15 states have laws that allow corporal punishment in schools. Here's where, and why

For example, an Education Department analysis of data from the 2017-’18 school year shows boys were more probable than girls to receive corporal punishment. And compared to each group’s enrollment levels, white, Black and Native American or Alaska Native boys all experienced corporal punishment at disproportionately high rates, according to a federal analysis of data from the 2020-’21 school year.

A 2021 study published in the journal Social Problems employed federal data to look at the relationship between a region’s history of lynchings and the present-day use of corporal punishment in public schools. In counties where more lynchings occurred, the researchers found a higher likelihood of students experiencing corporal punishment at school and “that lynching is particularly predictive of corporal punishment for black students.”

The negative impacts of corporal punishment 

According to the American Psychological Association, corporal punishment “may create in the child the impression that he or she is an ‘undesirable person’; and an impression that lowers self-esteem and may have chronic consequences.”

Joan Durrant is a child developmental psychologist in Manitoba, Canada. She has spent her career researching corporal punishment, and she said it doesn’t work the way parents and educators often hope it will. “It really fuels dishonesty,” she said. “You learn how to lie. You learn to avoid punishment.”

She said corporal punishment often teaches children that violence is an acceptable method of resolving conflict, and an overwhelming amount of research has identified a connection between the practice and an increase in aggressive behavior.

“It’s providing a very powerful model by the people that they revere as knowing everything, that this is how you deal with your frustration,” Durrant said.

And while not all children who experience corporal punishment become more aggressive, Durrant emphasized that corporal punishment can erode relationships and lead to other chronic issues like anxiety, depression and addiction. Research also indicates corporal punishment to be a risk factor for intimate partner violence later in life, both as a victim and as a perpetrator.

Durrant said the negative impacts of corporal punishment are clear and backed by hundreds of studies conducted since the mid-20th century. She said there are limited, peer-reviewed studies that challenge those broader findings, but she questions some of their methods.

“You’re at a disadvantage” when a child knows they can’t be spanked

Randy Randleman is a licensed psychologist who works with school children. Unlike many of his peers, he believes corporal punishment can be a helpful tool for schools. He’s based in Oklahoma, where school corporal punishment is legal.

“I’ve worked in over 150 small schools in Oklahoma,” he said. “I go out here every day and I see there’s a small group of kids that, if they knew they would get a paddling – oh, [the misbehavior is] done. So why would you give that up?”

Randleman said he helps schools implement their disciplinary procedures. Sometimes, schools will call him in to conduct a psychological evaluation of a particular student and to help determine how to respond to that student’s misbehavior. Randleman previously served as an Oklahoma state representative. While in office, he said, he resisted proposals to ban corporal punishment for students with disabilities. A similar bill ultimately passed, but Randleman said he stands by his opposition.

With the exception of children with intellectual disabilities, he said, “you’re at a disadvantage” when a child knows they can’t be spanked. He points to children who are making conscious decisions to misbehave and who may also have diagnoses such as speech disorders. He said taking away corporal punishment could provide such students license to act with impunity.

Still, he said he considers corporal punishment a last resort: “I would never [recommend that a school] spank a child unless it was just behavioral.” Meaning, he stated, a student is making a conscious choice to be defiant, something he determines in his student evaluations.

If corporal punishment doesn’t succeed in changing the student’s behavior, he said it’s probably time for a different approach. He said, as a child, he often secured spanked – sometimes for behaviors that were out of his control. It he now attributes to his ADHD.

“And you could spank me a hundred times and it wouldn’t make me any [different].” What did help, he stated, was taking away his basketball practices.

Randleman acknowledges that physical discipline can sometimes go too far. NPR asked him about a 2025 news report from ABC affiliate WTOK. It described a local incident in which a Mississippi school staffer broke a student’s arm during a paddling. In cases like that, Randleman said, “It should have been stopped before you even got to that level.”

But he said he still doesn’t think it should be legislated away. “I don’t want any consequences taken away from me,” he said.

What corporal punishment looks like in one district

Warner Public Schools, roughly 70 miles southeast of Tulsa, is among the highest achieving districts in Oklahoma. David Vinson is the superintendent, and he’s a proponent for allowing districts to make their own rules concerning corporal punishment.

“I’ve been here for 14 years,” Vinson said. “We’ve allowed corporal punishment that whole time.”

His district is in a small, rural community and serves about 860 students, most of them from low-income households. He said numerous of his students are Native American.

Vinson said he isn’t advocating for other schools to apply corporal punishment. But he doesn’t want the option taken away for his district, even though he said it’s rarely employed. The threat of a paddling alone is often enough to curb unwanted behavior, he said, and corporal punishment allows students to stay in the classroom for infractions that would have otherwise resulted in suspension.

“The fact that we can paddle, I think, is a great deterrent to a lot of kids,” he explained.

In the last eight years, Warner High School Principal, Brian Hummingbird. This person is Cherokee, said he’s only paddled two students – both at a parent’s request. (Hummingbird recently accepted a new job as superintendent of a nearby district.) Warner’s middle school principal, Jeramy Branchcomb, stated he has never spanked a student, but “If I did it every time a parent asks me to do it, I’d be doing it every week.”

Vinson said corporal punishment is primarily employed at the elementary school level, usually with pre-K and kindergarten students.

The elementary school principal, Alan Gordon, said students know concerning his paddles – one named Peace and one named Harmony.