Recent Pathways Publications
Pathways to Grade-Level Reading Policy and Practice Action Toolkit
Five-part series (published 2023-2024)
This series provides guidance for how policymakers, advocates, community non-profits, the business community, and other stakeholders can work together to move us closer to the goal of all North Carolina’s children reading on grade-level by third grade. This Toolkit also highlights organizations and initiatives across the state that are already taking action to move the needle forward.
- Part 1, Strengthening North Carolina’s Early Care and Learning System in Ways that are Responsive to the State’s Cultural Diversity
- Part 2, Attendance is Key to Maximizing the Benefits of North Carolina’s Investments in High Quality Early Learning Environments
- Part 3, Increasing Child Care Quality and Availability by Investing in a Publicly-Funded Statewide Child Care and Early Learning System
- Part 4, Early Actions for Long-Term Resilience: Pathways to Strong and Resilient Mental Health for Infants and Young Children
- Part 5, coming soon!
Policy & Practice Briefs to Eliminate Child Care & Preschool Exclusion
Eight-part series in collaboration with the Trauma-Resilient Education Project (published 2023-2024)
Childcare and preschool suspension and expulsion can harm children’s development, and often only serve to increase their behavioral challenges. Yet North Carolina has an elevated rate of preschool expulsions relative to the average across the US, with disproportionate impacts on children who are boys, Black, and/or who have a disability or special health care need. This series of briefs lifts up actions that policy-makers and early educators can take to limit and end expulsions for our youngest learners.
- Brief 1: Challenging behaviors happen; Exclusion from care and learning environments is not the answer
North Carolina is among the states with a high rate of expulsion compared with the national average. This policy brief examines the resources available to early educators for supporting children exhibiting behavior challenges, as well as the guidelines that govern the use of exclusion as a disciplinary measure in preschools. - Brief 2: Strengthening Policy & Practice Guidelines for Preventing Exclusionary Discipline
This policy brief focuses on how understanding evidence-based principles that guide best practices for the social and emotional development of preschoolers can guide policy-makers to effectively set expectations for early educators to use developmentally appropriate responses with young children who exhibit challenging behaviors. - Brief 3: Building Effective Reporting Systems to Prevent and Reduce Early Exclusion
Policy-makers can provide clarity and guidance to reduce exclusion in early care and learning environments. As of 2022, only eight states required early childhood care providers to report expulsions. This policy brief examines how to remedy the lack of data within and across states. - Brief 4: Strengthen the Capacity of Early Care and Learning Educators to Eliminate Exclusion
This policy brief focuses on how a child’s response to previous trauma and nonverbal behavior is often the underlying cause of their punishment and expulsion – and how to support early educators to better respond to challenging behaviors. - Brief 5: Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation: A Powerful Tool to Reduce Exclusionary Discipline by Addressing Underlying Problems – this policy brief explores a highly-effective strategy for the management of young children’s challenging behaviors, and the prevention of exclusionary discipline: ensuring that child care providers and preschool teachers have regular access to child development and mental health professionals.
- Brief 6: Beyond Suspensions and Expulsions: Reducing Racial Disproportionality in Exclusion Through Everyday Practices – this brief explores meaningful steps that early learning & care administrators can take to build more inclusive learning environments.
- Briefs 7-8, coming soon!