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Dreamstime.com
Brookings
Ending corporal punishment of preschool-age children
Marie Falcone, Diana Quintero, and Jon Valant
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
Over the last several years, education policymakers and school leaders
have worked to rein in excessively punitive school discipline
practices. Motivated by concerns about disproportionality in discipline
rates and the consequences of harsh discipline, they have limited the
use of suspension and expulsion, especially for young children. It’s
been among the most active areas of state and district education
policymaking, while also attracting the attention of federal
policymakers.
In this context, it seems remarkable that so many states continue to
allow corporal punishment in schools and that there hasn’t been more
legislative effort to end the practice. According to the Education
Commission of the States, 23 states either explicitly allow corporal
punishment in public schools or defer to localities on its use.
Perhaps even more remarkable is that state laws on corporal punishment,
unlike many laws on exclusionary discipline, do not distinguish between
children of different ages. We reviewed state legislation on corporal
punishment (aided by research from the National Center for Safe
Supportive Learning Environments). Our review turned up no cases of
states prohibiting the use of corporal punishment for young children
where the practice is allowed for older children. This is true even for
children enrolled in school-based pre-K programs. State laws that allow
educators to hit 14-year-olds generally allow educators to hit
4-year-olds as well.
We don’t accept that any child, of any age, should be subject to
corporal punishment at the hands of a teacher or school administrator.
However, with corporal punishment in grades K-12 still a contentious
issue in some areas, we looked into the practice in pre-K in
particular. While it appears less common at these ages—and harder to
track, with many children in private child-care centers that do not
provide data—we would hope that objections to corporal punishment for
very young children are shared widely enough to motivate legislative
action.
THE LANDSCAPE OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT OF YOUNG CHILDREN
Corporal punishment is the practice of intentionally inflicting pain
upon a child in response to a behavior deemed unacceptable. It has a
long history in U.S. schools, evoking images of paddles, belts, and
open hands. Concerns about corporal punishment also have a long
history, too, with New Jersey being the first state to ban the practice
in 1867.
Today, corporal punishment laws vary across states, as well as across
districts (and schools) within states. About half of all states ban it
outright. Some say little about it, implicitly deferring to local
leaders and educators, perhaps relying on child-abuse laws as
guardrails. Others are more explicit.
For example, Oklahoma’s school discipline laws state that “nothing
contained in this act shall prohibit any parent, teacher or other
person from using ordinary force as a means of discipline, including
but not limited to spanking, switching or paddling.” Its policy defines
some limits—specifically for students with “the most significant
cognitive disabilities”—but does not restrict its use for very young
children. Even the restriction for students with severe disabilities is
waived if the child’s parent or legal guardian provides written consent.
Figure 1, link to article below, shows the legal landscape for the
corporal punishment of preschool students. States colored in some shade
of blue allow the practice. The different shades of blue reflect the
number of preschool children (ages 3 to 5) who experienced corporal
punishment during the 2015-16 school year according to the Civil Rights
Data Collection (CRDC). These figures show the number of children who
received corporal punishment, not the number of incidents, so a child
who was punished multiple times would only count once. Moreover, these
data reflect only children in public programs or receiving public
services—and only the incidents that educators actually reported. While
it’s hard to know the extent to which corporal punishment might be
underreported, the U.S. Government Accountability Office identified
evidence of underreporting in CRDC data of disciplinary incidents
involving students with disabilities. That type of underreporting is
possible here, too, though it cannot be known for sure.
The map shows clear trends by region, especially in the number of
reports. Nearly all of the reported cases are in the South or parts of
the Great Plains, generally in states with Republican state leadership.
Ten states reported at least one preschooler receiving corporal
punishment in 2015-16, for a total of about 1,500 children. Children in
Texas and Oklahoma account for the majority of these cases. Mississippi
and Oklahoma have the largest number of pre-K children subjected to
corporal punishment relative to their public preschool populations
reported in the CRDC data.
In all, the rates of corporal punishment are lower for pre-K than K-12.
About 1 of every 1,000 preschool children in the CRDC data are reported
to have been corporally punished in 2015-16, compared to about 2 of
every 1,000 students in K-12 grades. Interestingly, pre-K corporal
punishment patterns by race and ethnicity differ from the
disproportionality observed in suspensions. Black and white children in
public pre-K programs are both overrepresented among those receiving
corporal punishment relative to their shares of the full public pre-K
population. Latino children are substantially underrepresented: 11% of
preschoolers receiving corporal punishment are Latino, compared to 29%
of all children in public pre-K programs and 21% of children in public
pre-K programs that reported at least one case of corporal punishment).
Some states allow corporal punishment, but they give parents an
opportunity to opt out. For example, Texas law defers to districts on
the use of corporal punishment, but it allows parents/guardians to opt
out via a written, signed statement. However, decades of research in
psychology and behavioral economics show that default options are
powerful. Requiring families to actively opt out—and then do it again
every new school year—likely leads to many families who oppose the
practice unknowingly opting in. Moreover, schools don’t always comply
with those parental requests, and it’s not at all clear that this
question should be left to parents in the first place.
EVIDENCE ON THE EFFECTS OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT
The strongest arguments against schools deliberately inflicting
physical pain on preschoolers are rooted in ethics, not empirical
research. In fact, issues of ethics and empirical evidence are
interconnected, since it’s hard to imagine an institutional review
board (IRB) approving the type of experimental study that would produce
the clearest causal evidence of its effects.
Still, there is now an extensive body of research on this subject and,
in fact, an extensive body of meta-analyses and reviews of this
research. It comes with a couple of caveats. First, the evidence to
date is more correlational than causal, with researchers attempting to
control for differences between students who are and are not exposed to
corporal punishment. Second, the evidence on the effects of pre-K
children receiving corporal punishment at school is scarce. Most of the
studies consider older children, and many consider the effects of
corporal punishment at home as well as (or instead of) school.
Taken as a whole, this literature offers nothing to suggest corporal
punishment as a promising strategy with long-term benefits. Proponents
of corporal punishment tend to see it as way to secure compliance and
prevent future negative behaviors (e.g., seeing the threat of being hit
as a powerful deterrent). However, the positive effects–if and where
they exist–tend to be very short term (e.g., getting a child to comply
with an adult’s immediate command). They are overwhelmed by a broader
set of negative outcomes, including in long-term compliance. Many
studies find associations between corporal punishment and negative
outcomes such as aggression and antisocial behavior, although the
strength of these negative associations and the extent to which they
represent causal effects continue to be debated.
Leading organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and
the American Psychological Association (APA) have condemned corporal
punishment in schools, citing its likely harm to children. The APA
recently passed a resolution that strongly condemns its use by parents
as well.
LOOKING AHEAD
Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that corporal
punishment at school does not violate Eighth Amendment protections
against “cruel and unusual punishment,” a push to curtail its use has
come from the local and state levels. However, that work remains
incomplete, with about 45% of U.S. schoolchildren living in states that
still allow it.
Federal action seems unlikely, at least without a change in majority
control of the Senate. House Democrats introduced a bill in 2019 that
would prohibit states and local educational agencies that permit
corporal punishment from receiving federal funding. However, that bill
has not attracted Republican support and, with Congress not passing
much legislation of late, looks unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon.
In the absence of federal action, state governments should take action
on this issue, not leaving decisions about whether to harm young
children to local leaders, educators, or even parents. Many issues in
education are complicated, with reasonable arguments on multiple sides.
This isn’t one of them. Even if the politics of student discipline do
not allow for the full-fledged prohibition of corporal punishment, one
would hope that enough support exists to stop the practice for
preschool-age children.
To see the story and the chart of states, click here
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