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Corporal punishment is defined as causing deliberate bodily pain or discomfort in response to some undesired behavior. In schools in the United States, this punishment often takes the form of either a teacher or school principal striking the student's buttocks with a wooden paddle (sometimes called "spanking"). The practice was held constitutional in the 1977 Supreme Court case Ingraham v. Wright, where the Court held that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause of the Eighth Amendment did not apply to disciplinary corporal punishment in public schools, being restricted to the treatment of prisoners convicted of a crime. Part of the rationale for the Court's decision was that there was at the time no movement towards prohibition of the practice by the states; in 1977, only 2 states had laws prohibiting corporal punishment in schools. In the years since, a number of other states have enacted similar bans.
Individual US states have the power to ban corporal punishment in their schools. The first state to abolish school corporal punishment was New Jersey in 1867. The second was Massachusetts, 104 years later in 1971. As of 2015, corporal punishment is banned in state schools (known as public schools in the U.S.) in 31 U.S. states and the District of Columbia (see list below). The usage of corporal punishment in private schools is legally permitted in nearly every state, though extremely uncommon in most, with only New Jersey and Iowa, prohibiting it in both public and private schools. The 19 states that have not banned it are in the South and, to a lesser extent, the Mid-West. It is still used to a significant (though declining) degree in some public schools in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. The most recent state to outlaw school corporal punishment was New Mexico in 2011. Students can be physically punished from kindergarten to the end of high school, meaning that even legal adults who have reached the age of majority are sometimes spanked by school officials.
Most urban public school systems, even in states where it is permitted, have abolished corporal punishment. Statistics collected by the federal government show that the use of corporal punishment in schools has been gradually declining. It is still common in some schools in rural and suburban areas of the South, however, and more than 167,000 students were paddled in the 2011-2012 school year in American public schools according to statistics from the United States Department of Education. Students can be physically punished from kindergarten to the end of high school, meaning that even legal adults who have reached the age of majority are sometimes spanked by school officials. One study found that African-American students were more likely than either White or Hispanic students to be physically punished, by 2.5 times and 6.5 times, respectively, and boys were 3.4 times more likely than girls to be physically punished in school.
Overview
According to the Department of Education, over 166,000 students in public schools were physically punished during the 2011–2012 school year. The majority of these students reside in the Southern United States; Department of Education data from 2011–2012 show that 70 percent of students subjected to corporal punishment were from the five states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas, with the latter two states accounting for 35 percent of corporal punishment cases. According to the data, African-American students make up about 16% of all public school students but 35% of those receiving corporal punishment. According to the Washington Post, this has resulted in corporal punishment becoming a routine occurrence in some majority-Black school districts. Overall, according to the Post, a student is hit in a U.S. public school an average of once every 30 seconds.
Previous statistics showed that black and Hispanic students were more likely to be paddled than white students; however, a study in Kentucky found that minority students were disproportionately targeted by discipline policies generally, not only corporal punishment.
The United States Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection for 2006 also shows that students with disabilities are subjected to corporal punishment at disproportionately high rates for their share of the population, according to a report jointly authored by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. Representative Carolyn McCarthy remarked in a 2010 congressional hearing that students with disabilities are subjected to corporal punishment at "approximately twice the rate of the general student population in some States".
The United States' National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) opposes the use of corporal punishment in schools, defined as the deliberate infliction of pain in response to students' unacceptable behaviour and/or language. In articulating their opposition, they cite the disproportionate use of corporal punishment on Black students in the US; potential adverse effects on students' self-image and school achievement; correlation between school corporal punishment and increased truancy, drop-out rates, violence, and vandalism by youth; the potential for misuse and/or injury to students; and increased legal liability for schools.
The NASSP notes that the use of corporal punishment in schools is inconsistent with laws regarding child abuse as well as policies toward "racial, economic, and gender equity", asserting that "Fear of pain or embarrassment has no place" in the process of education. The NASSP recommends a range of alternatives to corporal punishment, including "appropriate instruction", "behavioral contracts", "positive reinforcement", and "individual and group counseling" where necessary.
Public-opinion research has found that most Americans are not in favor of school corporal punishment; in polls taken in 2002 and 2005, American adults were respectively 72% and 77% opposed to the use of corporal punishment by teachers. A bill to end the use of corporal punishment in schools was introduced into the United States House of Representatives in June 2010 during the 111th Congress. The bill, H.R. 5628, was referred to the United States House Committee on Education and Labor where it was not brought up for a vote. A previous bill "to deny funds to educational programs that allow corporal punishment" was introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives in 1991 by Representative Major R. Owens. That bill, H.R. 1522, did not become law. A new bill, the Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools Act of 2015 (HR 2268) would prohibit all corporal punishment, defined as “paddling, spanking, or other forms of physical punishment, however light, imposed upon a student”. As of May 12, 2015, the bill is in the Committee stage.