Corporal Punishment in U.S. Public Schools

Corporal Punishment in U.S. Public Schools: Prevalence, Disparities in Use, and Status in State and Federal Policy

“…From the universal dataset of public schools that we examined, our findings are consistent with analyses from previous years of OCR data on a sampling of schools (Human Rights Watch & the ACLU, 2008, 2009). Analyses of national racial-disparity ratios across time have found that they are nearly the same now as they were in 1976, when these data were first collected (Gershoff et al, 2015). …”

“…The prevalence of school corporal punishment has been on a steady decline since the late 1970s, decreasing from 4% of all schoolchildren in 1978 to less than 0.5% today (Gershoff, Purtell, & Holas, 2015). This decline occurred in large part because 25 states banned corporal punishment from public schools between 1974 and 1994.…”

“…Yet this pattern of state policy change stagnated in the 20 years since 1994, during which time only 5 additional states passed bans on school corporal punishment, bringing the total number of states with bans to 31 plus the District of Columbia (see Table 1). The states that continue to allow corporal punishment have a greater percentage of children in the general population, higher rates of child poverty and child mortality, lower college graduation rates, and lower per-pupil education expenditures than states that have banned school corporal punishment (Gershoff et al, 2015). …”

“…School-district-level racial disparities in suspensions and expulsions in the 2011–2012 OCR data were recently highlighted in a report from the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education (Smith & Harper, 2015). While two studies to date have examined the prevalence and predictors of school corporal punishment at the state level using OCR national data from representative samples of schools (Gershoff et al, 2015; Owen & Wagner, 2006), this policy report is the first-ever effort to describe prevalence of and disparities in the use of school corporal punishment at the school and school-district levels using a universal dataset of all U.S. public schools. We end the report by summarizing sources of concern about school corporal punishment and the future of public policies related to the practice, reviewing state policies related to school corporal punishment, and discussing the future of school corporal punishment in state and federal policy.…”

School corporal punishment in global perspective: prevalence, outcomes, and efforts at intervention

“…In practice, school corporal punishment often involves the use of objects (Gershoff, Purtell, & Holas, 2015). Children around the world report that they are hit by their teachers with a variety of objects, including sticks (Egypt: Youssef et al, 1998), straps (Jamaica: Baker-Henningham, Meeks-Gardner, Chang, & Walker, 2009), and wooden boards (U.S.…”