Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union have released their report, A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in US Public Schools, detailing the nature and extent of corporal punishment in U.S. schools. Based on official reports for the 2006-2007 school year, 223,190 students received corporal punishment at least once, although the researchers suggest that actual numbers are much higher, because many cases go unreported. Currently, slightly less than half (21) of the states permit corporal punishment.
African American and students with disabilities are particularly likely to be given corporal punishment According to the report:
Corporal punishment in the US disproportionately affects African-American students, and in some areas, Native American students. In the 2006-2007 school year, African-American students made up 17.1 percent of the nationwide student population, but 35.6 percent of those paddled. In the same year, in the 13 states with the highest rates of paddling, 1.4 times as many African-American students were paddled as might be expected given their percentage of the student population. Although girls of all races were paddled less than boys, African-American girls were nonetheless physically punished at more than twice the rate of their white counterparts in those 13 states during this period. These disparities violate students’ right to nondiscrimination in access to education, making it harder for these students to succeed and undermining the social fabric of schools.
Special education students—students with mental or physical disabilities—also receive corporal punishment at disproportionate rates. For instance, in Texas, the number of special education students who were beaten in the 2006-2007 school year amounted to 18.4 percent of the total number of students who received corporal punishment statewide. However, special education students made up only 10.7 percent of the Texas student population, meaning almost twice as many were beaten as might be expected. Corporal punishment damages these students’ education as much as other students, and it may also adversely affect some students’ underlying physical or psychological conditions.
The entire report is available from the Human Rights Watch website as a PDF file.
