Maryland Law Offers Lessons on Restricting Early Childhood Suspension and Expulsion

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Key Findings

Finding #1: Maryland school staff need additional resources to effectively address challenging behaviors and meet the needs of diverse learners, despite districts’ efforts to promote supportive and preventative discipline approaches.

According to many interviewees, Maryland’s law accelerated existing momentum toward supportive discipline. For example, school staff reported increased access to trainings on evidence-based approaches that emphasize positive interactions and preventing misbehavior (e.g., Conscious Discipline). Many districts also increased the number of mental and behavioral health staff available to schools after the policy took effect. These resources have been invaluable in helping school staff reduce their reliance on exclusionary discipline, but critical gaps remain. In particular, school staff requested more training and coaching to help teachers effectively implement inclusive classrooms for children with special needs and more support staff to assist when behavioral challenges arise despite the use of preventative approaches.

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Finding #2: School staff had varying knowledge about and interpretations of the PK-2 suspension policy and its implications for school discipline.

School administrators had differing understandings of what constitutes suspension under the law. Some understood that removing a student from the classroom or asking a parent to pick up their child early is akin to suspension and that these informal practices should no longer be used. Others did not report receiving this information and seemed to believe that these are permissible ways to address challenging behaviors. Additionally, although almost all interviewed administrators were aware of the suspension policy, very few PK teachers knew of it; however, some teachers reported that Conscious Discipline training had inspired them to try keeping students in the classroom.

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Finding #3: Schools used suspension and expulsion less frequently under the law but continued to rely on informal exclusionary practices.

Most districts have reported reduced suspension rates since the policy took effect and some school staff reported less frequent use of informal exclusionary practices (e.g., sending a child to the office) in response to challenging classroom behaviors. However, other school staff described continued—and, in some cases, increased—use of informal practices that exclude children from the learning environment but which are typically not reported as suspensions, such as calling a parent to pick up their child early or assigning a student to in-school suspension.

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Finding #4: School administrators demonstrated limited understanding of discipline disproportionality.

Many school administrators indicated receiving training in diversity, equity, and inclusion. A few had also received targeted training and support around disproportionality in student discipline. However, administrators often pointed to racial/ethnic group population sizes to explain why Black students were suspended at higher rates than White students in their school districts, without acknowledging that this masks the relative proportion of students suspended by race.

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Recommendations for Policymakers

Findings from the Child Trends study highlight successes and challenges of implementing Maryland’s PK-2 suspension and expulsion policy in local school systems. As more states develop and implement policies to eliminate suspension and expulsion in ECE settings, lessons from Maryland can help policymakers develop more effective and equitable policies. Specifically, we recommend that policymakers:

• Use a tailored communications strategy to clarify state discipline requirements and restrictions to district administrators, school administrators, and teachers. Provide definitions and examples of key terms (e.g., suspension) to ensure consistent interpretation across school districts and schools.
• Issue guidance on best practices and evidence-based approaches to help school districts comply with discipline restrictions, even if the use of such approaches is not explicitly required by law.
• Match discipline policy shifts with funding for additional staffing and programming to ensure that schools have the capacity to meet students’ behavioral needs and support educators’ shifts in practice.
• Prioritize training on equitable discipline to help school administrators and educators detect disproportionality using discipline data and recognize the underlying individual and systemic causes of school discipline disparities.

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This work was supported by the Foundation for Child Development. The Foundation for Child Development is a national private philanthropy based in New York City that supports research to help researchers, policymakers, and advocates develop high-quality, evidence-informed, and equity-centered early childhood systems to serve the needs of all children.

For more details about this study, contact Bonnie Solomon at bsolomon@childtrends.org.