For over 15 years, researchers have described a crisis in early learning classrooms in the United States. Hundreds of children are expelled from child-care programs and preschools every day, a rate nearly three times that of kindergarten–12th grade students. While policymakers have taken steps to mitigate this crisis, disparities in who is expelled persist. Boys and Black children are routinely over-represented among those pushed out of the exact environments supposed to help prepare them for school. Each child’s expulsion is symptomatic of a larger crisis—an overburdened, underfunded, undervalued, and fragmented early education system.

No Longer Welcome starts a critical conversation between and across sectors of the early childhood field. Parents, teachers, preschool administrators, researchers, and policymakers all have a role to play in ensuring that all children have the opportunity to be retained in high-quality early care and education settings. Drawing on research and interviews with teachers, program administrators, parents, and policymakers, this book offers a detailed description of the myriad of factors contributing to the expulsion crisis. No Longer Welcome offers a compelling argument for the importance of ending the practice of excluding young children and outlines roles that each and every member of the field (from classroom aide to legislator) must play in sustaining this change.