Rep. John Waldron, D-Tulsa, said his bill would require school districts to report uses of corporal punishment, and metrics about each instance, to the State Department of Education — a process not currently mandated by law.
In Oklahoma statute, corporal punishment is described as the deliberate infliction of physical pain by hitting, paddling, spanking, slapping or any other physical force used as a means of discipline.
For physical punishments to be allowed in a given district, it has to have the approval of its local school board. Of 512 districts in the state, 137 permit corporal punishment, according to a 2023 report from the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice.
“But we don’t know how often it’s being used, or who it’s being used on,” Waldron said.
He said reporting guidelines would create much-needed transparency and reveal patterns the state may wish to correct.
A draft of the bill provided by Waldron would require districts to report the number of times corporal punishment is administered; a record of the age, race, gender and disability status of the student receiving it and details about who administered the punishment.
The State Department of Education would then be responsible for providing the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth with an annual report with the findings.
Corporal punishment in schools today
In recent years, corporal punishment has been a topic of public and legislative focus in Oklahoma.
Right now, there are no reporting laws for corporal punishment performed on the general student population.
Under Ryan Walters’ administration, only seven school districts reported their numbers to the state for the 2022-23 school year. Only one district reported for 2023-24.
Previous years contain more comprehensive reporting from practicing districts but still don’t offer complete state-wide data.
Conflict about affording protections to students with disabilities
In 2020, the Oklahoma State Department of Education prohibited schools from using physical force to discipline students with disabilities. A bill failed to pass in the state House this year that would have encoded a similar prohibition in state law.
Joe Dorman, head of the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy, argues the law is necessary.
“My expectation is that [corporal punishment is] happening more often to students with special needs, to students in the critical subgroups as laid out by the report card,” he said.
Dorman said the department’s protections only extend to children with the most severe conditions, leaving out swaths of students who should qualify for exemption.
Rep. Jim Olsen, R-Roland, has been at the helm of the disagreeing majority preventing state laws from policing corporal punishment.
“It all comes down to the definition of disabled,” Olsen said. “Under federal laws, that’s a huge range.”
Olsen said students with “extreme cases” of disability may not have the capacity to understand the infliction of corporal punishment and, therefore, should be exempt – an opinion he said “virtually everyone” would agree with.
Olsen said, though, not everyone with a federally recognized disability should be afforded the same immunity. For example, a child with a “speech impediment” or “who is partially blind in one eye” should still be able to receive corporal punishment – an option he said would disappear with recently proposed bills.
Still, Sen. Dave Rader, R-Tulsa, is bringing a version of the same bill back to the floor. Along with Dorman, Rader and other proponents of the bill argue students who’ve already been recognized by “society and school systems” to have special needs, are falling through the cracks.
“I originally gawked at running the bill,” Rader said, “because I was thinking, ‘surely this isn’t done today.’”
Questions about efficacy of physical punishment
Oklahoma State University psychiatry professor Dr. Sara Coffey said she thinks corporal punishment should not be a permitted form of discipline for any children, let alone for those with disabilities.
“There are so many more effective ways of being able to teach and train a child and help a child grow,” Coffey said.
She said physical punishment is not a good way to mold behavior because it can disrupt relationships and harm a student’s mental health.
“What we want to do is provide that scaffolding and support so that they are able to meet that expectation going forward,” she said.
And a supportive environment, Coffey said, is especially important in a state like Oklahoma where childhood trauma is so prevalent.
Still, Olsen is hesitant to endorse district-wide tracking.
“I don’t necessarily trust the state,” he said. “It gets this data, and then what’s it going to do with it?”
He said the groups advocating for tracking corporal punishment in schools are often those who want to see it banned. He said he wants to avoid governmental overreach, especially when attitudes already reflect best practices.
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