The National At-Risk Education Network

The NAREN Hall of Shame

The 23 states that still allow paddling (beating with a board) of students in schools.

The "top 10" highest hitting, paddling states, in descending order from the worst paddlers to the least, are:

• Mississippi
• Arkansas
• Alabama
• Tennessee
• Oklahoma
• Louisiana
• Georgia
• Texas
• Missouri
• New Mexico

The other 13 — unlucky for students to attend — states are:

• Arizona
• Colorado
• Delaware*
• Florida
• Idaho
• Indiana
• Kansas
• Kentucky
• North Carolina
• Ohio
• Pennsylvania*
• South Carolina
• Wyoming

* Awaiting a governor's signature to ban corporal punishment in the schools. The United States remains one of only three industrialized nations — along with Canada and Australia — to allow paddling students for bad behavior.

In recent national surveys, nearly 40 percent of the parents and 75 percent of the teachers surveyed supported corporal punishment in schools. So does the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1977 gave schools the OK to paddle children, even if their parents don't approve.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association and the National Association of School Psychologists are all against school paddling.

From a recent article in USA Today:

What supporters of corporal punishment fail to recognize is that spanking creates more problems than it solves and sends kids the wrong message — that physical abuse is acceptable under certain circumstances. Among current concerns regarding this issue:

• Department of Education statistics show African-American students are twice as likely to be spanked as kids of other races. Poor children also are struck more often.
• A Columbia University analysis of 88 studies on spanking found that corporal punishment imposed inconsistently, in anger or in ways that humiliate is linked to aggression and later mental-health problems.
• Teachers poorly trained in corporal punishment can easily cross a line between appropriate discipline and violent mistreatment.