Education Week - August 24, 2016 - 18

WA
MT
ID

Black students made up 22 percent of enrollment in U.S. schools
using corporal punishment, but 38 percent of students who received
this form of discipline in the 2013-14 school year.

White

60%
38%

Black
22%

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16

and senior director of the Gundersen
National Child Protection Training
Center, which was created by hospital networks to reduce corporal punishment. The group trains officials
in hospitals and schools on ways to
help parents and educators avoid
corporal punishment in responding
to children's misbehavior.
The training program has spread
rapidly, but for schools using corporal punishment, there's little guidance to be had from the mishmash
of vague and sometimes contradictory state laws, district policies, and
case laws that address the practice.
Case law was set nearly 40 years
ago, with the 1977 case Ingraham v.
Wright. The U.S. Supreme Court
ruled against Florida students who
argued that corporal punishment
violated their rights to due process
under the 14th Amendment as well
as their Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. At the time, the high court
argued that school officials had considerable discretion to discipline students on campus. Since then, there
has been no new federal precedent,
though the U.S. Department of Education's office for civil rights has cited
schools' use of corporal punishment
in larger investigations of racially
disproportionate discipline.

State Laws a Jumble
There's no consensus among states
on how to regulate physical discipline in schools. Texas allows the
discipline unless parents ask in writing that their child not be paddled,
while Utah bans physical discipline
without a parent's written permission. Alabama allows the practice,
and Maryland bans it, but neither
state details what corporal punishment would include.
In Louisiana, administrators fill
out a form for corporal punishment
incidents, naming witnesses, describing the student's behavior and

UT
CA
AZ

MI
PA

KS
OK

RI
CT

TN
AR

SC
MS

NJ
DE
MD
DC

IL
CO

Percent
of student
enrollment
in schools
using corporal
punishment

other types of discipline that had
already been tried, such as a detention or a meeting with parents. Florida requires its districts that want
to use corporal punishment to hold
a public hearing every three years.
Policies can vary within states,
too. The Texas education agency
allows corporal punishment, but its
Child Protective Services requires
foster parents to opt their students
out, arguing it can hurt students
with a history of trauma and interfere with students' ability to trust
adults.
In part, the variation comes from
significant local control of corporal
punishment policies. Fifteen states,
including Arizona, Arkansas, Mississippi, Wyoming, and Tennessee explicitly allow corporal punishment but let
local school boards decide whether to
use it.
That leads to more specific rules
in some districts than others. For
example, Louisiana's Central Parish
stipulates no more than three swats
of a paddle "approximately 20 inches
long, 4 inches wide, and not exceeding ½ inch in thickness" for any grade,
while Pointe Coupee schools use a
district-set paddle but limit the number of strikes to three for grades 6 and
under, and five for upper grades.
That's a common size for a school
paddle, though there's no real consensus on what size implements
should be used on children of different ages, nor how many strikes
or how hard they should be. From
state to state and district to district,
spankings are given for infractions
from being tardy to fighting, and
can run from one to eight strikes in
a session, according to a review of
paddling-related lawsuits.
In fact, one of the few things states
and districts seem to agree on is that
those who paddle generally learn as
they go.
"I've been doing this a long time
and I don't know that I've ever seen
anyone offer training," said Daryl
Scoggin, the superintendent of the
Tate County, Miss., school district
on the border of Tennessee. "It's kind
of like, I had it done to me, and so I
knew what I needed to do. I guess it's
more that you learn by watching. ...
We don't practice on dummies or anything like that."
And even when state or district laws
ban physical discipline, individual

18 | EDUCATION WEEK | August 24, 2016 | www.edweek.org

Percent
of students
who received
corporal
punishment

SOURCE: Education Week Research Center analysis of U.S. Department
of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection, 2016

Many Schools
Use Corporal
Punishment

DISPROPORTIONATE IMPACT

50%

NH
ME
VT

LA
FL

More than 10%
1 to 10%
Less than 1% but
greater than 0%

WHERE SCHOOLS USE CORPORAL PUNISHMENT
Nationally, only 4 percent of students attended schools that reported the use of corporal punishment
in 2013-14. The discipline practice was more common among states located in the South. Mississippi
(55 percent), Alabama (43 percent), and Arkansas (41 percent) saw the highest percentages
of students attending schools where this form of punishment was used.
SOURCE: Education Week Research Center analysis of U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection, 2016

schools still reported using it. All told,
Education Week found 18 schools that
reported at least one-and often several-cases of physical punishment
in four states that have outlawed the
practice on paper. For example, District of Columbia public schools ban
"the use or attempted use" of physical
force to discipline a student; not just
hitting or spanking, but also pushing,
grabbing, or "unreasonable restraint."
The district keeps a special investigator to evaluate any alleged corporal
punishment. Ten schools spanning
all grade levels reported such cases
in 2013-14, Education Week found.
"Corporal punishment is not allowed in our schools, thus we take it
very seriously and follow all protocols when there is an allegation at
our schools," said Michelle Lerner, a
District of Columbia schools spokesperson. Lerner confirmed reporting
the cases Education Week found, but
declined to comment on the specifics
of them or allow the investigator to
discuss trends in the district.

Unexplained Cases
Administrators at other schools
told Education Week that the illegal
cases were caused by reporting errors in the federal Civil Rights Data
Collection. This is possible-the
massive biennial survey has had inaccuracies in prior years-but Mary
Schifferli of the Education Department's office for civil rights said each
school and district had to certify its
data as accurate, in a system that
flags potential issues such as when a
school reports corporal punishment
incidents after saying that it did not
use corporal punishment.
National Trail public schools in
Ohio, for example, listed at least
29 corporal punishment incidents
across four categories in two schools.
"I have no idea why we have any
instances listed with corporal punishment. We do not utilize corporal
punishment," said Jeff Parker, the
National Trail superintendent, who

plans to file for a correction with the
Education Department.
Nationwide, corporal punishment
seems to be on a steady decline:
from more than 300,000 students in
2000 to more than 109,000 in 201314 nationwide, according to Education Department estimates.
The Education Department does
not bar physical discipline in K-12
schools, but the federal Head Start
program prohibits its use among
early-education grantees.
A long list of national education
and child welfare groups, including
teachers' unions, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and associations
for state education departments and
boards of education, school nurses,
counselors, and psychologists, have
also come out against the practice.

ONLINE
INTERACTIVE MAP: Find out about
corporal punishment policies and
its prevalence in your state.
AUDIO SLIDESHOW: Hear Trey Clayton
recount his experience of being
paddled.
HOW WE DID IT: More on the
methodology behind our analysis.
www.edweek.org/go/
corporalpunishment

Additional reporting and research by
research intern Jack Williams and
editorial intern Carmen Constantinescu.
Coverage of social and emotional
learning is supported in part by
a grant from the NoVo Foundation,
at www.novofoundation.org.

51
+311071

RURAL CONNECTION
Rural students accounted
for 51 percent of enrollment
in schools where at least one
student was physically
punished during the
2013-14 school year.

Locale not available

Urban

11%

Suburban

51%

Rural

Note: Details do not sum
to 100 percent due to rounding.

SOURCE: Education Week Research Center
analysis of U.S. Department of Education's
Civil Rights Data Collection, 2016

31%
Town

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Education Week - August 24, 2016

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