Unschooling Black Girls Begins in Early Childhood: What Black Women Can Change, and What Society Must Confront
The forthcoming book, Unschooling Black Girls: Surviving Anti-Black Violence in Suburban Schools by Ashley L. Smith-Purviance raises a question that deserves attention long before Black girls enter middle school. What happens when the educational systems designed to nurture Black girls become places where they must learn to protect themselves?
The book, scheduled for publication in February 2027, examines how Black girls navigate school environments where even policies intended to advance equity may reproduce harm. It also explores how Black girls and Black women create spaces of refuge, resistance, and belonging. Although the book focuses on suburban middle schools, its central concerns reach directly into early childhood education.
As an early childhood educator, coach, and leadership advocate, I believe we must ask an earlier question: What experiences are Black girls having in childcare, preschool, and the early elementary grades that shape how they understand their intelligence, identity, voices, and worth? We cannot wait until adolescence to address the conditions that undermine Black girls' humanity.
We must begin in early childhood.
The First Lessons About Belonging Begin Before Kindergarten
A four-year-old Black girl enters her preschool classroom excited to share a discovery. She speaks enthusiastically, moves toward her teacher, and interrupts a conversation. One educator describes her as confident and curious. Another describes her as loud, demanding, or disruptive. The behavior is the same. The interpretation is different.
These everyday interpretations matter because early childhood educators do more than teach letters, numbers, and social skills. They communicate whose voices are welcome, whose emotions are acceptable, and whose behavior is considered developmentally appropriate. Research published during the past five years underscores the importance of examining the educational environments Black children experience.
The U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection (2023) documented continuing racial disparities in exclusionary school discipline, including among young children. These patterns demand attention to the adult decisions, institutional expectations, and policies that determine who is removed from learning environments.
For Black girls, the concern extends beyond formal suspensions. It includes the subtle daily experiences of being misunderstood, corrected more frequently, excluded from leadership opportunities, or expected to demonstrate emotional maturity beyond their developmental years. A preschooler should not have to become exceptionally compliant to be considered worthy of care. The first question educators must ask is not, "How do we get this child to behave?" but "What are we assuming about this child's behavior?"
When Equity Policies Reproduce Inequity
One of the most provocative arguments in Smith-Purviance's forthcoming book is that reforms intended to create fairness can themselves become instruments of harm. This idea deserves serious consideration in early childhood settings. Programs adopt positive behavioral interventions, social-emotional learning curricula, restorative approaches, and classroom management systems to create supportive environments. These approaches can be valuable. However, no framework automatically eliminates bias.
A behavior chart may appear neutral until we examine which children consistently receive negative marks. A social-emotional curriculum may emphasize self-regulation without acknowledging that children experience classrooms differently because of race, gender, language, or cultural expectations. A restorative conversation may encourage accountability while failing to address the adult actions that contributed to the conflict.
The problem is not necessarily the intervention itself. The problem arises when educators assume that adopting a particular intervention guarantees equitable practice. The National Association for the Education of Young Children [NAEYC], 2020) emphasizes developmentally appropriate practice grounded in children's individual strengths, cultural contexts, relationships, and experiences. That principle challenges educators to move beyond standardized responses and exercise thoughtful professional judgment. We must examine whether our practices genuinely support children or merely produce the appearance of orderly classrooms. Equity cannot be measured only by whether a program has adopted the right language or curriculum. It must be visible in children's lived experiences.
Black Girls Need Agency, Not Simply Protection
There is an important distinction between protecting Black girls and empowering them. Protection asks adults to prevent harm. Agency recognizes children's capacity to think, make choices, express preferences, solve problems, and participate meaningfully in decisions affecting their lives. Both matter.
In early childhood classrooms, agency begins with everyday opportunities. A Black girl chooses the materials for her project. Her teacher respects her decision. She questions an instruction. Rather than interpreting the question as defiance, the educator invites discussion. She disagrees with her classmate. The adult helps both children negotiate without automatically assigning blame. She demonstrates leadership skills. Her teacher recognizes it rather than describing her as bossy. These interactions communicate that her thinking matters.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2023) emphasizes that early childhood education and care systems must address inequities in access, experiences, and outcomes. This requires attention not only to the availability of programs but also to the quality and fairness of children's experiences within them. Agency must become a central component of educational quality. A child who is consistently silenced may learn compliance. A child whose voice is respected has opportunities to develop confidence, judgment, and leadership.
