De Facto Suspensions: Informal Exclusionary Discipline Practices in Public Preschool and Early Elementary Settings

Abstract

Following recent discipline reforms, formal suspensions and expulsions have declined nationwide. This qualitative study investigates the kinds, causes, and consequences of informal exclusionary discipline practices that have inadvertently emerged in public preschool and early elementary settings. Drawing on interviews with 63 parents, teachers, administrators, and behavior specialists, we provide evidence of within-classroom, within-school, and out-of-school informal exclusionary discipline practices. We find that these practices occur when mandates to reduce formal discipline are not paired with adequate resources for alternative restorative behavior management approaches. By disproportionately impacting racially/ethnically and economically marginalized students, informal practices reproduce formal school discipline disparities and contribute to further educational inequities. These practices have lasting harms, including disruptions to child learning, parental employment, and child and families’ sense of school belonging. Findings underscore the need to systematically document and address informal exclusionary discipline practices, which remain invisible in administrative records but constitute increasingly common forms of racialized exclusion in contemporary early education.