an option when a child’s behavior is out of control. Others call it punitive and cruel, particularly when used on very young children. 

That split was evident in testimony at a recent state House of Representatives hearing on the legislation. Sitting on opposite sides of a windowless Capitol hearing room, the witnesses took turns describing starkly different realities. 

Principal of Jeffers Pond Elementary in the affluent, suburban Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools, Patrick Glynn testified that suspensions provide “the gift of time” so staff can “allow for healing” and create a “re-entry plan” for the student in question. 

Minnesota Elementary School Principals Association President Lisa Carlson, who oversees a school in another prosperous Twin Cities suburb, said a suspension can send a strong signal to a parent in denial about a student’s issues: “For some families, the only way to truly recognize the severity of a situation is to be inconvenienced by it. When a child is suspended, parents are forced to stop, pay attention and take action.”

But parent and educator Ali Alowonle told lawmakers that suspension taught her child the wrong lesson. “She was told that she could not come to school because a police officer had to determine if she were a danger,” Alowonle said. “She began to hate school and refused to go. Suspension broke my kid’s trust in school and adults there.”

Parent Susan Montgomery broke down describing her son’s suspension setting off a destructive cycle. “Now, at 20, he is trying to rebuild his life,” she said, pausing to choke back sobs. “He is taking computer class, participating in healing circle, Bible study, working as a janitor and attending recovery groups — but all behind bars.”

However and whenever lawmakers vote on the bills — they may be standalone legislation or wrapped into an omnibus spending package – they will resurface longstanding racial and demographic divides.

Minnesota has long had nation-leading racial disparities in education, with a teacher corps that is more than 90% white and an increasingly diverse student body. Its schools also have a long history of suspending and expelling non-white students and children with disabilities at much higher rates than their white, nondisabled peers. 

In 2017, the state Department of Human Rights entered into a settlement with 41 school districts and charter schools that were found to have suspended and expelled non-white children and those with disabilities at disproportionate rates. A 2022 from Solutions Not Suspensions, a coalition of advocacy groups that has campaigned for 10 years for laws requiring schools to stop disciplinary practices, found that children of color received 79% of exclusionary discipline despite being 49% of the student body during the 2018-19 school year. Children with disabilities made up 14% of students but received 43% of suspensions and expulsions. 

The agency noted that when the reason for discipline was subjective — e.g. “disruptive behavior” or “verbal abuse,” versus bringing a weapon to school — the disproportionality skyrocketed.  

Armed with these numbers, advocates got a break in 2023, when Democrats gained power in both legislative chambers and the governor’s office. They enacted laws outlawing the use of dangerous prone restraints by police officers stationed in schools and dramatically narrowed schools’ authority to dismiss children. 

But limits on police authority in the wake of Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis officer had divided Minnesotans along both partisan and geographic lines, with city residents saying they were long overdue and rural residents largely opposed. In 2024, with an election looming and the support of rural Democrats feared to be softening, the Democratic-majority legislature reversed the ban on prone restraints.

The 2024 election left the state House evenly split, with equal numbers of lawmakers from each party set to take office. The late discovery that a Democrat did not actually live in the district where he was elected gave Republicans a one-vote majority until a March 11 special election likely restores the 67-67 split. They immediately started working to try to roll back policies enacted by the Democrats in 2023 and 2024.

Support for the discipline reforms passed in 2023 had been weak among rural Democrats. Now, advocates fear that the rollbacks being proposed by the Republicans could clear the state Senate, which has a one-vote Democratic majority. Advocates fear Democratic Gov. Tim Walz would not veto the measures. 

Kate Lynn Snyder is a lobbyist for Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union. Speaking in opposition to the changes, she reminded lawmakers that it is still legal for teachers to remove students from classrooms. Schools can send children home for less than a day, impose an in-school suspension or send a child to a sensory break room. When there is an ongoing, serious safety threat, expulsion is still possible.

“The largest complaint I hear about school safety from my members is that when our teachers call administrators to send someone to their office, no one is answering the phone,” she said. “That might be because of the perception that their hands are tied, or it might be because of the educator shortage, but either way teachers, like students, are not getting the currently allowed supports that they’re asking for.”

The state Department of Education also opposes the changes. At the hearing, lobbyist Adosh Unni described resources the agency has made available to schools interested in changing their approach to discipline.  

Matt Shaver, a former teacher who is policy director of the advocacy group EdAllies, urged lawmakers not to return to allowing schools to withhold or delay lunch or recess because of a student’s behavior.

