hen a Florida elementary school principal was caught on video spanking a six-year-old girl with a wooden paddle last month, it sparked national outrage and a criminal investigation. But for those who believed the principal should face arrest, a state prosecutor’s memo stung like a slap to the face.
Florida is one of 19 states in the country that allows corporal punishment in schools, but it’s prohibited in Hendry county, where the little girl was beaten, and state law requires educators to follow local rules. That was not enough, however, for state prosecutors to hold Melissa Carter, the principal, responsible for any wrongdoing. In a three-page memo outlining their decision not to pursue charges, they instead questioned the credibility of the girl’s mother, an undocumented immigrant who filmed the campus incident and shared it with the local television station WINK. Officials concluded the mother consented to the beating and at no point spoke up to “raise any objection”.
That the prohibition in her own school district did not protect the Florida first-grader from being hit is just one example of how corporal punishment persists even in places where the practice is explicitly outlawed.
About a dozen school districts in states where corporal punishment is banned reported using it on students more than 300 times during the 2017-18 school year, according to an analysis by The 74 of the most recent civil rights data from the US Department of Education. And in Louisiana, a state where paddling is permitted except on students with disabilities, data shows that special education students were hit nearly 100 times in 2017-18. Years of data have shown that students of color and those with disabilities are disproportionately subjected to corporal punishment, a practice that goes on despite a substantial body of research showing its harmful effects on youth development.
To the state senator Annettee Taddeo, a Democrat who has worked for several years to ban corporal punishment in Florida schools, the Hendry county video is proof that physical punishment continues under the radar in her state. Yet without a statewide ban, she said it was “very, very difficult for prosecutors to have a case” when educators dole out corporal punishment to students in violation of local rules.
“This is a major problem when, even in areas where supposedly it’s not supposed to happen, it’s still happening,” Taddeo told the 74. “When the school boards say ‘We don’t want this in our counties,’ we as parents think, ‘OK, that takes care of it.’ It does not.”
Districts in six states and the District of Columbia reported instances of corporal punishment in 2017-18 despite laws prohibiting its use. Of them, Chicago public schools accounted for the lion’s share, with children in the nation’s third-largest school district struck 226 times in school that year.
A district spokesman said all corporal punishment allegations are reported to the education department and since 2019, accused educators “are immediately removed from the classroom and thoroughly investigated”.
In September, the Chicago district agreed to pay $400,000 in court settlements after lawsuits accused educators of using physical force on two children with disabilities. Both educators were charged with felony aggravated battery.
Nationally, educators used corporal punishment on K-12 students nearly 100,000 times during the 2017-18 school year, according to the federal Civil Rights Data Collection. While educators’ use of corporal punishment has declined significantly in recent years, the practice remains prevalent almost exclusively in southern states where it is allowed. Mississippi was the national leader, with educators there subjecting students to corporal punishment nearly 28,000 times in one year.
