Prevalence and Factors Associated with Expulsion in Center-Based Child Care Settings across Two National Surveys: An Exploration of Policy Impacts

Background/Purpose: Pre-kindergarten students face an expulsion rate three times higher than their K-12 counterparts, with significant variations across Early Childhood Education (ECE) settings. Particularly alarming are the expulsion rates in center-based child care settings that are not part of state-funded pre-kindergarten systems. Despite this, comprehensive examinations of the socio-ecological factors associated with expulsion rates in center-based child care settings are lacking. Following a policy statement on Expulsion and Suspension in ECE settings issued by the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Education in 2014, it is crucial to identify the overall trend in child expulsion before and after policy changes. We hypothesize that the prevalence of expulsion among children aged 0 to 5 would decrease in 2019 compared to 2012, and that expulsion in center-based ECE settings was influenced by child, provider, program, and community-level factors simultaneously. Identifying these predictors will enhance our understanding of why children are expelled and inform prevention efforts.

Methods: Secondary data from the National Survey of Early Care and Education for the years 2012 and 2019 were analyzed. The analytic sample was restricted to child care providers (n=14,100) who regularly serve children aged 0 to 5 and responded to a question about child expulsion in the prior 3 months. We examined child, provider, program, and community-level factors as independent variables, with provider-reported whether they expelled a child (yes/no) as the dependent variable.

After examining multicollinearity among the independent variables, hierarchical logistic regression was conducted. Child-level factors were entered in Model 1, proceeded by the sequential addition of provider characteristics in Model 2, program characteristics in Model 3, and community factors in Model 4.

Results: 10.48% (809) of childcare providers reported expelling at least one pre-kindergartner in 2012; this prevalence increased to 14.65% (927) by 2019. Logistic regression analyses revealed child-level factors like the percentage of children with an IEP/ISFP (OR=0.98, 95% CI: 0.97-1.00) initially reduced the odds of expulsion but these factors were not significant in Model 4. Higher provider education (OR=0.65, 95% CI: 0.44-0.96) transiently was associated with lower expulsion rates, yet this effect dissipated when program and community variables were examined. Program factors such as increased operational weeks per year (OR=1.05, 95% CI: 1.02-1.07) and total enrollment (OR=1.01, 95% CI: 1.00-1.01) were consistently associated with higher odds of expulsion, whereas more comprehensive services (OR=0.91, 95% CI: 0.83-1.00) was associated with lower odds. Community-level poverty density significantly increased odds of expulsion with moderate poverty (OR= 1.38, 95% CI: 1.01-1.90) being linked to higher odds of expulsion.

Conclusions and Implications: This study enhances our understanding of risk and protective factors associated with expulsion at individual-levels and from multi-layered socio-ecological perspectives. Findings underscore the importance of developing targeted policy initiatives and pre-kindergarten programmatic responses to address the rising prevalence of expulsion in center-based ECE settings. Study findings also have implications for expulsion policies, provider recruitment and training, and community poverty initiatives.