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Children who are expelled from preschool are subsequently more likely to experience academic failure and enter what scientists and advocates call the "cradle-to-prison pipeline," meaning that these children tend to follow a trajectory away from school and toward the criminal justice system.

Preschool expulsion may be less likely, however, if a teacher perceives parents to be cooperative during discussions about the child's challenging behavior, according to a study in Prevention Science by Drs. Courtney Zulauf-McCurdy, Rechele Brooks and Andrew Meltzoff.

"Our findings show that a collaborative parent-teacher relationship may help reduce the number of preschool expulsions," said lead author Courtney A. Zulauf-McCurdy, Ph.D., pediatric psychologist at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

"This insight can guide simple interventions to encourage relationship building between preschool teachers and parents. The impact on children could be profound in the long term."

Previous research has revealed that attendance in a preschool program is correlated with better educational, occupational, and social outcomes. However, young children are being expelled from their preschool classrooms at undesirable rates—about 250 per day in the United States.

Studies also show that child race is a significant predictor of expulsion, even when controlling for poverty, child behavior and perceived achievement. Across preschools, the rate of expulsion for Black children is almost three times higher than for white children and almost six times higher than for Latine children.

Dr. Zulauf-McCurdy and colleagues at the University of Washington conducted a random-assignment experiment to assess two known risk factors for preschool expulsion—teachers' perception of the disruptiveness of the child's classroom behavior and teachers' feelings of hopelessness about changing the child's behavior.

The study included 95 preschool teachers who 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 parents were described as uncooperative with the teacher and half as cooperative).

Even though the child's challenging behavior was the same by experimental design, teachers' perception of that behavior and teachers' feelings of hopelessness toward the child were significantly influenced by the degree of parental cooperation. Preschool teachers changed their ratings about the perceived disruptiveness of the child's behavior after receiving the brief vignette about parental cooperation. Teacher ratings of hopelessness about changing the child's behavior significantly increased for teachers who read about uncooperative parents.

"Bidirectional communication between the preschool teacher and parents is the foundation for working together on child behavior concerns," stressed Dr. Zulauf-McCurdy. "Focusing on this relationship could help prevent preschool expulsions."