In Kentucky, teachers are now banned from interacting on social media with students or electronically communicating with them outside of school district-adopted platforms. The rationale? To reduce teacher grooming of and sexual misconduct with students.
The problem with this rationale is it frames all teachers as probable threats to their students. It is akin to banning cars from the road because some drivers run red lights or speed, thereby putting pedestrians at risk. It disregards the great transportational benefit of cars and it frames all drivers as redlight-running threats to pedestrians.
Kentucky’s new law, Senate Bill 181, which took effect in June, directs districts to designate a traceable communication system as the exclusive means for a teacher to communicate electronically with students, bans all other electronic communications, and establishes a mandatory duty on the part of school employees and volunteers to report violations.
The statute does not provide exceptions for health or safety emergencies and authorizes the state’s Education Professional Standards Board to revoke teaching certifications for any external electronic communications.
Under this law, a teacher could lose their license for texting a scholarship-deadline reminder to a student unless the parent of that student has submitted written consent for the teacher to text the student outside of the system.
Similar initiatives have failed on grounds of legal overreach. In 2011, Missouri’s Senate Bill 54 unsuccessfully attempted to restrict teachers’ electronic communications. Colloquially named the “Facebook” law, Bill 54 was quickly repealed (with lawmakers then passing a much narrower version) after a state court ruled it a threat to free speech.
Drawing on this and similar cases, an American University Law Review analysis argued such legal bans on teacher communications run counter to constitutionally protected free speech rights. Specifically, the benefit of appropriate and protected speech outweighs the limited potential reduction in inappropriate speech.
In other words, we shouldn’t ban texting because some people will write harmful texts any more than we should ban cars because of speeding redlight runners.
And the number of teachers using electronic communications to commit sexual misconduct is small. Of the more than 43,000 licensed public school teachers in Kentucky, annually about one-fiftieth of 1 percent used electronic communications in a case of sexual misconduct, a recent study found. This means the rationale for limiting all teacher-student communications is based on the actions of a minuscule minority.
To highlight what an overreach this policy is, consider that the same research also found almost three-quarters of those who had their teaching licenses revoked for sexual misconduct were men, even though male teachers only comprise 22% of Kentucky’s teachers. Despite the fact that male teachers are more highly associated with sexual misconduct than is the use of electronic communications, thus far no one has suggested banning men from teaching.
Some will argue that preventing even one case merits any measure without thought to the cost of such a broad-brush approach. This policy, however, will not stop bad actors. Abusers are already breaking the law. It is not likely to increase prosecution rates, which historically have been grossly inadequate.
What the policy does do, however, is undermine trust in the teaching profession while making it significantly more difficult for teachers to live in the same community with students and their families.
Kentucky ... would do well to take a close look at the ways its polices may be eroding interest in the teaching profession.
The policy ignores the ways that teachers are integrated community members. Most teachers work within 20 miles of where they went to high school and, especially in a state like Kentucky where 42% of the population is rural, teachers’ own children often attend the schools where they teach.
Teachers have multiple roles in a community, yet the law limits communications with all students in their district—not just those in a teacher’s classroom. The policy constrains teachers’ ability to communicate with their children’s friends, coordinate local sports leagues, and be a resource to children seeking support.
It also limits teacher capacity to professionally adapt to circumstances. During the pandemic, especially in the early days of school closures, some teachers relied on their own cellphones to make and sustain contact with students.
In rural areas, unreliable internet connections limited communication options. Teachers found themselves communicating with and responding to their students, especially teens with daytime jobs, by text and email long after school hours had ended. These communication efforts by teachers were done in service to students and in support of community well-being.
The status of the teaching profession has declined in the last half century, and that is hurting our capacity to recruit and retain teachers. Researchers at Brown University’s Annenberg Institute have analyzed the current state of teaching as a career, noting that prestige, interest, and job satisfaction are all at or near 50-year lows. Student interest in teacher education has declined, and teachers report low rates of career satisfaction as they confront increasing social and political vilification.
Kentucky, ranking near the bottom nationally in teacher salaries and facing an urgent teacher shortage, would do well to take a close look at the ways its policies may be eroding interest in the profession.
Kentucky’s new law is fueling teachers’ discontent as evidenced in the 32,000-member Facebook group Kentucky Teachers in the Know. Teachers cite infringements on their rights outside contracted work time. One educator worries about not being able to text her daughter’s friends when she is responsible for them on an outing.
Other concerns include the effect on side jobs or businesses. A teacher who operates a photography business suspects high school senior photo clients, used to scheduling by text, will resist the shift to calling—and her business will suffer. Another is not sure she can continue to employ students in her family’s pizza parlor given the problem of mixing work and school communications systems.
Teachers also see the law as interfering with good teaching. A video-production teacher’s students often text her to resolve location-filming issues while another teacher notes the new requirement to “unfriend” students on Facebook conflicts with her school’s mandated suicide-prevention training that instructs her to monitor students’ social media posts for warning signs.
Understanding the flaws in this legislation is not the same as inattention to student safety. There is little reason to believe the bill will increase student safety and much to support the argument that it will make teachers’ work more difficult, limit student access to support, violate free speech rights, and hurt public perception of the teaching profession.
Making sweeping policies that tarnish respect for and erode trust in teachers undermines our ability to attract and retain well-qualified and committed educators. Policymakers need to consider the assumptions and messages implicit in the policies that shape public schools. We can and should expect better policy solutions.