“I took a lot of recess away from kids during my decade in the classroom,” he said. “I used this tool when students didn’t finish their homework or worksheets or weren’t focused in class. My line was, if you’re going to be playing during class time, you’ll do class time during your play time. I thought I was pretty clever and delivering consistent logical consequences that would teach the behaviors I wanted to see for my students. In hindsight, I was wrong.

“This wasn’t an effective tool because the same kids missed recess over and over,” he continued. “Instead of keeping a kid inside for a punishment, my time with them would have been much better spent on the playground building that relationship that would have made it more likely for them to respect and listen to me as their teacher.”

Reading that title, many of us have a Wait. What? moment, unable to connect one idea with the other. Expulsion? For little kids? Isn’t that for incorrigible troublemakers who’ve exhausted all their chances with school officials and teachers?

One would think so. Tragically, as author Dr. Katherine M. Zinsser writes, for thousands of American children that point comes well before their fifth birthday, when they are labeled as “challenging,” “defiant” or “difficult,” and are ejected from early childhood education before they even reach kindergarten. Children 2, 3 and 4 years old — especially boys and Black children — are being kicked out of their schools at “staggering rates,” she writes — more than three times that of K–12 school children.

Drawing on research and interviews with teachers, program administrators, parents and policymakers, Zinsser’s “No Longer Welcome” provides a thoughtful, nuanced appreciation of the complex factors contributing to the expulsion epidemic. Foremost, she makes it clear the children are not to blame. Even though preschoolers can behave in intensely emotional, combative and even destructive ways, they are acting out in developmentally appropriate ways for small children without the language to express themselves or the capacity to self-regulate their emotions.

Nor does she blame the teachers who are often maxed out on their own stress levels from jobs that would be demanding even if everyone were well-paid, well-trained and had their own emotions well-regulated. Far too frequently, none of this is the case.

Excluding a child from school can have significant negative impacts on the child’s academic achievement. Children removed from school for just a few days can have trouble catching up. Studies show that children who are pushed out of the classroom for disciplinary reasons don’t do as well on test scores or other measures of academic learning; exclusionary discipline fuels widening achievement gaps during this critical period of development.

The excluded child loses their connection with classmates and misses the social-learning opportunities they can’t get at home. They feel alienated from school, which — no surprise — makes them more likely to drop out altogether. One of the worst effects of expulsion is that children begin to be labeled as “bad kids,” and to think of themselves as such. Imagine the future unfolding for a child of 3 who is thrown into the “bad boy” track and begins to think of himself as a “threat to themselves and others.”

Researchers have traced significant lifelong negative outcomes to school exclusion, notably delinquency and incarceration, Zinsser writes. A 2015 study showed that children who were repeatedly suspended were eight times more likely to be incarcerated than those who never were. Ultimately, society pays, as older kids who’ve been expelled or suspended are more likely to drop out, putting them at risk of financial insecurity and the need to depend on public assistance. Studies also have shown an association between expulsion and later problems with substance abuse. All of which may seem far removed from that little 3-year-old, but Zinsser’s point is that early experiences of exclusion can launch a cascade of negative interactions with schools.

For every child who is expelled, a family pays the price. Parents suffer emotionally when their children are expelled, and they can begin to see themselves as failures as parents. They suffer financially as well, reporting employment issues such as having to leave work suddenly to retrieve their child, lost hours and wages, and even having to quit their jobs when they can’t find alternative child care. Families who are receiving child care subsidies lose eligibility when they lose their jobs, which makes finding alternative child care sometimes impossible — or impossible to afford. Nearly a quarter of the expelled children in Zinsser’s research team’s surveys didn’t find alternative child care and were kept at home instead.

Bias at Work

Biases, both explicit and implicit, play a powerful role in expulsions, Zinsser writes. A teacher states that girls are “easier” or “more fun” than boys, or that boys are innately more “hyper” and “aggressive,” and it isn’t hard to guess which kid is going to meet harsher discipline as they gallop to the art table or run in the cafeteria.

Implicit biases are the insidious factor in many expulsions. Though all humans have unconscious biases, in the U.S., our collective biases fall along racial, cultural and gender lines. Implicit biases are at play all the time in the American education system but, Zinsser writes, three in particular contribute to disparities in early childhood expulsion: “being a boy, being Black and being big.” The more these “three Bs” describe a child, the greater the likelihood adults will be biased against that child. Black boys are perceived as being “dangerous or aggressive” (At 4 years old? Unfortunately, yes), which eventually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as teachers anticipate misbehavior among kids who’ve been stereotyped as disruptive or dangerous.

