User:Estech01/sandbox

 This is a proposed re-write of the existent page with Mariavalderrama 

School corporal punishment in the United States

Overview
Copied from existent page for legacy.

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 behavior 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 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”. , the bill is in the Committee stage.

History of corporal punishment in U.S. schools
Corporal punishment was widely utilized in U.S. schools during the 19th and 20th centuries as a way to motivate students to perform better academically and maintain objectively good standards of behavior. The practice was generally considered a fair and rational way to discipline school children, particularly as a system with many parallels to the criminal justice system, and teachers in the late 19th century were encouraged to employ it.

At the turn of the 20th century, both boys and girls received roughly equal levels of corporal punishments in U.S. schools, but girls were more likely to report their punishment as 'unjust' or 'unfair.' However, while punishment was seen as a builder of masculinity for boys, girls were not expected to experience the same benefits, so their punishment was often, but not always, more lenient. This trend in gender parity changed significantly in the next century.

Some of the earliest parental opposition to corporal punishment in schools occurred in England in 1899 in the case Gardiner v. Bygrave, in which a teacher in London was acquitted after a parent took him to court for assault after he physically punished their son. This case set a precedent that schools could discipline children in the way they saw fit, regardless of the wishes of the parent regarding the physical punishment of their child. Over the next century, the conception of corporal punishment as a common and necessary component of (public) schools would be challenged in various countries.

Federal stance
Despite moves by some states to ban corporal punishment in schools, the Federal Government's stance is a bit more complicated. In 1977, the question of the legality of corporal punishment in schools was brought to the Supreme Court. At this point, only New Jersey (1867), Massachusetts (1971), Hawaii (1973), and Maine (1975) had outlawed physical punishment in public schools, and just New Jersey had also outlawed the practice in private schools. Many assumed that the Supremes would rule in favor of the plaintiffs.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legality of corporal punishment in schools in the landmark Ingraham v. Wright case. The Supremes ruled 5-4 that the corporal punishment of James Ingraham, who was restrained by his assistant principal and paddled by the principal over 20 times, ultimately requiring medical attention, did not constitute the Eighth Amendment, which protects citizens from cruel and unusual punishment. They further concluded that corporal punishment did not violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, since teachers or administrators administering excessive punishment can face criminal charges. This case established a precedent of "reasonable, but not excessive" punishment of students and was criticized by some scholars as "an apparent low point in American teacher-student relations."

The Ingraham v. Wright ruling firmly pushed the decision of whether or not to outlaw corporal punishment in schools squarely onto state legislators. A majority of state bans on corporal punishment have occurred in the intervening years since 1977.

States' stance
Individual states have had the power to ban corporal punishment in public schools since the 19th century. The first state to abolish school corporal punishment was New Jersey in 1867. In 1894, a Newark bill challenged this ruling, arguing that whipping should be legal if parents consented to it; the New Jersey House defeated that bill, with one doctor's testimonial asserting that the bill's provisions "would expose children who did not have thoughtful and careful parents to the cruel discrimination of the teachers." The second state to ban corporal punishment in schools 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) extent in some public schools in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina 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.

The majority of students who experience corporal punishment 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.

As of 2014, a student is hit in a U.S. public school an average of once every 30 seconds.''

List of U.S. states outlawing corporal punishment in public schools
Same as in existent page

List of U.S. states outlawing corporal punishment in private schools
Same as in existent page

Prevalence and disparities of use of corporal punishment in schools
In italic format are past Wikipedia users' contributions. The prevalence of school corporal punishment shows a decreasing trend since the 1970s, declining from 4 percent of the total number of children in schools in 1978 to less than 1 percent in 2014, this reduction is partially explained by the increasing number of states banning corporal punishment from public schools between 1974 and 1994.

The number of instances of corporal punishment in U.S. schools have been declining in recent years. In the 2002-2003 school year, federal statistics estimated that 300,000 children were disciplined with corporal punishment at school at least once. In the 2006-2007 school year, this number was reduced to 223,190 instances. According to the Department of Education, over 166,000 students in public schools were physically punished during the 2011–2012 school year. In the 2013-2014 academic year, this number was reduced to 109,000 students.

During the 2011-2012 academic year 19 states legally allowed school corporal punishment, around 14 percent of the total schools in those 19 states reported the use of corporal punishment, and 1 in 8 students attended schools that use this practice. The States that still allow this practice are :

Misbehavior that elicit corporal punishment in schools
Several studies have questioned the kind of children's misbehavior that elicit corporal punishment, however, none so far has found a cohesive and standardized system use within states or across states. The Human Right Watch conducted a series of interviews with paddled students and teachers in Mississippi and Texas and found that the most of school corporal punishment was for minor infractions, such as violating the dress code, being tardy, talking in class, running in the hallway and going to the bathroom without permission. A review of over 6,000 disciplinary files in Florida for 1987-1988 school year found that corporal punishment use in schools was not related to the severity of student's misbehavior nor with the frequency of the infraction. Czumbil and Hyman reviewed over 500 media stories about corporal punishment published in newspapers from 1975 to 1992 and coded the reason of the punishment and whether it was severe, and they found that severe corporal punishment was not more common for violent than non-violent misbehaviors.

