Children who are 3 and 4 years old weigh only 35 pounds or so, but when they are kicking, hitting, biting, running around or are in other ways a handful, they are more likely to get expelled from their state-funded preschool program than students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

		Graphic: Preschool explusions

More than three times as likely.

That's the finding in the first study of expulsion rates of 3- and 4-year-olds, led by Yale University Child Study Center researcher Walter S. Gilliam.

Gilliam, assistant professor of child psychiatry and psychology, said that decades of research show that early childhood programs can significantly improve the chances of a student's success in school.

"Unfortunately, there appears to be a back door through which some children -- the ones who stand the most to gain from these programs -- are sometimes pushed," he said.

"These children are barely out of diapers. No one wants to think of children this young being kicked out of school."

The study doesn't track what happens to the children, but Gilliam said his experience shows that what usually happens is the parent is embarrassed and puts the child in another program without revealing what happened before. Then, the same problems recur and the child is expelled.

The cycle continues until the child is placed in a program that doesn't expel or the child reaches kindergarten and behavior problems continue there.

He said many preschool classrooms lack the supports needed to help students learn necessary social skills.

He said states should ensure that all prekindergarten students have access to support services and procedural protection, require teacher training, develop alternatives to expulsion, make sure an alternative placement is available if the child must leave the program and assist in identifying children who need help at younger ages.

The study didn't tally specific behaviors, but Gilliam said he knows from experience that it includes incidents such as aggressiveness toward other children or the teacher or damaging property.

He said that's generally "anything that tickles a zero tolerance policy or raises concerns of the teaching staff for liability of the safety of that child or other children in the classroom."

Some centers in the Pittsburgh area do not expel children -- including the Child Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, Carriage House Children's Center in Squirrel Hill, Butterfly Garden Early Learning in McKees Rocks and Head Start, both in the city and county.

"Young children should not be expelled from classrooms," said Sherry Cleary, director of the Child Development Center, a laboratory school and child care center at Pitt.

"When classroom environments are inappropriate for children, when expectations are wrong, when there's a lack of equipment and appropriate supplies, children are unhappy, bored, frightened and they misbehave," Cleary said.

Natalie Kaplan, executive director of the Carriage House Children's Center in Squirrel Hill, said, "You're not getting to help the problem by expelling them. It isn't taking care of what's bothering them. We all know the sooner you can get help for children, it's like preventive medicine."

Deborah Krotec, who supervises Head Start classrooms for the Allegheny Intermediate Unit and is president of the Pittsburgh Association for the Education of Young Children, said the county Head Start program has a psychologist and three behavior support teachers who work with teachers in the classroom.

She said some preschoolers can't express how they feel but act it out.

"They haven't learned how to use their words. They haven't learned how to handle intense emotions. That's something we teach them to do in preschool," she said. What they learn at that age affects them the rest of their lives.

"The research is pretty clear that social interactions, social skills are learned by age 6," said Roberta Schomburg, director of the school of education and the graduate studies program in early childhood education at Carlow University.

"The strategies that the children learn in the early years are the ones they continue to use in elementary school and further into adulthood."

Those who work with young children give a host of reasons for discipline problems at such an early age, including a lack of parenting skills, inadequate teacher training, lack of access to behavior specialists, children's exposure to violence and expectations of children that aren't appropriate for their age.