Developmentally appropriate practice recognizes that children are active participants in their own learning. Educators must consider each child's individual strengths, developmental abilities, cultural context, and lived experiences when creating meaningful learning opportunities (NAEYC, 2020)
For Black girls, this means creating environments where their voices are heard, their decisions are respected, and their emerging leadership abilities are intentionally nurtured.
Agency must become a central component of educational quality. A child who is consistently silenced may learn compliance. A child whose voice is respected has opportunities to develop confidence, judgment, and leadership. Our goal should not be to raise Black girls who simply know how to survive educational institutions. It should be to create institutions where they can thrive without surrendering their identities.
What Black Women Can Control
Black women have historically served as educators, caregivers, organizers, advocates, and community builders. They have created learning spaces when existing institutions excluded or underserved Black children. That legacy offers both inspiration and practical direction. However, we must avoid placing the responsibility for dismantling systemic racism entirely on Black women.
Black women did not create the structural conditions that produce educational inequity. They should not be expected to repair those conditions without institutional support, authority, and resources. Still, there are meaningful areas where Black women can exercise influence.
Control the questions we ask
Whether serving as mothers, grandmothers, educators, directors, researchers, or community leaders, Black women can challenge assumptions about children's behavior and abilities. Instead of asking why a child is difficult, ask what the child is communicating. Instead of asking why a Black girl is so outspoken, ask how her communication skills might be cultivated. Instead of asking whether she fits the classroom, ask whether the classroom makes room for her.
Create spaces of belonging
Smith-Purviance describes Black girls and Black women creating spaces of refuge within educational institutions. In early childhood, these spaces can take many forms: culturally affirming classrooms, mentoring relationships, family learning circles, community-based programs, and opportunities for children to see Black women as leaders and knowledge producers. Belonging must be more than representation on classroom posters. It must be experienced through relationships, decision-making, curriculum, and institutional culture.
Exercise professional judgment
Black women educators can advocate for developmentally appropriate responses rather than automatically applying rigid behavior management procedures. They can document patterns, question inconsistent disciplinary decisions, and recommend alternatives that preserve children's dignity. Professional judgment is one area where Black women educators can exercise meaningful influence. Long-Coleman (2023) explored early childhood educators' perspectives on the development of practical teaching expertise. Building on this work, educators can examine how their interpretations of children's behavior influence classroom decisions, particularly when cultural expectations and gender stereotypes may shape those interpretations. However, professional judgment must be supported by organizational policies that protect educators who raise concerns.
Build collective influence
Individual advocacy matters, but collective action can create broader change. Black women can participate in professional associations, school governance, advisory councils, research collaborations, and policy discussions. They can mentor emerging leaders and build partnerships across family childcare, center-based programs, public schools, and higher education. The objective is not to carry more unpaid work. It is to increase collective decision-making power.
The Mental Load of Protecting Black Children
An often-overlooked dimension of this discussion is the mental and emotional labor Black women perform while navigating educational systems. A Black mother may carefully consider how to approach a teacher about her daughter's treatment. A Black educator may question whether challenging a disciplinary decision will affect her professional standing. A Black director may recognize inequitable practices but struggle to change them while managing staffing shortages, regulatory requirements, and financial pressures. These experiences create additional responsibilities that are rarely reflected in job descriptions or institutional accountability systems. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2023) emphasizes the importance of addressing opportunity gaps experienced by young children. Its recommendations reinforce the need to examine how educational systems, policies, and practices influence children's access to equitable learning opportunities. For Black girls, this means creating environments where their voices are respected, their identities are affirmed, and their emerging leadership abilities are intentionally nurtured.
The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (2024) documents persistent economic insecurity and workforce challenges among early educators. These conditions are particularly relevant when considering the additional advocacy and emotional labor expected of educators working in under-resourced environments. We must recognize that advocacy requires time, emotional energy, access to information, and institutional power. Expecting Black women to continually identify problems, educate colleagues, defend children, and develop solutions without compensation or authority reproduces the very inequities we seek to address. Black women's commitment to children should not become an excuse for institutions to avoid responsibility. Educational leaders must create systems where raising concerns is welcomed, professional judgment is respected, and responsibility for equity is shared.
What Society Stands to Lose
The consequences of these experiences extend beyond individual children and classrooms. When Black girls are repeatedly misunderstood or marginalized, society risks undermining their confidence, educational engagement, and opportunities to exercise leadership. When Black women educators experience professional marginalization, educational systems lose valuable knowledge, cultural expertise, and leadership potential. When families lose confidence in schools and early learning programs, relationships essential to children's development can weaken. The implications are educational, economic, political, and intergenerational. Consider the potential trajectory.