Disparities
Many studies have highlighted that the use of corporal punishment in schools does not affect all students equally. It varies by race or ethnicity, gender and disability status. In general, results suggest that boys, children of color and children with disabilities are most likely to be targets of corporal punishment. These disparities violate three federal laws that prohibit discrimination by race, gender and disability status Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

By gender
Boys are more likely than girls from suffering corporal punishment in schools. In 1992, boys accounted for 81 percent of all incidents of physical discipline in schools. By 2012, the disparities persist, the majority of school districts within states that legally allow corporal punishment registered a ratio of 3:1 or higher, indicating that boys are 3 times more likely than girls of being subject of corporal punishment in schools. Differences in behavior can explain a fraction of this imbalance, but not all of the difference. Boys have been found to be two times as likely as girls to be discipline, but there are four times as likely to be corporally punished. When race and gender are considered together, Black boys are 16 times as likely to be subject of corporal punishment as white girls. Among children with disabilities, black boys have the highest probability of being subject to corporal punishment, followed by white boys, Black girls and white girls. While Black boys are 1.8 times as likely as white boys to be corporally punished, Black girls are 3 times more likely than white girls.

By race or ethnicity
The race and ethnic disparities in school corporal punishment have decreased with-in groups over time, but the ordering of the race and ethnic groups have remained stable. Black students are corporally punished at higher rates than White or Hispanics. In contrast, Hispanic students are less likely than white students to receive corporal punishment. 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. Another study calculated the ratio of the proportion of Black students who were corporally punished to the proportion of white students who were by state, and found that for the 2011-2012 academic year Black children in Alabama and Mississippi were over 5 times more likely to be disciplined with corporal punishment than their white counterparts. In other southeastern states -Florida, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Tennessee- Black children were more than 3 times more likely to receive corporal punishment than white children.

Within states studies have also found gender disparities. A review of over 4,000 discipline events in Florida occurred from 1987-1989 in 9 schools, revealed that although Black students constituted 22% of school enrollment, they accounted for over 50% of all cases of corporal punishment. The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction in 2013 published a review of corporal punishment cases in the 2011-2012 academic year founding that corporal punishment was disproportionately applied to Native American students, who represented 58% of all cases of corporal punishment while being only 2% of the student population.

The disparity by race in the use of corporal punishment in schools goes in line with findings of other methods of discipline, where Black children are 2 to 3 times more likely than white children to be suspended or expelled from schools. This imbalance is not due to a higher likelihood of misbehaving by children of one race over another or the socio-economic status of the children.

By disability status
Children with physical, mental, or emotional disabilities are afforded special protections and services in U.S. public schools. However, they are not afforded protection from school corporal punishment in the states that allow it, and in many states they are actually at greater risk for receiving corporal punishment than their non-disabled peers.

According to a report jointly authored by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, the United States Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection for 2006 shows that students with disabilities are subjected to corporal punishment at disproportionately high rates for their share of the population. 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." 

Children with disabilities are 50 percent more likely to experience school corporal punishment in more than 30% of the school districts in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. However, in some school districts among Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee children with disability status are 5 times more likely to be subject of corporal punishment than peers without disabilities.

Effects on children
The use of corporal punishment in schools has been shown to be associated with detrimental physical and psychological outcomes that can have long-lasting effects. Children exposed to school corporal punishment are more likely to have conduct disorder problems, to experience feelings of inadequacy and resentment, to be more aggressive and violent, and to perceived a reduction of problem-solving ability, social competence and academic achievement .Studies have suggested that corporal punishment in schools can deter children's cognitive development, children subject to corporal punishment in schools have a more restricted vocabulary, poorer school marks, and lower IQ scores.

Researchers have found a negative correlation between legality of corporal punishment and test scores, students in states that allow disciplinary paddling are exceed by their un-spanked peers on the ACT test. In 2010, 75 percent of states that allow corporal punishment in schools scored below average on the ACT composite, while three-quarters of non-paddling states scored above the national average. Improvement trend among the years also differ, in the last 18 years 66 percent non-paddling states have above average rates of improvement, while 50 percent of spanking states were above the national trend of improvement.

Disparities in the use of corporal punishment among gender, race and disability status can be perceived by children as discrimination. This perceived discrimination has been related with lower self-esteem, lower positive mood, higher depression and anxiety, and also with low academic engagement and more negative school behaviors, which might exacerbate the existing gap in discipline policies.

Furthermore, while corporal punishment is sometimes lauded as an alternative to suspension, the lack of formal training for U.S. teachers means that there is no consistently implemented style of corporal punishment that takes into account the size, age, or psychological profile of students. This leaves students more vulnerable to physical and psychological injury.

Public opinion in the U.S.
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. Moreover, a national survey conducted on teachers ranked corporal punishment as the lowest effective method to discipline offenders among eight possible techniques.

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 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”,'' the petition was closed. In 2017, Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools Act of 2017 was introduced, and was referred to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

''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 behavior 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 .''

However, some teachers and administrators defend the use of corporal punishment in the classroom as a reasonable alternative to other types of disciplinary action, like suspension, which have been shown to negatively impact children's classroom performance and social skills.