This story is part of a series from NPR Ed exploring the challenges U.S. schools face meeting students' mental health needs.
Every year, thousands of children are suspended from preschool.
Take a second to let that sink in.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, 6,743 childrenwho were enrolled in district-provided pre-K in 2013-14 received one or more out-of-school suspensions.
And that's just public pre-K. Still more children were likely suspended from the nation's many privately-run preschools and day cares.
While most suspensions come as the result of a child's disruptive, sometimes violent, behavior, experts and advocates now argue that suspending a 3- or 4-year-old, no matter how bad the behavior, is a bad idea.
"Expelling preschoolers is not an intervention," according to apolicy statement issued earlier this year by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics. "Rather, it disrupts the learning process, pushing a child out the door of one early care and education program, only for him or her to be enrolled somewhere else, continuing a negative cycle of revolving doors that increases inequality and hides the child and family from access to meaningful supports."
[For more of this story, written by Cory Turner, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/ed...kay-with-connecticut]
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