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Source: U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection for the 2013-2014

By Trisha Powell Crain

This story was written for AL.com by independent journalist Trisha Powell Crain of Alabama School Connection.

While most of the nation long ago stopped striking children, Alabama principals continue to boast one of the highest batting percentages in the nation, paddling one child every four minutes.

Across Alabama public schools, nearly 19,000 students were paddled in the 2013-2014 school year, according to newly available data from the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. The count is of individual students and does not indicate how many were paddled more than once.

Unlike in most of the developed world, Alabama law explicitly allows adults to administer corporal punishment, and education leaders in Alabama find no problem with paddling in schools.

"I don't anticipate this being the focus of change that Alabama needs to move our student achievement higher," said Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, chair of the Education Policy committee in the Alabama House of Representatives.

Collins said no one has brought up the subject of paddling in the legislature. "As a child paddled, and as a parent who paddled, I've not experienced the negative side of corporal punishment personally, only the positive side," Collins said in a statement.

While no studies exist showing improvement of student achievement after corporal punishment is banned, many studies show the negative impact paddling has on children's attitudes toward and achievement in school. After decades of research, all major children's advocacy and medical groups have called for an end to corporal punishment.

But the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of public schools to administer corporal punishment to students in 1977. The new federal data shows that most states decline to use the option, as Alabama is one of just 21 states to report any paddling in any public school.

Alabama is one of just 15 states with a state law that explicitly allows for corporal punishment. Another 29 states specifically ban the practice.

In Alabama, the new data also shows disproportionate usage, as boys are far more likely to be paddled than girls, and black and multi-race students are more likely to be paddled than white students. Though black males made up only 24 percent of the population in the schools that paddle, they accounted for 35 percent of the boys who were paddled.

Alabama is one of just 21 states to report paddling in public schools in the 2013-2014 school year, according to newly released federal data. (File image from Shelby County.)

While the number of total swings is far lower for girls, the racial disparity was higher. About a quarter of the girls in schools that paddle are African-American, but nearly half of the girls who were paddled were African-American.

Dr. Amir Whitaker, an attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center who has studied the effects of paddling, says that Alabama policy contradicts national research. "It's a very convenient and knee-jerk reaction to discipline. And it does nothing but harm the child. All the research shows that, and all the experts know that," Whitaker said.

"Research clearly says you're more likely to be aggressive if someone is aggressive with you. You're more likely to physically abuse someone if someone has physically abused you," he said.

Whitaker points out that if he, as an adult, hit a child with a board, he'd be charged with aggravated assault, yet Alabama law allows adult educators to hit children at school.

No debate in Alabama

Meanwhile, 49 nations, including most of Europe and South America, have outlawed the use of corporal punishment both in schools and in the home, according to the Global Initiative to End Corporal Punishment.

And while pressure has mounted on holdouts, such as France, there has been little public debate in Alabama or neighboring states.

"Proper corporal punishment isn't abuse, and we should be clear about that," said Mary Scott Hunter, a member of the state Board of Education.

Hunter said she had not reviewed any research on the subject, nor had she ever been asked about paddling while serving on the state board. But she said she knows many parents and school leaders who use corporal punishment on children, adding she defers to their judgment about its use in a school setting.

"We often see misbehavior in children that comes straight from the home, and I'd like to see some parents lined up and paddled for that," said Hunter. "Habitual tardiness and truancy comes to mind."

Heaviest hitters in the South

Of the 21 states that paddled in 2013-2014, a dozen are in the South.

And when it comes to frequency of paddling, seven of the top ten heaviest hitters are also in the South. Alabama lands at number three in the nation for percentage of students who are paddled, behind Mississippi and Arkansas.

In Alabama, federal data shows 18,749 students were paddled in 2013-2014. That's about 2.5% of all students in Alabama.

But the paddle is not invoked evenly across the state nor across school districts. More than half of all schools in Mississippi paddled students, but just under half in Alabama use corporal punishment.

This first map shows the number of students paddled at least once.

Meanwhile, American education and child advocacy groups, including the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Bar Association, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Association for Secondary School Principals, and the American Civil Liberties Union, continue to call for a ban, citing harmful long-term effects of paddling on children and the need to keep physical violence out of the educational environment.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry policy statement against corporal punishment, reads in part: "Corporal punishment signals to the child that a way to settle interpersonal conflicts is to use physical force and inflict pain ... Supervising adults who willfully humiliate children and punish by force and pain are often causing more harm than they prevent."

