My comment at Weblogg-ed. (I just found out that this is the middle school that my mom and aunt attended. Go figure.)

Tom, I think you’re absolutely right about this only being news because it’s happened to privileged white kids. But I’m not sure where to go with that idea.
I guess one way is to take the approach I would’ve taken had I read this ten years ago, when I was an undergrad completely taken with the idea of a Rage Against the Machine-style Socialist utopian rebellion (complete with awesome riffage): let’s bury this story, ignore it, until we can convince the nation’s major media outlets to cover the same injustices as they happen to poor students of color.
But another thing to do with this is to use it as another example of how our schools and school policies are not in line with the reality our kids live with. I, according to the rules of the school where I work, do not allow my students to have their cell phones out on their desks during class. When a phone rings in my class, I ask the student to turn the phone off; if he or she refuses, I confiscate it until the end of the period.
If our school had better cell service (if you use Verizon and stand near some windows, you can receive calls–otherwise it’s pretty bad), though, I wonder if my thinking would change. Despite our school’s block of all social-networking sites (and, recently, most blogs, including ed-tech ones like Dy/Dan and a few others, I applauded my students when they made a Facebook group in order to better organize a class project.
We have to find ways to let our students use the technologies that enhance their lives, whether through enjoyment/leisure (social networking, videogames, etc), personal expression (digital camcorders, blogs, etc), or research (the internets), to drive the change we want to see in our classrooms.
Otherwise we’re still just dictating what students need to learn to deal with the world as it existed when we were their age. For me, that was ten years ago, and it’s incredible how much it’s changed since then. I eat lunch with a cadre of teachers in their mid-20s, and even the 24-year-olds can’t believe what our students know how to do online, with their phones, etc. The sooner we stop confiscating potentially useful tech items, the sooner we stop looking like idiots to most of these kids.