“In light of all this evidence,” Zinsser writes, “it is clear that American preschools are choked with the same ‘smog of racism’ that Dr. Beverly Tatum in high schools nearly 20 years ago.”

The Kids Aren’t to Blame; the Issues Are Real

And yet, what’s a teacher to do? What’s a school to do? Some of the case studies Zinsser presents offer truly frightening portraits of out-of-control children who, though preschoolers, have inflicted serious damage on school personnel or classmates. A 3-year-old’s tantrum turns into something else when they’re strong enough to throw a chair, shove another child to the ground, or kick a teacher hard enough to require stitches.

Zinsser approaches the topic of expulsion through an ecological lens, pointing out that the process occurs on multiple levels at once, with children, teachers, parents and administrators all experiencing the process differently.

We expect a lot of providers, she writes. They work in a system that routinely discounts their value, and they report more stress and worse physical health than their non-teaching peers. Preschool teachers are among the most economically insecure workers in the U.S., with a median annual wage that generally hovers just above the federal poverty line. The demands on these educators are colossal. Many even say they can’t easily take breaks or step out of the classroom for a minute — even if they need to step away from a disruptive student and take a few deep breaths to regulate their own emotions.

Early childhood teachers may enter the workforce because they are empathetic to the needs of children who face adversity but may not have the tools, experience or support to be effective in the face of a 4-year-old in bloody-murder-tantrum mode.

“To me,” Zinsser writes, “the exclusion of a child is indicative of a teacher at the end of their rope — a teacher so emotionally or physically exhausted that they must triage how to expend their limited remaining energy.”

Promising Paths, but Few and Far Between

Throughout her excellent book, Zinsser describes programs and approaches that can intervene and interrupt problematic behavior. Workplace climate and culture are decisive, with “high effort” programs engaging in the complex process of working with a family to address a child’s disruptive behavior. But for teachers and administrators trying to cope with chaos in the classroom with inadequate staffing and anorexic budgets, it may seem that just getting rid of “that kid” is the only solution.

It doesn’t have to be this way, nor should it. “No Longer Welcome” thoughtfully details how parents, teachers, preschool administrators, researchers and policymakers all have a role to play in ensuring that no child is excluded, and all can remain in high-quality early care and education settings. Zinsser outlines roles that every member of the field, from classroom aide to legislator, must play in sustaining this change.

More than 20 percent of 2- to 5-year-olds display “challenging” behaviors. If 20 percent of children in a school had peanut allergies, Zinsser writes, and a school persisted in serving peanut butter in the cafeteria, parents, pediatricians and politicians would be outraged and demand structural reform. Peanut allergies affect only 1.4 percent of U.S. children, yet entire infrastructures have shifted to rightfully accommodate their needs. Nobody blames the children for being allergic, but we do blame children who need help managing their emotions.

The time has come, Zinsser writes, to flip the script and consider that the deficiency lies with the adults in the picture. The kids deserve support and huge scoops of compassion.

And while the controversy surrounding the issue hasn’t changed, the pandemic offers up a troubling new context: Districts are reporting spikes in , violent attacks on school employees and blatant disregard for school rules.

“There is certainly a much higher level of dysregulation in our kids,” said Rico Munn, superintendent of the Aurora Public Schools in Colorado. He added that educators usually expect students to fall into a routine and follow rules by September. “We weren’t hitting that until spring break.”

The education department is expected to update its policy in two parts. One will focus on students with disabilities, who are significantly to be suspended and expelled than non-disabled students. The other will address racial gaps in discipline — a reality that persists in many districts despite over the past decade to keep students from being removed from school and often referred to police.

Advocates for students’ educational rights are eager for the department to make a strong statement against discipline that keeps students out of the classroom.

“Discipline is inherently an authoritative tool used to punish students for being what an adult has decided is disobedient,” said Denise Stile Marshall, president of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, which focuses on the rights of students with disabilities. “There is a lot of research on this, but simply put, punitive school discipline does not improve student behavior or academic achievement.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s not accidental. The person leading the department’s effort is Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary at the Office for Civil Rights, the same position she held under President Barack Obama. Seth Galanter, who worked with Lhamon during the Obama years, has also returned to the civil rights office after four years at the National Center for Youth Law.