The federal definition of corporal punishment is "paddling, spanking, or other forms of physical punishment imposed on a student". Alabama leaves its definition to local boards of education.

Here's what Alabama law says about corporal punishment:

"No student has a right to be unruly in his or her classroom to the extent that such disruption denies fellow students of their right to learn. The teacher in each classroom is expected to maintain order and discipline. Teachers are hereby given the authority and responsibility to use appropriate means of discipline up to and including corporal punishment as may be prescribed by the local board of education."

In practice, spanking largely falls to principals and assistant principals, rather than classroom teachers.

Alabama growing cautious

The Alabama Board of Education just hired a new state superintendent from Massachusetts, a state that banned corporal punishment in 1971. State Superintendent Michael Sentance, who starts work today, could not be reached for comment.

Requests for comment from the Alabama State Department of Education were not successful.

But Dr. Eric Mackey, director of the School Superintendents of Alabama (SSA), said he believes the decision to paddle belongs at the district and school level. Mackey has worked in school districts that paddled students and in those that don't. "I can certainly see both sides of the debate," he said.

Maintaining order in the classroom is necessary to ensure students have a good learning environment, Mackey said. He said he believes Alabama school officials have grown cautious about using corporal punishment due in part to the litigious nature of society, but also due to the national trend away from paddling.

For their part, he said, SSA cautions school superintendents to make certain teachers and administrators know what the local board policy allows and to ensure employees follow local board policy.

While the National Education Association has called for a ban on paddling, the Alabama Education Association has not done so. Efforts to reach AEA President Sheila Remington Hocutt to determine why AEA has remained silent on this issue were not successful.

Inside the numbers

In Alabama in 2013-2014, boys were paddled at a 4.5-to-1 rate over girls.

The federal data showed that 107 of Alabama's 133 school districts engaged in the practice. (Two small city school districts, Satsuma and Troy, were not included in the federal data.)

Here's a look at which districts paddled students. Use the drop-down menu to choose whether you want to see the actual number of students paddled or the rate (or percentage) of students paddled.

Even within districts, some schools paddled far more often than others.

Nearly half, or 657 of Alabama's 1,367 schools, saw at least one incident of paddling. More than 400 of those schools that used corporal punishment enrolled elementary-aged children.

Because grade levels vary widely within schools across Alabama, it's hard to say exactly at which grades most of the paddling happened, but 10,550, or 56% of the students who were paddled attended schools that enrolled kindergartners up to at least fifth graders.

Here's a map of all schools that paddled students during the 2013-2014 school year.

When looking at schools where paddling was practiced, black males received the highest rate of paddling, at 13 percent of black males enrolled. Though black males only made up 24 percent of the population, they accounted for 35 percent of the total male students that were paddled. Alabama's numbers mirror national numbers as black males make up 22 percent of the population nationwide and accounted for 38 percent of the total male students paddled nationwide.

Among males of two or more races, one in ten was paddled, double the rate for Hispanic males, and three times the rate for Asian males. Six percent of American Indian males were paddled.

About 8 percent of white males were paddled. Overall, white males made up 66 percent of the total student population in schools where students were paddled, and accounted for 60 percent of the students who were paddled.

Black girls are being paddled at even more disproportionate rates. Though they make up only a quarter of the population at schools where students are paddled, they accounted for 47 percent of all girls who were paddled. White girls, making up 66 percent of the population in schools where students are paddled, also accounted for 47 percent of girls who were paddled.

Students with disabilities were not paddled disproportionately more than students without disabilities statewide. Although within some schools, the numbers show students with disabilities were paddled at higher rates than those without disabilities.

Trending Downward

Though Alabama is still near the top of the list nationally when it comes to use of corporal punishment, the state's numbers have shown a long-term downward trend.

In 2000, nearly 40,000 students were paddled, according to federal data. That number was nearly 30,000 in the 2009-2010 school year, and in the latest data that number is below 20,000. (It should be noted that a representative sample of schools was used prior to the 2011-2012 collection, when every school was required to report discipline data to the U.S. Department of Education.)

Numbers are also trending downward in two Alabama districts that were among the heaviest users of the paddle in 2013-2014.

