Summary of main findings
Texas now leads the U.S. in the number of school paddlings, surpassing Mississippi.
In the 2021–22 school year, Texas administered 11,359 spankings, and over 70% of all U.S. paddlings in the top 20 schools using the practice.
While overall use has declined, many Texas high schools have reinstated corporal punishment in recent years.
Shift from lower to upper grades:
Spanking has greatly decreased in elementary schools but increased at high schools, especially in non-urban districts.
Between 2010 and 2025, over 180 high schools reintroduced paddling —- often justified as an alternative to out-of-school or in-school suspension.
Community and cultural attitudes:
Support is strongest in rural communities, where spanking remains socially acceptable for teenagers.
Parents and students sometimes opt for paddlings to avoid missing sports or other extracurricular activities.
Research and Legal Context
The study emphasizes how researchers can use the Texas Public Information Act (TPIA) to access detailed, school-level disciplinary data:
Information on offenses, number of swats, gender/race of students, administrators involved, etc.
Data must be released (with student identifying details redacted) free of charge.
Texas law allows corporal punishment if it is "reasonable."
Districts typically limit swats to three.
Parental consent is not required by law, but many districts have voluntarily adopted opt-in consent forms signed by parents and students.
Trends and Policy Developments
Opt-in systems: Increasingly common since 2019; schools require written parental and sometimes student consent.
Expansion to athletics: Dozens of districts (e.g., Brownwood, Pittsburg, Hardin-Jefferson) now allow coaches to administer paddlings to athletes.
Policy reversals: Some schools introduced corporal punishment and then stopped, while others revived it after decades.
Public perception: Social media reactions show both shock (especially from outsiders) and local acceptance.
Research Questions Proposed
The article suggests several topics for future study:
1. Does corporal punishment reduce suspensions or disciplinary incidents?
2. How do parental and student attitudes vary by grade?
3. Is paddling administered equitably across demographics?
4. What role does authoritarianism play in the revival of corporal punishment?
Conclusion
Although corporal punishment in Texas schools has declined overall, a notable countertrend is emerging in rural high schools, where spanking is being reintroduced as a disciplinary tool, often with community approval. The author encourages journalists and researchers to use public records to analyze this phenomenon empirically —- its frequency, fairness, and effectiveness.
In more detail:
This July 2025 article reports that between 2017/18 and 2021/22, 431 Texas schools ceased using corporal punishment. Nevertheless, the article reports, Texas has now surpassed Mississippi in recording the highest number of corporal punishment incidents. The article is a definitive study of the current use of corporal punishment in Texas public schools. At 189 pages, including 743 endnotes, it is too long to include in full on this site, but may be downloaded free of charge here.
In many Southern US communities, the article notes, the use of spanking to discipline even older adolescents has been socially acceptable for many decades. This is true both at home and in school. Investigating disciplinary practices by parents presents numerous challenges. Texas schools, on the other hand, collect substantial data that invite examination by researchers.
The article outlines how any member of the public (whether resident in Texas or not) can use the Texas Public Information Act (TPIA) to obtain detailed information, on an anonymized per-student basis, from any of the hundreds of Texas schools that still use a spanking paddle to discipline their students. Discipline information maintained electronically by the school (as most now is) must be provided promptly and free of charge to anyone who asks. To protect student privacy, any information likely to identify a particular student must be redacted (blanked out).
Of particular interest to researchers may be questions of the effectiveness of corporal punishment, implementation decisions, parental views, and where use of corporal punishment falls on a spectrum of "authoritative" to "authoritarian". General TPIA requests can be for policies, forms, statistical reports, dimensions and photographs of the approved paddles, and administrative guidelines.
Specific requests can be for which offenses each paddling was given; the grade level, gender and race (but not name or phone number) of each student paddled; the date and time of each paddling and number of swats administered; the name of the employee who administered each spanking; and the name of all witnesses present (omitting only the name of a parent or guardian who may have been a witness). The article includes appendices of a model TPIA request, as well as a discussion of federal statistics from the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.
Among other things, the article documents the extraordinary fact that, during the past six years, sixty-five (65) identified Texas high schools have implemented spanking, either for the first time ever or after an absence of many years. Many Texas high schools are now using "opt-in" written consent provisions to obtain explicit parental support for the school's introduction, or continued use, of corporal punishment. This procedure replaces the default "opt-out" provision of Texas law.
Often these forms now also are to be signed by the student. This requires them to acknowledge in writing that they are aware of the disciplinary consequences that may await them for disrespecting an adult or engaging in other misbehavior. Use of such "opt-in" spanking permission forms is thought to encourage better conduct even by 18- and 19-year-old students. (Young adults voluntarily attending Texas public schools, the study notes, are just as eligible as minors to receive corporal punishment; this is per Texas court decisions.)
A district's decision to implement corporal punishment at the high-school level has often been accompanied by ending or reducing spanking in the lower grades. This may be because younger students are thought to be more susceptible to the presumed negative effects of corporal punishment. Many Texas districts have taken a policy decision to use corporal punishment exclusively to discipline their adolescent students. In Texas districts that paddle, a high-school student now has a significantly higher chance of receiving a spanking than an elementary student.
