Disabled kids are punished more often
Corporal punishment report called ‘concerning’
Tennessee schools use corporal punishment at a disproportionate rate on students with disabilities, a new state report shows, possibly spurring forward a bill that would ban the discipline practice for that subset of students.
The Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury released the report this week, showing a higher rate of the use of corporal punishment against students with individualized education plans.
Those students could have either a physical or mental disability, or could be considered gifted.
The report defines corporal punishment as “paddling, spanking, or other forms of physical punishment imposed on a student.”
Corporal punishment on decline, but less so for disabled students
The report reviewed three academic years of data, 2009-10, 2011-12, and 2013-14.
“In 2009-10, the statewide rate of corporal punishment use for students
with disabilities was lower than the statewide rate for students without disabilities,” the report said. “In the following two reporting years, the opposite was true: students with disabilities received corporal punishment at a higher rate than their peers, by nearly 2 percentage points in 2013-14.”
In 2012-13, nearly 2,000 students with disabilities across the state endured corporal punishment.
“In all three reporting years, about 80 percent of the schools that reported using corporal punishment for students with and without disabilities used it at a higher rate for students with disabilities,” the report said.
While the numbers of children without disabilities being disciplined with corporal punishment dropped 46 percent over the three-year period studied, the rate for students with disabilities dropped just 7 percent.
Most major districts in Tennessee don’t allow the practice
Carol Westlake, executive director of the Tennessee Disability Coalition, said she was saddened but not surprised by the data.
“It is something that I think we believed from anecdotes that families tell us,” Westlake said.
Tennessee is one of 22 states that allows for corporal punishment. Many districts have policies against it, however. No Shelby County districts use corporal punishment. Neither do Metro Nashville Public Schools, Williamson County Schools or Murfreesboro City Schools.
But its use is prevalent in several rural and eastern areas of the state. Of 148 total school districts, 109 have a board policy allowing corporal punishment.
Eight school districts have policies that require the school to contact parents prior to the administration of corporal punishment, while 31 board policies specify that parents may opt out of the practice for their child. The report, however, could not explain the discrepancies between students with and without disabilities receiving corporal punishment.
“It is not possible to conclusively determine why students with disabilities receive corporal punishment at higher rates than their peers,” the report said. “This is due in part to the lack of good data on corporal punishment use.”
Nashville legislator pushes a statewide ban
Legislation currently under consideration in the Tennessee General Assembly seek to both ban corporal punishment for children with disabilities and require better reporting on its use from districts.
Rep. Jason Powell, D-Nashville, filed the bill that would ban corporal punishment for students with disabilities.
He’d tried to ban all corporal punishment in the past, but was unsuccessful. Powell refocused his efforts on students with disabilities after seeing news reports of the disproportionate use of corporal punishment.
“I think that it’s alarming, especially when you consider that a lot of the children with disabilities have severe emotional and mental disabilities,” Powell said.
“Subjecting them to corporal punishment — they don’t even understand, in some cases, the consequences of their actions.”
Westlake, whose group advocates on behalf of more than 30 organizations that work with people with disabilities in Tennessee, said it can be hard to distinguish whether a child’s actions are the result of their disability.
“It is too easy, I think, to mistake behavior related to your disability for simply being bad behavior,” she said.
“I think that it’s alarming, especially when you consider that a lot of the children with disabilities have severe emotional and mental disabilities.” Rep. Jason Powell D-Nashville
State education department calls report’s findings ‘concerning’
The Tennessee Department of Education said in a statement that while discipline decisions are made on the local level, the results of the comptroller’s report are concerning.
“While corporal punishment is legal, our state training and resources promote the use of restorative practices to foster positive discipline in schools,” spokeswoman Sara Gast said. “We are committed to increasing our focus on this issue and engaging in conversations with students, educators and our broader community about how we can better support healthy and fair discipline practices.
“Additionally, we will gladly work with the General Assembly to determine policy considerations to address the concerning results found in this report.”
Two Republican legislators, Senate Education Committee Chair Dolores Gresham of Somerville and Sen. Rusty Crowe of Johnson City, requested the report from the comptroller’s office. Neither was available for comment Thursday.
Powell said he hopes the report convinces the legislature to pass his bill.
The hodge-podge nature of practices across the state “speaks to why we need a blanket wide state policy on this,” he said.
“Because clearly we still have some educators and principals in this state who think there’s nothing wrong with administering corporal punishment to those students who are the most vulnerable in our society.”
Reach Jennifer Pignolet at jennifer. pignolet@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @JenPignolet.