Preschool Expulsion Risk Factors: Teachers’ Ratings of Preschoolers’ Challenging Behaviors Vary by the Cooperativeness of their Parents

Abstract

Preschool children in the United States are expelled at a rate of about 250 per day with a disproportionate number being Black children. There is a need to better understand how to prevent preschool expulsion. Using a random-assignment experiment, preschool teachers (N = 95; 92% female; 61% White) were assigned to one of eight conditions: child race (Black vs. White) × child gender (boy vs. girl) × parental cooperativity (cooperative vs. uncooperative). Teachers read two controlled vignettes: one about a child and one about that child’s parents. The child vignette described the child’s challenging classroom behavior (identical behavior for all children); the parent vignette described a subsequent meeting with the child’s parents (half of the parents were described as uncooperative with the teacher and half as cooperative). After each vignette, teachers were asked to complete sections of the Preschool Expulsion Risk Measure (PERM) to assess two known risk factors for preschool expulsion: (a) teachers’ perception of the disruptiveness of the child’s classroom behavior and (b) teachers’ feelings of hopelessness about changing the child’s behavior. Even though the child’s challenging behavior was controlled (by experimental design), teachers’ construal of the child’s behavior and teachers’ feelings of hopelessness towards the child were significantly influenced by the descriptions of parental cooperation. Variations in results by child race and child gender are also reported. Findings indicate that teachers’ perceptions of parents may be a particularly important factor to prevent children from preschool expulsion.