Start with Equity: California
November 2020
Authors: Dr. Shantel Meek, Dr. Darielle Blevins, Dr. Evandra Catherine and Dr. Brittany Alexander
The nation’s early care and education systems are gravely inequitable. Opportunity gaps between children from historically marginalized communities and their peers are consistent, wide, and consequential. In the summer of 2020, The Children’s Equity Project and the Bipartisan Policy Center came together to create an actionable policy roadmap for states and the federal government—as well as for candidates at all levels of government vying for office—to take meaningful steps to remedy these inequities. Read Start with Equity: From the Early Years to the Early Grade.
As a follow-up to that work, the Children’s Equity Project has developed a new report focusing on the state of equity in California’s early care and learning systems in the three key issues covered in the Start with Equity national report, including harsh discipline and its disproportionate application, lack of inclusive learning opportunities for children with disabilities, and inequitable access to bilingual learning for dual language learners. The authors provide a California-specific policy agenda to inform the state’s Master Plan for Early Care and Learning and to build more equitable systems for the state’s youngest learners.
Suggested citation:
Meek, S.E., Blevins, D., Catherine, E., Alexander, B.L. (November, 2020). Start with Equity: California. The Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University. Retrieved from: https://cep.asu.edu/resources/start-with-equity-california
About Start with Equity: California
Start with Equity: California is a Children’s Equity Project policy brief examining equity in California’s early care and education systems. Published in November 2020, the brief applies the framework developed in CEP’s national Start with Equity report to California and provides state-specific analysis and policy recommendations.
The report focuses on three areas of early learning policy:
- Harsh and exclusionary discipline and its disproportionate application
- Inclusion of young children with disabilities in early learning settings
- Equitable access to high-quality bilingual learning for dual language learners
The authors developed the brief to provide California-specific data and recommendations during the development of the state’s Master Plan for Early Learning and Care and related early childhood efforts.
Equity in California Early Childhood Education
California’s young children represent a wide range of racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and developmental backgrounds.
At the time the report was published, more than half of California children under age five were Latino, and approximately 60 percent of young children were identified as dual language learners. The report also examined hundreds of thousands of children participating in California’s subsidized child care programs.
Because of this diversity, the authors argue that questions of access, program quality, inclusion, language, discipline, workforce preparation, and public investment are particularly important when evaluating California’s early childhood system.
The brief examines these issues through state data, research, existing policies, and recommendations developed by the Children’s Equity Project.
Exclusionary Discipline in California Early Learning Programs
One major focus of Start with Equity: California is the use of exclusionary discipline in early childhood education, including suspension and expulsion.
The report reviews research associating early suspension and expulsion with negative educational outcomes and examines racial disparities in the use of these practices. It also discusses factors that research has connected to discipline practices, including educator preparation, behavioral expectations, implicit and explicit bias, working conditions, and access to mental health consultation and other supports.
The authors identified a significant challenge in the California data landscape. At the time of publication, there was no comprehensive, publicly available state data source covering exclusionary discipline across California’s full early care and education system. Federal Civil Rights Data Collection information primarily captured public pre-K settings, leaving many child care and private preschool settings outside the dataset.
California Discipline Policy Recommendations
The report presents a series of recommendations developed by its authors for addressing harsh discipline in California.
Among them were proposals to:
- Restrict suspension and expulsion in publicly funded programs serving young children
- Strengthen protections across different early childhood programs
- Collect and publicly report more comprehensive discipline data
- Examine disparities using disaggregated data
- Increase early childhood mental health consultation
- Strengthen educator training and professional development
- Address bias and developmentally appropriate behavioral expectations
These recommendations represent the policy agenda proposed by the Children’s Equity Project in 2020.
Inclusion of Children With Disabilities in California
The report also examines early childhood inclusion for children with disabilities.
Research reviewed in the brief found benefits associated with high-quality inclusive learning environments in which children with and without disabilities learn together. The report also notes that children's early educational placements can influence whether they continue learning in inclusive settings later in their education.
According to IDEA data cited in the report, 136,631 California children from birth through age five were receiving services under IDEA in fall 2018. The report found that California's level of preschool inclusion was below the national average at that time. Only 37 percent of California preschoolers receiving special education services received them in a regular early childhood program, according to the data used in the report.
Because these statistics reflect data available when the report was developed, they should be understood as a historical snapshot rather than a description of current California preschool inclusion rates.
California's Early Childhood Inclusion Policies
The brief also examines California policies and initiatives that existed at the time to expand inclusive early learning opportunities.
One example is the Inclusive Early Education Expansion Program, established through Assembly Bill 1808. The report describes the program as authorizing competitive grants intended to increase access to inclusive early learning programs for children with disabilities. It also discusses California educator credentialing, professional development, and inclusion initiatives.
The report's authors concluded that these initiatives represented meaningful steps toward greater inclusion while also identifying areas where they believed additional policy changes were needed.
