Phone Bans Increase Throughout US Schools To Better Student Engagement
Throughout the US, school districts are implementing bans and restrictions on cellphones in the classroom in order to better student engagement and behavior. In fact, according to a new survey from Education Week’s Research Center, 95% of educators say that their school or district has an official policy restricting students’ access to their phones during school hours.
The survey was conducted from mid-February to mid-March and included 596 teachers and school and district leaders.
The report showed that, in general, teachers, principals, and district leaders reported positive results from their restrictions, specifically pointing out improvements in student participation and behavior. 7 in 10 educators said that phone limits have had a positive impact within those two areas.
“A lot of educators are seeing benefits from the cellphone restrictions on engagement, behavior, well-being, and learning,” said Bridgette Whaley, an associate professor of education at West Texas A&M University.
“The survey also made it clear to me that having a policy is not the same thing as implementing it well. How the policy is designed and how consistently it’s enforced really seem to matter a lot.”
On the other end, educators said that attendance is one area where cellphone restrictions are not impacting student behavior. 7 in 10 reported that cellphone restrictions didn’t have a positive nor negative impact.
A district-level administrator in Oklahoma who participated in an open-response section of the survey discussed how the state recently “mandated a cellphone policy that restricts the usage of personal devices during the school day.”
“It has been a game changer regarding student engagement, focus, and minimizing poor student behavior.”
A high school teacher in Tennessee said that for them, “the state, district, and school policies have helped to foster more person-to-person interaction and people skills. The policies have also focused student attention more on learning content.”
In recent years there has been a very rapid increase in policy and lawmakers from both parties placing restrictions on cellphones in schools in the US. Education Week reported that at least 37 states and the District of Columbia require school districts to ban or restrict students’ use of cellphones in school. Some of the other states not in that group are either incentivizing or recommending local districts enact their own policies.
Whaley pointed out that many schools do not require students to lock their phones away in lockers during the day.
“Instead, they seem to be relying more on compliance-based approaches, like keeping [phones] turned off or placed in backpacks or maybe somewhere else in the classroom,” she said.
“That really matters because it suggests that many schools may have restrictions on paper, but the actual enforcement often depends on the people rather than the policy or the structure.”
The survey also showed that some educators don’t see cellphone rules being enforced with 64% saying they are and 36% saying they were not.
“A policy can look consistent from a leadership perspective, but not be as consistent in classrooms. That’s why I think that the teacher’s perspective matters so much to the conversation,” Whaley said.
A high school teacher in California: “While the school rule is no cellphone use in the classroom except for at the teacher’s discretion, not all teachers enforce this rule. Last year, fed up with fighting students’ cellphone use, I bought and began using cellphone pockets. For the most part, this has eradicated the cellphone distraction in my class, but not all teachers do this.”
“We are starting to make changes to reduce technology usage across the district and implementing a stricter cellphone policy due to parent [and] community requests,” a Minnesota high school teacher said.
“The enforcement is what is the most difficult. We are not consistent in classrooms.”
“With our cellphone policy, we see very few cellphones in classes, but many students still don’t turn them in like they are supposed to,” said a school leader of a middle school in Massachusetts.
“I think students are still definitely using phones in the bathroom and during breaks. One of the biggest challenges that I see with phones is what happens outside of the school building that then is brought in here.”
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
