This paper describes the approach used by two demonstration sites to implement Pyramid Model Practices at fidelity and address behavioral issues without the use of suspension and expulsion. The article describes the critical features of implementation used by public school preschool centers to improve the implementation of evidence-based social and emotional teaching practices by classroom personnel and the leadership strategies used to examine implementation fidelity and outcomes. Evaluation data are provided to demonstrate the positive outcomes achieved in the programs and to illustrate the potential of this approach for addressing issues related to inappropriate discipline practices.

Research on exclusionary discipline often focuses on school-aged children (kindergarten to twelfth grade), overlooking carceral logics in early childhood education (ECE). This paper advances a conceptual understanding and policy-oriented analysis that situates exclusion in preschool, child care, and other ECE settings as systemic rather than individual, showing how surveillance, sorting, and regulation disproportionality affect young children. We demonstrate how diagnostic gatekeeping, inequitable access, and formal and informal removals are design choices embedded in systems that reproduce racialized and classed hierarchies. At the same time, ECE holds transformative potential. We highlight abolitionist and decolonizing approaches already in practice, including culturally sustaining and community-rooted models, healing-centered and trauma-responsive care, and reimagining classrooms as “homeplace” spaces of resistance and care. We conclude with recommendations for policy, research, and practice that reject surveillance and exclusion, expand access, and center family and community leadership. If exclusion begins before the pipeline, so must liberation.