Study Finds Minorities More Likely To Be Paddled WASHINGTON, D.C. (APR - Alabama Public Radio ) - Paddlings, swats, licks. A quarter of a million schoolchildren got them last year, and a study says blacks, American Indians and kids with disabilities got a disproportionate share of the punishment.

The study found that African American and Native Americans students are more than twice as likely to be paddled. It also found that boys are three times as likely to be paddled as girls.

Researchers from Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union used Education Department data and interviewed students, parents and school personnel in Texas and Mississippi. Those states accounted for 40 percent of the children who were paddled at least once in the 2006-2007 school year which was studied.

Twenty-nine states ban corporal punishment at school, but corporal punishment remains widespread across the South, including Alabama.

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