In 2014, the Obama administration issued a saying that schools where Black and Hispanic students were disproportionately removed for disciplinary reasons could be in violation of federal civil rights laws — even if those students misbehaved at higher rates. 

Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded that guidance in 2018, siding with those who called the move and said it misinterpreted meant to prevent discrimination.

The Biden administration comes to the issue not only more sympathetic to the idea of restorative justice, but in the midst of a pandemic that has seen an increase in student misbehavior. One said student behavior was so “abysmal” that educators were afraid for their safety.

‘A year of disrupted schooling’ 

That’s one reason why Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, that the department should hold off on new guidance, arguing that districts shouldn’t have to fear a federal investigation for removing disruptive students from the classroom. 

The pandemic, he noted, was worse for low-income Black and Hispanic students, who were more likely to attend schools that had been closed longer. 

“The very same students that have more catching up to do after a year of disrupted schooling are also facing the prospect of a more challenging learning environment if schools are hesitant to remove problem students,” he wrote. 

Others say the pandemic shouldn’t interrupt the administration’s efforts to revisit the issue of bias in school discipline.

“It is always a good time to say that racial discrimination is wrong [and] that children with disabilities have the right to be alongside their non-disabled peers,” said Liz King, the senior program director for education at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. 

She thinks the guidance should reflect showing police in schools don’t reduce gun violence but do increase suspensions, expulsion and arrests of students — especially for Black students. She wants the department to take a stand against seclusion and restraint of students and “lean in” to the rights of Black and Hispanic girls and LGBTQ students.

Black girls are five times more likely than white girls to be suspended from school at least once and four times more likely to be arrested at school. A 2016 from advocacy group GLSEN found that LGBTQ students are suspended at higher rates than non-LGBTQ students. 

‘Absolutely a dance’

The Obama-era guidance embraced so-called restorative justice practices that aim to give students a chance to build stronger relationships, work out their grievances and make amends for their actions in lieu of suspension. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have passed laws supporting the model, according to the at Georgetown Law School. 

on such programs was mixed, but a more from California showed restorative practices can shrink Black-white discipline disparities and are associated with higher grade point averages in high school.

But “good discipline is very expensive” and hard to implement with the “regular teacher allocation in the school,” said Elliott Duchon, former superintendent of the Jurupa Unified School District, near Los Angeles. 

His district launched a multi-year effort to reduce suspensions and expulsions after federal officials found that Hispanic students were more likely to be suspended than white students.

Los Angeles Unified’s restorative justice program costs $13 million a year, according to the district, and funding for the Oakland district’s program — considered — was almost cut until the city and private funders stepped in to pick up the cost. 

Critics of alternative discipline practices argue the Obama-era guidance created tension between teachers who make discipline referrals and administrators who send students back to class without any consequences.

“It’s absolutely a dance,” said Jacqueline Shirey, at-risk coordinator for the Beaumont Independent School District in Texas. “If we are going to say that students can’t leave, what are we doing to help the teachers?”

With that in mind, Shirey began training teachers last fall to set up “de-escalation” spaces in their classrooms — a desk with a box that includes stress balls, 500-piece puzzles and writing materials. 

“I saw a way for students to learn how to manage their own emotions before it became disruptive, and I didn’t want students to leave my classroom to do that,” she said, but added that ground rules are necessary. “If you don’t implement it with a purpose, then it really does become supplies in a corner that students can play with.”

When students returned last fall, some administrators decided it was important to take a business-as-usual approach to discipline. 

In Nashville, Hunters Lane High School Principal Susan Kessler said her teachers “enforce dress code this year and every year” and that it helps in “maintaining school culture, enforcing building security and reducing distractions in the classroom.”

Other school leaders factored in the impact of school closures on students’ behavior.

Aaron Eyler, principal at Matawan Regional High School in Aberdeen, New Jersey, brought his staff together in September for a frank conversation about what to expect when students returned. 

He told them not to worry about trying to “win the battle” against students wearing hoodies and hats. And he wasn’t surprised to see more of what he referred to as insubordination, like students wearing Airpods and being late to class. The point, he said, was to keep students from missing even more instruction.

“With … what happened last year and the lack of consistent structure,” he said, “there was no way we weren’t going to have greater instances of discipline than what we’re accustomed to in school.”

Ronn Nozoe, executive director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, said any guidance from the department is likely to “ruffle feathers,” but he added, “You never want to tie the hands of folks who are actually doing the work.”