"Over most of the country and in all but a few major metropolitan areas, corporal punishment has been on a gradual but steady decline since the 1970's, and 28 states have banned it. But the practice remains alive, particularly in rural parts of the South and the lower Midwest, where it is not only legal, but also widely practiced.

In a handful of districts, like the one here in Everman [Texas], there have been recent moves to reinstate it, some successful, more not. In Delaware, a bill to rescind that state's ban on paddling never got through the legislature. But in Pike County, Ohio, corporal punishment was reinstated last year. And in southeast Mississippi, the Laurel school board voted in August to reinstate a corporal punishment policy, passing one that bars men from paddling women, but does not require parental consent, as many other policies do.

The most recent federal statistics show that during the 2002-3 school year, more than 300,000 American schoolchildren were disciplined with corporal punishment, usually one or more blows with a thick wooden paddle. Sometimes holes were cut in the paddle to make the beating more painful. Of those students, 70 percent were in five Southern states: Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas."

"Research indicates that life experiences contribute about one-third of that remaining 55-60% of student achievement or about 20% of overall achievement. Life experiences are closely related to a child's socioeconomic status. Socioeconomic status is generally defined as a function of where you live, your family's income and the education of your parents. Of these three factors, many studies have shown the level of parental education to be the most important. In general, children who come from low socioeconomic or poverty backgrounds are less likely to have the types and numbers of educational experiences, such as trips to libraries, museums, stores, etc., as compared to children who come from middle class or higher socioeconomic backgrounds. That is certainly a concern in our school district, which has a poverty rate of 72%.

The solutions to poverty are varied and complex, so in the interest of time I'll address it by simply discussing prevention. A professor I had during my doctoral studies cited the following research that I think is worth sharing with you. He said there was a simple 3-step procedure for staying out of poverty.

1) Graduate from high school

2) Get a job

3) Don't have children before you get married

The research shows if a person fails to do any one of these three things, they more than triple chances of going into poverty.

The last major area identified by research as influencing or contributing to student achievement is sociological factors. In general, sociological factors include those environmental or cultural factors which influence cognitive development. This is an area which receives occasional, but limited public attention, however the research shows that its cumulative influence on student achievement is about 40% of total student achievement, approximately the same magnitude as that of schools. Let's take a brief look at some of its' major components and correlational findings.

1) Low-birth weight babies (Those weighing 5 lbs or less) tend to lag behind others in intellectual development.

2) Children born to a very young mother (age 18 or less) is also a risk factor associated with a strong negative impact on cognitive development.

3) Social scientists are practically unanimous in their agreement that one of the most important risk factors for children today is growing up in a single-parent, female-headed household. This single factor is almost always associated with lower educational attainment and more behavioral and psychological problems. Those problems are manifested by students getting into trouble both in school and with the law, dropping out of school, early pregnancy and depressed academic performance. In general, the larger the family of single-parent household the more acute the problems."

Most theorists believe that anti-social behavior begins in childhood or early adolescence.  However, researchers at Rutgers University and the University of Minnesota have recently drawn attention to the considerable number of young people-especially young women-whose pathological pattern of antisocial behavior first manifest itself in mid- to late adolescence.  And their data indicate that parental divorce helps incubate this late-emerging pathology.

The authors begin their study by carefully scrutinizing epidemiological data collected for 358 young participants in the Minnesota Twin Family Study.   The researchers then identify and classify the 142 youths who have been engaged in antisocial behaviors: a third (33%) of this group manifest such behaviors in early adolescence but stop such behaviors by mid-adolescence; almost one half (47%) begin adolescence entangled in such behaviors and persist in such behaviors through late adolescence; and one fifth (20%) begin their antisocial behavior in mid- to late adolescence. 

The Rutgers and Minnesota scholars acknowledge that the course of antisocial behavior that begins in mid- to late adolescence is "less common than other courses of antisocial behavior."  Yet they note that this pattern "clearly exists" and is "pathological," even if it does not fit within "commonly accepted taxonomies of antisocial behavior."  What is more, those young people who begin manifesting antisocial behavior in mid- to late adolescence are at "particularly high risk of substance dependence during the transition to young adulthood."   The researchers indeed note that "youths with late-onset antisocial behavior evidenced rates of substance dependence that were higher [than those of peers involved in no antisocial behaviors] for all three classes of substances [alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana; p < 0.001 for all three]." 

The pattern of substance abuse among young adults involved in late-onset antisocial behavior very much resembles the pattern seen among young adults involved in persistent antisocial behavior throughout their adolescence.   But the researchers highlight a "striking" gender difference separating these two antisocial groups: females account for almost three-fourths (72%) of late-onset antisocial behavior, while males constitute more than three-fourths (78%) of persistent antisocial behavior.  In other words, the commonly accepted taxonomies of antisocial behavior-which do not account for late-onset antisocial behavior-"particularly fail to capture antisocial behavior among young women." 

But as striking as the gender difference is between the largely female late-onset antisocial group and the largely male persistently antisocial group, the similarity in risk factors is in some ways just as striking.  In particular, the researchers highlight evidence that "youths with persisting antisocial behavior and youths with late-onset antisocial behavior experience similar levels of family-based risk."  This family-based risk is clearly evident in statistics for parental divorce: only 8% of the youth manifesting no antisocial behaviors had experienced parental divorce and only 6% of the youth who had stopped such behaviors by mid-adolescence, compared to 23% of the youth manifesting persistent antisocial behavior and 31% of the youth manifesting late-onset antisocial behavior.  The researchers in fact highlight the "similarly high rates of parental divorce" linking the persistent and late-onset antisocial-behavior groups. 

Among males who start their disruptive behaviors early and among females who throw over the traces years later, parental divorce is all too likely to have helped write the turbulent life script.