Education Law

Should State Boards of Education Issue Guidelines?

Today, the Virginia School Board is considering adopting a set of guidelines on teacher electronic communication. The "guidelines" cover everything from texting to online gaming ... basically, they say teachers can never talk to students using electronic communication. If they do, for an emergency or whatever, they need to report it to their supervisor the next day. 

Obviously, I am going to hate the merits of this set of guidelines. They are simplistically stupid - as in this is an attempt to apply simple rules to complex situations - in addition to just making me think the board members are a bit simple-minded.

But, outside of the merits, these sort of guideline prescriptions of model policy have always bothered me. State Boards are regulatory agencies tasked with passing administrative law extending legislatively created statutes. So, I don't see this in the job description.

It winds up being, of course, a policy back door. You can get schools to do what you want without having to go to the trouble or burden of passing regulations. And, then, just like the Federal government, you say that schools have a choice, even if it is a politically or financially unrealistic choice.

It's coercion, simple as that. Is that what we want from our democratic systems? Are both legislatures and schools so screwed up that state agencies are forced to intervene with coercive, legally-questionable model policies because neither can accomplish the correct outcome (questionable anyway) through traditional legal means?      

Full post as published by Edjurist on January 10, 2011 (boomark / email).