A preschooler whose curiosity is interpreted as defiance may begin to participate less frequently. An elementary student whose leadership is repeatedly discouraged may become reluctant to take initiative. An adolescent who experiences exclusion may disengage from institutions that claim to support her. These outcomes are not inevitable, and we should not assume that every Black girl experiences them. They are risks that deserve prevention rather than acceptance.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO, 2024) documented disparities in student arrest rates across racial, gender, and disability groups in K–12 schools. Its findings underscore the importance of examining how intersecting identities influence students' experiences with school-based disciplinary and law enforcement systems. Although the report focuses on K–12 education rather than early childhood settings, it raises important questions about how educational institutions respond to children's behavior and how inequities might be prevented before they become entrenched.
Early childhood offers an important opportunity to interrupt these patterns. The broader societal question is whether we are willing to invest in educational environments that cultivate the intellectual contributions of all children, rather than requiring some children to expend extraordinary energy simply to belong.
From Individual Advocacy to Institutional Transformation
Early Childhood Innovations approaches leadership through three interconnected commitments:
ASK Better Questions
Examine whose perspectives influence classroom decisions. Investigate differences in discipline, participation, family engagement, and leadership opportunities. Ask Black girls and their families what belonging looks and feels like to them.
BUILD Better Leaders
Prepare educators and directors to recognize bias, interpret children's behavior within developmental and cultural contexts, engage families as partners, and exercise sound professional judgment.
CREATE Better Systems
Preparing educators to exercise sound professional judgment requires more than providing written policies and standardized procedures. Long-Coleman's (2021) research examined how early childhood professionals develop expertise without traditional apprenticeship experiences. This work offers a foundation for reconsidering how leadership development, mentoring, and professional learning can strengthen educators' capacity to make informed decisions. An educator's caring intentions are important, but children also need equitable policies, competent leadership, supportive working conditions, and meaningful opportunities to participate in their own learning. The work is not finished when an organization adopts an equity statement. It begins when that statement changes what children experience.
The Future We Must Create
Smith-Purviance's forthcoming book challenges us to examine the contradiction between educational reform and the lived experiences of Black girls. For early childhood educators, the challenge is particularly urgent. We have opportunities to influence children's earliest understandings of identity, belonging, authority, fairness, and personal agency.
Black women can use their expertise, relationships, voices, and collective influence to create meaningful change. But society must also provide the resources, authority, accountability, and institutional commitment necessary to sustain that change. Our goal cannot simply be to prepare Black girls to withstand systems that diminish them. Our goal must be to transform those systems before children learn that survival is a prerequisite for education.
Imagine an early childhood classroom where a Black girl's curiosity is welcomed, her confidence is nurtured, her emotions are understood, her cultural identity is affirmed, and her leadership is encouraged. That should not be an exceptional classroom. It should be expected. And it should begin long before kindergarten.
References
Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. (2024). Early childhood workforce index 2024. University of California, Berkeley. https://cscce.berkeley.edu/workforce-index-2024/
Long-Coleman, V. (2021). Perspectives of online Child Development Associate credential recipients regarding development of expertise without apprenticeship [Doctoral dissertation, Walden University]. Walden University ScholarWorks. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/10393/
Long-Coleman, V. (2023). Practical expertise: Viewpoints of online-educated early childhood teachers. Exchange Magazine. https://hub.exchangepress.com/articles-on-demand/3177/
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2023). Closing the opportunity gap for young children. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26743
National Association for the Education of Young Children. (2020). Developmentally appropriate practice: A position statement of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/position-statements/dap/contents
Smith-Purviance, A. L. (2027). Unschooling Black girls: Surviving anti-Black violence in suburban schools. University of North Carolina Press. https://uncpress.org/9798890888280/unschooling-black-girls/
U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. (2023). 2020–21 civil rights data collection: A first look. https://civilrightsdata.ed.gov/
U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2024). K–12 education: Differences in student arrest rates widen when race, gender, and disability status are combined (GAO-24-106294). https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106294[
About the Author
Victoria Long-Coleman, Ph.D., MBA is the Founder and Principal of Early Childhood Innovations. An early childhood educator, leadership, coach, author, speaker, she focuses on strengthening educators, developing leaders, and translating research into practical approaches that improve early childhood systems.
Early Childhood Innovations
Remember your ABC’s:
ASK Better Questions. BUILD Better Leaders. CREATE Better Systems.
www.earlychildhoodinnovations.com
