Welcome

Welcome to the Program Leader’s Guide to Supporting All Children’s Success! The guide is a research-based tool aimed at helping you eliminate suspensions and expulsions in your early childhood program by addressing the underlying root causes. The guide provides information, recommended policies and practices, resources, and tools targeted at three levels or tiers of support to help program leaders.

How to Use the Practice Guide

The Overview of the Issue tab provides important information to help you better understand what suspensions and expulsions look like in early childhood settings and why eliminating all forms of exclusion is urgent and vital to preparing all children for success.

The Recommended Policies & Practices tab of the guide is divided into three tiers of recommended policies and practices. Each recommendation includes a description; steps and tips for implementing the recommendation; potential barriers and solutions; links to resources, tools, and additional information; and references.

• Tier 1 recommended policies and practices focus on program-wide policies, procedures, and practices that help program leaders reduce exclusionary discipline practices occurring in the program. Tier 1 recommendations address building a program climate that promotes collaboration, problem-solving, teacher capacity-building, and prevention-based approaches, and reduces teacher stress, ineffectiveness, and the negative effects these have on child behaviors and outcomes.
• Tier 2 recommended policies and practices address how program leaders can work with individual classroom providers/teachers to support a positive, culturally inclusive environment that nurtures children’s positive social-emotional development and prevents challenging behavior.
• Tier 3 recommended policies and practices help program leaders support providers/teachers in addressing the needs of individual children through assessment and tailored behavior support plans.

The Glossary tab provides definitions for key terms used throughout the guide.

Get Started

The guide can be read from start to finish, or the individual recommended policies and practices can stand alone. We recognize that implementing all recommended policies and practices may be overwhelming and that programmatic changes often need to occur in stages.

To help you prioritize what recommended policies and practices are most necessary and timely to implement in your program, we have developed a self-assessment. The self-assessment is an optional tool that includes a brief questionnaire to help you reflect on your program’s current policies, practices, and needs. The results of the self-assessment will provide you a roadmap to navigating the guide and examining your strengths and needs.