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New educational uses of cellphones are challenging the "turned off and out of sight" rules that many districts have adopted for student cellphones on campus.

A growing number of teachers, carefully navigating district policies and addressing their own concerns, are having students use their personal cellphones to make podcasts, take field notes, and organize their schedules and homework

"In our district, especially at high school, students have a cellphone on them at all times, just like a pencil—it's an underused too

To be a school “reformer” is to support: * a heavy reliance on fill-in-the-bubble standardized tests to evaluate students and schools, generally in place of more authentic forms of assessment; * the imposition of prescriptive, top-down teaching standards and curriculum mandates; * a disproportionate emphasis on rote learning—memorizing facts and practicing skills—particularly for poor kids; * a behaviorist model of motivation in which rewards (notably money) and punishments are used on teachers and students to compel compliance or raise test scores; * a corporate sensibility and an economic rationale for schooling, the point being to prepare children to “compete” as future employees; and * charter schools, many of which are run by for-profit companies.

Almost never questioned, meanwhile, are the core elements of traditional schooling, such as lectures, worksheets, quizzes, grades, homework, punitive discipline, and competition.  That would require real reform, which of course is off the table.

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