There is growing use of swats in voluntary extracurricular activities, particularly boys' and girls' high-school athletics, the study notes. During the past decade, the many Texas districts that have incorporated corporal punishment into their athletic programs include Anahuac Independent School District (ISD), Banquete ISD, Big Spring ISD, Blue Ridge ISD, Bremond ISD, Bridge City ISD, Brownwood ISD, Callisburg ISD, Carthage ISD, Chilton ISD, Corrigan-Camden ISD, Crockett ISD, Diboll ISD, Elkhart ISD, Evadale ISD, Ferris ISD, Fort Stockton ISD, Garrison ISD, Gladewater ISD, Goodrich ISD, Hardin ISD, Hardin-Jefferson ISD, Harleton ISD, Hillsboro ISD, Hubbard ISD, Iraan-Sheffield ISD, Irion County ISD, Jacksonville ISD, Joaquin ISD, Kerens ISD, Kirbyville Consolidated Independent School District (CISD), Leon ISD, Linden-Kildare CISD, Livingston ISD, Lorenzo ISD, Malakoff ISD, Marshall ISD, Mathis ISD, Mineola ISD, Mount Pleasant ISD, Newton ISD, Normangee ISD, North Zulch ISD, Nueces Canyon CISD, Olney ISD, Pettus ISD, Pittsburg ISD, Plains ISD, Rains ISD, Redwater ISD, Rice CISD, Roby CISD, Schleicher County ISD, Sweeny ISD, Troup ISD, Waskom ISD, West Sabine ISD, Whitehouse ISD, Whitewright ISD, Whitney ISD, Woodville ISD and Wortham ISD. Others may have done so through team guidelines and individual coaches' rules, rather than in any handbook. These are available via TPIA public information requests even if not posted on line.
There has been little apparent resistance to the introduction of spanking in athletics. And in a growing number of conservative non-urban high schools, the parent of a student-athlete must agree that the athletic director or a coach may give swats. This is as a condition of their son's or daughter's participation in sports.
The article also discusses recent developments in Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee; the fact that Texas law requires any use of corporal punishment to be reasonable; the Make Kids Great Again movement that promotes the purchase, display and use by parents of a spanking paddle to correct their teenage sons and daughters; whether the abolition of corporal punishment reduces disciplinary incidents; whether the implementation of corporal punishment reduces suspension rates or disciplinary incidents; whether using swats in athletics reduces disciplinary incidents; the numerous choices available in the administration of corporal punishment (e.g., whether students can choose swats instead of in-school suspension (ISS), whether a wood or plastic paddle is to be used, and whether swats are to be delayed until the next school morning); how authoritarianism factors into the revival of school corporal punishment; and whether corporal punishment is administered in a discriminatory way.
This website includes extensive school handbooks pages (Corporal punishment regulations of individual schools or school districts: External links to present-day school handbooks). The author may not in all cases have had time to update those pages with the myriad information included in this article, all of which was current as of July 2025.
TexasISD.com is a resource for Texas school educators, with thousands of unique visitors every day. In September 2025 it published this summary of the article.
This article was published prior to the implementation of the Texas Legislature's new law – House Bill 1481 – that forbids students from using their cell phones or other personal communications devices during the school day. As a result of the new law, some districts are adopting new cell phone/personal communications devices policies that are enforceable with a paddling.
For example, in Grandview ISD, the 2025/2026 Student Code of Conduct provides, "Inappropriate use of a personal communication device during the school day will result in disciplinary action in accordance with this Code of Conduct. Disciplinary actions are as follows: • 1st Offense: 2 Days of ISS or 3 Swats • 2nd Offense: 3 Days of ISS or 3 Swats • 3rd Offense: 5 Days of ISS (No Swat option)". Penelope ISD provides that students will receive Thursday School Detention or a paddling for their second and third cell phone offenses, and ISS or a paddling for their fourth and subsequent offenses. Nazareth ISD provides, "3rd + OFFENSE — Includes corporal punishment and/or ISS".
Texas is not the only state where some high schools have decided to place a greater reliance on the use of a spanking paddle to shape adolescent behavior. In Missouri, Cassville High School has become stricter with its students this year by making spanking available on the first of all Class IV offenses. These include cheating, classroom disruption, dress-code violations, inappropriate language or gestures, skipping detention, automobile violations, and public displays of affection ("embracing, kissing, and any other indecent action"). The Discipline Grid in the 2024/25 high-school handbook did not provide for "swatting buttocks with a paddle" for any first offenses other than property destruction, possession or use of tobacco, truancy, and verbal abuse of a school employee. And like the Texas districts just mentioned using swats for cell phone violations, the Cassville High School Student Handbook 2025-2026 provides varying durations of ISS for all cell phone offenses, but "Corporal punishment option available if opt-in form is turned in and on file in the office".
Corporal punishment in US schools -- illustrated overview