Recommendations for Expanding Early Childhood Inclusion
The Children’s Equity Project proposed several strategies for increasing access to inclusive learning environments in California, including:
- Examining differences in preschool inclusion across districts
- Identifying factors contributing to segregated learning environments
- Increasing support for inclusive early education programs
- Expanding technical assistance related to inclusion
- Strengthening workforce preparation for educators and coaches
- Reviewing placement practices for children receiving IDEA services
- Incorporating inclusion into quality, monitoring, and evaluation systems
The report also proposed closer coordination between early childhood programs and special education systems.
Dual Language Learners in California
The third major policy area examined in Start with Equity: California is bilingual education and dual language learning.
California has historically had one of the largest populations of multilingual children and families in the United States. The report estimated that approximately 60 percent of California’s young children were dual language learners at the time of publication, with Spanish representing the most common home language among those children.
The report reviews research on bilingual development and dual language education and examines California policies related to bilingual learning, educator preparation, language assessment, and access to dual language programs.
The authors also identified major gaps in publicly available data. At the time, they reported that comprehensive information about dual language learners participating in California child care programs, the quality of services they received, and their access to dual language programming was not publicly available.
High-Quality Bilingual Learning Opportunities
The report discusses research indicating that maintaining and developing a child's home language alongside English can support language development, academic learning, family connections, and children's sense of belonging.
It also examines California's policy environment following the passage of Proposition 58 in 2016, which expanded opportunities for bilingual education in the state. The report discusses California State Preschool, Transitional Kindergarten, workforce preparation, and other elements of the state's early learning system as they related to dual language learners at the time.
The authors concluded that access to high-quality dual language immersion remained limited relative to California's large population of young dual language learners.
Recommendations for Dual Language Learning in California
The report proposes a number of strategies for expanding bilingual early learning opportunities.
These include:
- Identifying existing publicly funded dual language early childhood programs
- Examining enrollment and access by demographic group
- Establishing quality benchmarks for early childhood dual language programs
- Expanding funding for dual language models
- Strengthening educator preparation related to multilingual development
- Improving collection of home language data
- Increasing access to bilingual educators and instructional resources
- Supporting programs serving communities with large populations of dual language learners
The authors also recommend prioritizing access for dual language learners when expanding dual language immersion programs.
Data and Accountability in California Early Childhood Systems
A theme running across all three areas of the report is the importance of better early childhood data.
The authors identified gaps in information about discipline, disability inclusion, dual language learning, program participation, and children's experiences across different early care and education systems. These gaps can make it difficult for researchers, policymakers, families, and program leaders to understand where disparities exist and whether policies are producing their intended results.
The report proposes collecting and analyzing data by characteristics such as race, ethnicity, disability, and language background to better understand differences in access and experiences across groups of children.
A California-Specific Early Childhood Policy Agenda
Start with Equity: California was designed as more than a description of disparities. It presents a California-specific policy agenda developed by the report's authors.
Recommendations address areas including:
- Preschool suspension and expulsion
- Early childhood mental health consultation
- Discipline data collection
- Educator preparation and professional development
- Preschool special education inclusion
- Early intervention and IDEA coordination
- Inclusive early childhood program capacity
- Dual language immersion
- Bilingual educator preparation
- Home language data
- Early childhood quality and accountability
The recommendations reflect the Children’s Equity Project's analysis and policy proposals at the time of publication in 2020.
Why Start with Equity: California Remains a Useful Resource
Because this brief was published in 2020, some of the policies, programs, funding levels, and statistics described in it have changed.
Its continuing value is as a research and policy resource documenting California's early childhood landscape at that point in time and presenting a framework for examining three issues that remain important to early childhood systems: exclusionary discipline, disability inclusion, and access to bilingual learning.
The report can be useful to researchers, educators, early childhood leaders, policymakers, students, advocates, and organizations studying California early childhood education, child care policy, preschool discipline, disability inclusion, dual language learners, bilingual education, and early learning equity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Start with Equity: California is a 2020 Children’s Equity Project policy brief examining equity in California’s early care and education system. It focuses on exclusionary discipline, inclusion of children with disabilities, and access to high-quality bilingual learning for dual language learners.
The report examines three main areas: harsh and exclusionary discipline, inclusion of children with disabilities in early learning environments, and equitable access to bilingual learning opportunities for dual language learners.
Yes. The report examines suspension, expulsion, and other harsh discipline practices, reviews available California data, and presents policy recommendations developed by the Children’s Equity Project.
Yes. The report examines early intervention, preschool special education, inclusive learning environments, workforce preparation, and policies affecting children with disabilities.
Using data available when the report was developed, CEP reported that 37 percent of California preschoolers receiving special education services received those services in a regular early childhood program. Because the report was published in 2020, this figure should not be interpreted as California's current inclusion rate.
Yes. The report examines California's large population of dual language learners, bilingual education policies, access to dual language programs, workforce preparation, and gaps in available early childhood language data.
Yes. CEP's authors provide recommendations across discipline, disability inclusion, and bilingual learning. The proposals were developed to inform California early childhood policy efforts at the time the report was published.
The report can serve as a resource for early childhood educators, researchers, policymakers, advocates, students, early intervention professionals, child care leaders, and others interested in California early childhood education and policy.