Report Cites 220 Cases of D.C. Teachers Abusing Students

by Mercedes Cardona (Subscribe to Mercedes Cardona's posts) Feb 9th 2010 2:42PM

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The Washington, D.C. school district, already rocked by infighting with its teachers, is getting another black eye from reports of more than 200 cases of staff going overboard disciplining students in the last school year.

A company that used to handle security for the D.C. school district tallied 220 incidents where teachers and school staff were accused of hitting or verbally abusing students during the 2008-2009 school year. The security company submitted the complaints to the District of Columbia Police Department, according to The Washington Post, but the cops could not establish how many of the allegations led to criminal charges.

The majority of the 220 accusations involved younger children; 128 of the children involved were elementary school students and 34 were middle schoolers, according to the tally. The reports range from slapping and choking to insults and verbal abuse.

Corporal punishment in schools is banned in 30 states and in the District of Columbia, according to the Center for Effective Discipline. Among the other states, most give school districts and administrators leeway to set rules, while only Indiana and Arkansas give the authority to teachers, according to the Center's review of state laws.

Still, nearly a quarter million children in U.S. public schools were subjected to that punishment during the 2006-2007 school year, according to a report issued last year by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. Children with disabilities were disciplined that way more often than the norm, the report states. It was based on interviews with parents, teachers, students and school staff, and backed up with U.S. Department of Education data.

The issue in D.C. came to light after schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, who is in the middle of testy contract negotiations with the Washington Teachers Union, defended school layoffs in an interview with the magazine Fast Company.

"I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children," she says of firing 266 school staff last October.

Under a Freedom of Information Act request, the Post got the records of Hawk One, the district's former security contractor, and found reports of physical and verbal abuse accusations. Hawk One went out of business last year and has been replaced in D.C. schools.

But under pressure from parents, teachers and district officials, Rhee explains that only six of the teachers were fired for hitting students and another was under criminal investigation for sexual abuse. That has brought up more questions of why other teachers accused have not been disciplined.

The teacher's union contract, which expired Sept. 30, 2007, sets a procedure for dealing with allegations of corporal punishment against teachers, including the option for the teacher to report to police directly.

Related: Corporal Punishment

Comments (8)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Sifrina 2-09-2010 @ 11:29PM

Deplorable.

I encourage folks to check out the website for Center for Effective Discipline. Lots of good food for thought, particularly on what works and what doesn't, here and around the world.

Wendy 2-10-2010 @ 7:22AM

Deplorable..Yes. Uncommon..No

I have been fighting with the Florida School System for 5 years for abusing my children. I 'stepped' my way all the way to the Board of Education in Tallahassee where I was told, "We don't have the means to investigate these allegations"! I wrote to my Congressman who was ignored by the School Board and to the Governor of Florida who ignored me.

People are leaving the State of Florida due to the School System. Unfortunately I wanted to do the same but the bottom fell out of the housing market just about that time and I cannot afford to sell right now.

Charlie Christ 'for the children'. I don't think so!

I'm looking into the possibility of going to the UN Conference on Children being held in Latvia this year.

SKL 2-10-2010 @ 8:05AM

How many instances were there of kids being verbally or physically obnoxious toward a teacher or other student?

I have no problem with corporal punishment in schools. You can talk all day about better discipline methods, but clearly these kids come from families who don't know squat about discipline, or don't care. How do we seriously expect professionals who are there to teach the 3 R's to put up with that all day long and not ever lose their cool?

School security contractor . . . funny, school security wasn't heard of when I was little - when most teachers displayed their paddles prominently in the front of their classrooms. Kids could actually concentrate on learning at school, once upon a time.

Far as I know, my state still allows corporal punishment. Like my parents, I'll tell my kids that if they get paddled at school, they are going to get more of it at home. I might make an exception if it's clear the teacher is a wacko and the punishment is extreme versus the crime. But these parents who go ballistic every time a teacher lays a finger on their children - or even gets in their face verbally - aren't doing their kids any favors.

Frankly, if I were the teachers, I'd strike until they came up with discipline rules that facilitated the kind of learning kids ought to be doing in school.

PinkThenRed 2-10-2010 @ 12:35PM

I remember being in school, and when the teacher had to get the paddle out or send a child to the principal's office it was always because they deserved to be disciplined. I am not saying it was the only way to go about disciplining the child, but it was understood that the kid was in the wrong and the teacher was not just some child abusing psycho. That was in the 70s and early 80s.
But now I keep hearing about all of these stories of school officials using no common sense when it comes to how they choose to discipline a child they feel is in the wrong. Kids are going to be naughty. Sometimes a talking to does the trick and sometimes more discipline is required. Schools should be allowed to discipline children in some fashion. But why some of these people take these bizarre measures is what I don't understand. Like that teacher that wrote with permanent marker on a child's face or the child that was handcuffed recently for drawing on her desk and then told she was going to be arrested. Did these people ever hear of letting the punishment fit the "crime"?
I know there are many great teachers out there, but it scares me that there are some real nuts in the mix. Not to mention that in a lot of these abuse cases, the principal was either in the know or was administering the abuse...the principal!

PinkThenRed 2-10-2010 @ 12:42PM

I agree with much of what you say but also believe that some of the trouble lies with some of these school employees. LOL My parents told me the same thing although I never had to be paddled. I did get a pink slip once in third grade. I dreaded having to show my parents. However, my mother took mercy upon me because I pretty much cried all day at school, and by the time I got home that day, she could tell I was already very sorry. Never had a problem with any pink slips or detention slips again.

Julie Worley 2-11-2010 @ 12:01PM

Parents and Tax-Payers expect children to be safe in our schools. There is no more basic right than to be free from violence; physical punishment of adults is not permissible, young people should expect no less. It is a "dirty little secret" that children continue to be struck with wooden boards for School "Discipline" in 20 states, Illegal in Schools in 30 states! We are unable to protect our 3 children from overhearing classmates being paddled just outside class for minor infractions such as not turning in homework. TN State Law does Not require Parental Consent of Notification for children to be physically/corporally punished at school.

Sifrina 2-11-2010 @ 3:57PM

Julie - Thank you, well put! I feel very fortunate to live in a state and a county that has successfully found better ways to effectively discipline (and educate) in our public schools. Sure, we are a very large group of fairly like-minded families overall (with many high achieving kids serving as good role models to others in the classroom who may lack positive influences at home), but my heart really goes out to parents like you (and most importantly the children) who live in other places that allow such practices and your well-behaved children have to witness this. You all deserve better.

Many people who favor paddling experienced this as children in parochial schools and believe that this is why they turned out "ok". I went to a public school outside of DC, where I never even saw or heard of paddling, and somehow the school system managed to discipline a very diverse group of students just fine (including some kids with issues at home).

This country really is divided into 2 schools of thought - "forward" thinking and "backward" thinking. If I sound condescending, I'm sorry, but paddling in school is just not the answer.