Groups want corporal punishment curbed, News & Observer

March 2012

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Children’s advocates want the legislature to prohibit school personnel from hitting disabled students and to require districts to report instances of corporal punishment to the state Board of Education.

Districts reported 1,400 acts of corporal punishment last year to Action for Children North Carolina. Two districts that allow corporal punishment did not respond to the group’s survey.

Twenty-six of the state’s 115 school districts administer corporal punishment, according to the Action for Children report. None are in the Triangle.

Twenty more school districts allow corporal punishment, but reported they hit no students in the 2008-2009 school year.

Three districts, Nash-Rocky Mount, Burke, and Robeson, accounted for more than half the reported instances, according to the group’s numbers.

In past sessions, advocates have failed in their efforts to get the legislature to join 30 other states and ban corporal punishment.

This year, they are trying to get a limited ban for disabled students.

There are no figures on how many disabled students received corporal punishment last year, but a survey by the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office said that disabled students were punished by hitting 290 times in 2006, according to the Action for Children report.