The Striking Outlier: The Persistent, Painful and Problematic Practice of Corporal Punishment in Schools

By Amir Whitaker and Daniel J. Losen

Students of color in this country far too often face barriers to receiving quality public education – from unequal resources in schools, to overly punitive discipline administered more often to children of color. As the nation’s oldest and largest nonpartisan civil rights organization, for more than a century, the NAACP has worked to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of all persons and to eliminate racebased discrimination. Equal access to public education and eliminating the severe racial inequities that continue to plague our education system is at the core of our mission. This new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the UCLA Center for Civil Rights Remedies brings new light to the practice of corporal punishment in schools. When an educator strikes a student in school, it can have a devastating impact on the child’s opportunity to learn in a safe, healthy, and welcoming environment. This is dangerous for all students, but corporal punishment is administered disproportionately to students of color in our nation’s public schools

Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Rights Center and Los Angeles: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA, 2019. 41p.