Centering Black Families: Equitable Discipline through Improved Data Policies in Child Care

This brief will outline the history of inequitable disciplinary practices in child care and early education—and in the context of American society more generally. In addition, the brief will examine how equitable data practices can uncover important, program-level information that tells the story of current realities and can center racial equity in data planning and collection. Finally, this brief will explore current child care systems such as the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and Head Start, which are microcosms of the larger privatized system. Equitable data practices are a key first step when examining all these issues and strengthening early care and education experiences.

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This report explores inequitable discipline in child care and early learning settings. Specifically, we show that:   

  • The lack of data on harsh discipline experienced by very young children in child care limits our ability to develop polices to end this practice. 

  • Programs such as the Child Care and Development Block Grant and Head Start are well positioned to begin collecting these data and disaggregating them by race, a prerequisite to changing policy. 

  • Since bias is built into early childhood survey practices and data collection systems, equitable data practices and community engagement can root out bias while also centering and shifting power to Black families and communities.     

  • In addition to highlighting innovative efforts in California, Colorado, and other states to eliminate inequitable discipline, we urge state and federal policymakers to:   

  • Increase funding to identify and eliminate harsh and inequitable disciplinary practices to manage young children’s behavior. 

  • Pass legislation at the state level to limit or prohibit suspension, expulsion, or pushing children out of programs that are licensed or funded by states and provide necessary supports to implement these laws equitably. 

  • Directly link continuous quality improvement and health and safety initiatives to reduce and end harsh disciplinary practices. 

  • Ramp up data collection and analysis to understand the scope of harsh discipline in early childhood settings and adopt equitable data practices that use community engagement and shift power to Black families and communities. 

  • Establish a federal office devoted to protecting the civil rights of very young children.  

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