[dougherty]

My wife is a teacher, and they are not allowed to take students' phones during class, as the school then would be responsible for the phones; "where is my iPhone, I put it in the box?", "my phone is scratched, it was fine when I gave it to you", the list goes on...

[Balgair]

Wife is also a teacher. In addition to the issues with liability, there is also the exhaustion aspect. With 7 classes a day of 37 students on average, trying to take away the phones becomes more effort than it is worth. It takes, say, 2 minutes per person to take away the phone and give it back at the end of class. Say we have 10 students, about 1 out of 3 students, that have this issue with attention (likely a low estimate). That's 20 minutes out of the 50 she has per class. There is a 5 minute passing period. You also have to attend to the other 36 students while the phone surrendering process takes place. You can change those number how you'd like, but trying to do this everyday, 7 times a day becomes, 5 days a week ... it becomes pointless. They talk back, as teenagers do, they start fights with teachers, they refuse to admit they have a phone, etc. The hassle of trying to get the phone out of their hands is useless. Effectively, you are forced to triage those individuals and focus on the students that want to learn.

And yes, the school is supposed to take the phones from the students that have proven themselves to be untrustworthy at the beginning of the day. This rarely occurs as 2000 students stream into their classrooms (you hope) about 5 minutes before the bell. You can call the front office to come in and take the phones away during first period, but they are usually busy with other aspects of running the school (truancy, regular discipline issues, legal drug administration, illegal drug confiscation, planning meetings, grading, etc). If the kind is on a phone, that is less of a priority than fights and other regular school discipline issues, so it gets left behind.

[dpark]

Yeah, the liability there seems too much. It seems like this would be pretty easy to enforce other ways, though. Use your phone in class? Immediate detention. Suspension if it's happening repeatedly. Alternatively, immediate confiscation. Goes into a padded envelope and waits for a parent to claim it.