In Selma City Schools, the Middle CHAT Academy, now known as R.B. Hudson Middle School, landed at the top of the state list for the percentage of students being paddled. Nearly 65%, or 301 of the school's 464 students were paddled. Males took most of the corporal punishment, with 200 of the 234 male students being paddled. Still, out of 230 female students, 101 were paddled.

Throughout the Selma district as a whole, nearly one in four students was paddled. But that appears to have changed.

Dr. Angela Mangum became superintendent of Selma City Schools in April of 2015. When asked about these numbers, Mangum provided 2015-2016 numbers showing only 178 incidents of paddling for the 3,588 students in the district, or one in 20 students, a difference she called "dramatic".

"One of the primary priorities in our district this year is to improve the socio-emotional well-being of students," Mangum wrote in an email response. "We are addressing this priority through improving the climate and culture of our classrooms and schools, and by implementing advisory programs in grade K-12 that emphasizes character development and positive relationships with others."

"We are moving away from the use of corporal punishment," echoed Mackey with the Alabama Superintendent association.

The use of alternative strategies, such as positive behavioral intervention supports (known as PBIS), are showing promise, he said. However, funding has "decreased precipitously" for teacher training within school districts, and training for programs like PBIS is suffering, he said.

"As a state, we're not investing in those behavioral interventions and professional development like we were ten years ago," Mackey said.

Highest rate in Alabama

While Selma may have claimed the highest rate for a single school, Conecuh County saw the highest rate of paddling by an entire district.

Conecuh County Schools in south Alabama paddled more students at a higher rate than any other district in Alabama. Of the 1,463 students enrolled, 341, or 23.3%, were paddled during the 2013-2014 school year. That was just slightly higher than Selma.

That means all students in Conecuh stood roughly a one in four chance of being paddled. Leading the way in Conecuh, with a 43% rate of paddling, was Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Evergreen, Alabama.

Dr. Zickeyous Byrd, superintendent in Conecuh County Schools, said "Corporal punishment is allowed in Conecuh County Schools with several restrictions. The very first, and most important one, is that any parent can 'opt out' of corporal punishment for his or her child." Byrd said it only takes a simple note from home.

But Byrd also spoke of a move away from corporal punishment. He said since he became superintendent in March 2015, paddling is now used as a "last resort," adding "only after all other corrective actions have been tried do we administer corporal punishment."

Conecuh County's student code of conduct sets out guidelines for how paddling is to be done and specifies "the employee will use a Board issued paddle" and the number of "licks" will be determined by the principal or his/her designee." Also, "at no time more than three (3) licks will be administered."

This map shows the rate of Alabama students paddled at each school by gender. The rate is the percent of students in that school and of that gender that were paddled. https://public.tableau.com/views/CorporalPunishment2013-2014OCRData/RateofStudentsbySchool?:embed=y&:display_count=yes

Why 2013-2014 numbers?

Without the federal civil rights database on school discipline, it is difficult to see what has happened since the 2013-2014 school year. Though many states provide disciplinary actions through their state department of education web sites, Alabama does not.

Discipline data belongs to local school districts, and representatives from the Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE) have said they do not have access to the data to be able to determine how many students were paddled during a school year.

But paddling students has a long history in Alabama. Much has been said about how southerners tend to spank their children, both at home and at school, more than those living in other areas of the country.

A recent study of all available research, called a "meta-analysis", on the effects of corporal punishment shows that paddling is not effective at controlling behaviors. "Instead of helping children to develop the desire and motivation to behave well of their own accord, corporal punishment teaches children that it is desirable not to get caught: rather than behaving differently next time, they are therefore likely to repeat the undesired behavior and use strategies to avoid being caught."

A recent international study linked corporal punishment with lower grades in school.

Whitaker at the Southern Poverty Law Center said that cultural acceptance of spanking children in the South makes it difficult to end the practice at school.

"As a society, we've acknowledged that bullying in schools should not be tolerated. Arming administrators and teachers with weapons and telling them it's okay to use their physical dominance on children, it's a form of bullying that shouldn't be tolerated," he said. "It sends a message that physical violence is an acceptable way to resolve conflict. In no other area is it acceptable to resolve conflict through violence. It shouldn't be tolerated in schools."

Data was extracted from the U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection for the 2013-2014 school year. Rates and proportions were calculated for purposes of this article.

More than 95,000 schools across the United States and its territories self-report the numbers on many topics including discipline, advanced course offerings and enrollment, chronic absenteeism among students and teachers. School officials must certify the accuracy of the data.

Data is collected every two years.