Oklahoma lawmakers discussed on Monday whether corporal punishment is an asset to school discipline, but a coalition of child advocates called for the state to ban public schools from inflicting physical pain on students.
Rep. Jim Olsen, R-Roland, hosted an interim study at the state Capitol to consider the “effectiveness of properly administered corporal punishment.” Olsen said he has no plans to file legislation on the topic but wanted to discuss both sides of the issue.
The Oklahoma State Department of Education in 2020 prohibited schools from using physical force to discipline students with disabilities. A bill failed to pass in the state House this year that would have encoded a similar prohibition in state law.
Oklahoma law bans corporal punishment only for students with the “most significant cognitive disabilities.”
More than 1,500 Oklahoma students, including 276 students with disabilities, experienced corporal punishment in the 2020-21 school year, according to the most recent data set available from the U.S. Department of Education.
Out of 512 districts in the state, 137 permit corporal punishment, according to a 2023 report from Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. The report’s author, David Blatt, spoke during the interim study Monday against corporal punishment, presenting multiple studies that link it to a risk of child injury and further negative behaviors.
Olsen and Rep. Randy Randleman, R-Eufaula, said during the study that local school districts, not the state, should decide whether to permit corporal punishment.
“I have no desire to insist that every parent use corporal punishment, nor that every school use corporal punishment,” Olsen said. “The goal is to leave that as an option for those schools.”
Randleman is a certified teacher and licensed psychologist. He said corporal punishment is unnecessary in most situations, but it could be appropriate in some contexts if a child is exhibiting misbehavior that is unrelated to a disability or emotional disturbance.
Warner Public Schools Superintendent David Vinson said his district applies corporal punishment sparingly and only with parental consent. He said it helps “tremendously” in his eastern Oklahoma district as a deterrent of bad behavior.
“I feel like if you’re in a school district or community that has allowed it and continues to allow it, then that’s where it needs to stay, is within those local communities,” Vinson said. “It’s part of our local control.”
Multiple medical organizations and child welfare groups recommend corporal punishment be abolished in all school settings. The American Academy of Pediatrics labeled the practice an ineffective, unethical and harmful way of managing child behavior.
The state Department of Education’s administrative codes discourage it for all students and recommend schools apply other developmentally appropriate discipline methods.
There are no guidelines in state law to regulate when, how and for what grade levels corporal punishment can be used, said Gary Duhon, an Oklahoma State University professor of school psychology.
“It was described that it could be effective under the right conditions with the right children at the right time with the right personnel,” Duhon said after the study. “There’s no guarantee that’s going to happen.”
Joe Dorman, chief executive officer of Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy, urged state lawmakers to outlaw the practice in schools, especially for students with disabilities. He advised parents to encourage their local school boards to ban it in districts where it’s still allowed.
In a state with thousands of inexperienced emergency certified teachers and a prevalence of childhood trauma, Dorman said “schools shouldn’t be doing this.”
The former president of the Oklahoma PTA, Lori Wathen, arrived at the interim study with a wooden paddle printed with the phrase, “no to corporal punishment.” She said she’s fortunate that her son, who has an intellectual disability, attended a district that doesn’t allow physical pain as a form of discipline.
“Having a child with a disability myself, it’s just hard to believe in 2024 that we’re having this type of interim study and that we’re still spanking children with disabilities,” Wathen said. “It just needs to stop. All of the data, all of the research shows it’s not effective, and I just wish our legislators would listen to that data and that research.”
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