It was over a decade ago when then-16-year-old Greg Hooper sat in an Alvarado High School office with his vice principal — who was holding a two-foot-long wooden paddle.
Hooper, who was in trouble for using an audio editing software after finishing up his work, was given a choice: He could do three days of in-school suspension or get three “pops” on his buttocks.
He took the pops.
“He asked me to essentially bend over his desk, and he hit me three times,” Hooper told KERA News. “It was humiliating. It was so uncomfortable.”
Now 31, Hooper is against corporal punishment – the practice of causing pain or discomfort to correct a behavior.
And while most states across the country have banned such punishments in schools, Texas and 14 other states explicitly allow the practice.
Texas had the fifth-highest rate of corporal punishment in the 2021-2022 school year, or about 2 incidents per 1,000 students, according to an analysis of the latest federal data by NPR. That amounts to 11,360 instances of corporal punishment.
It’s driven by a relatively low number of Texas schools – 580 out of 8,924 schools in the state recorded at least one instance of the punishment — and parents can submit a signed statement to opt their kid out of it in schools where it’s allowed.
Corporal punishments were also disproportionately given to children with disabilities. They accounted for 28% of the corporal punishment instances despite only making up 13% of the Texas public school population.
The NPR analysis only distinguishes between children with and without disabilities, so it’s not clear if other demographics are being disproportionately affected by corporal punishment.
But data from the Texas Education Agency on discipline shows boys are more likely to receive suspensions and be removed from school. Boys made up 68% of all in-school suspensions and school expulsions.
Alvarado ISD, which had the 12th-highest number of corporal punishment cases in Texas, has since banned the practice, Tommy Brown, a spokesperson for the district, told KERA News.
The change reflects a commitment to “creating a safe, supportive, and effective learning environment for every scholar,” he said.
“No specific incident led to the change in school policy regarding corporal punishment,” Brown said. “It was simply a change in philosophy.”
Does corporal punishment work?
Most schools across the country have moved away from the practice of paddling or other kinds of corporal punishment. That’s because there’s little evidence it works, said George Holden, a psychology professor emeritus at Southern Methodist University who primarily studied corporal punishment.
“School officials may think that by administering corporal punishment they are appropriately disciplining the child who will then learn to respect the school and behave better,” Holden said. “The research indicates that that’s unlikely to happen.”
What’s much more common is the child loses respect for the person who hit them, then retaliates and becomes reluctant to go to school. Their academic performance can also drop, Holden said.
The American Psychological Association has opposed corporal punishment in school since at least 2008.
For Hooper, the former Alvarado High School student who was paddled, he said it did have psychological effects.
“It makes me as a human being feel belittled or ostracized or less of a human,” he said.
And beside that, it just plain hurt.
“He didn’t hold back,” Hooper said. “It was three full swing hits, and each one hurt more than the last.”
Some parents support it
When KERA News reached out on social media to residents of Alvarado for their experiences with corporal punishment, some defended the practice.
“There is nothing wrong with a good old fashioned paddling,” Michael Reardon wrote. “Everyone needs a good one from time to time.”
“These spoiled brats these days need a good paddling,” Brian Wolfe wrote.
Holden said that’s no surprise.
“It’s deeply entrenched,” Holden said. “I think one reason that parents think it is so effective is because they see this immediate impact on the kid. If they spank their child, they see the child is very upset and crying, and at least immediately isn’t misbehaving.”
In one of his studies on corporal punishment, Holden said researchers attached audio recorders to mothers and analyzed how they disciplined their children. His team found that when children were hit for misbehaving, they would misbehave again within 10 minutes, 78% of the time.
“Some parents who get emotionally upset about the child’s ‘misbehavior’ will lash out at the child and then feel better afterwards because they have released their negative emotions and then interpret that as being a positive thing,” Holden said.
Hooper said he was also spanked by his parents, and his school called his parents for permission before he was paddled.
“It did absolutely nothing for them,” he said. “Because now I’m estranged from my family, I don’t talk to them anymore.”
Dylan Duke is KERA’s breaking news reporter. Got a tip? Email Dylan at dduke@kera.org.
KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you.
Copyright 2026 KERA News