Eamonn Fitzmaurice/The 74

Dear Commons Community,

Forbes published an article last Saturday entitled, “Will This Be The Year That Schools Shut Down Cellphones?”  It is a growing question among education policy makers that my colleague, David Bloomfield, is referenced as saying “it’s going to take time, it’s going to take expense, and it’s going to take enforcement.” 

The article also refers to the best-selling book, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt as fanning the flames for restricting access to cellphones.

It is an important issue that will be reviewed carefully by state education departments and school boards in the months and maybe years ahead.

Below is an excerpt from the Forbes article.

Tony

Just a couple of decades ago, teachers at conferences heard that smartphones were the education tool of the future. Now it appears that the national mood is to take broad steps to keep those devices out of classrooms.

Since students could pass notes in class, student personal communication technology has been a classroom challenge. Teachers of a certain age can remember when digital pagers posed a problem. But smartphones represent a whole new problematic level; students could be distracted by everything from checking their socials to starting or continuing a fight to arranging a rendezvous in the hall, all while the teacher tries to explain quadratic equations.

Schools, trying to embrace current technology or just caught flatfooted, have for years left teachers to develop their own policies and procedures for dealing with the ubiquitous devices. Larger bans have fared poorly. In 2006, the Bloomberg administration banned cellphones in New York City schools, raising an uproar from parents and teachers, with outspoken opposition from everyone from Councilman Bill De Blasio to UFT President Randi Weingarten opposed the policy and parents threatened to sue.

While students often push back against phone bans, parents can be the real challenge for a school district. For helicopter parents, the power to stay in touch throughout the entire day can be irresistible. For families that are stretching resources (two jobs, three kids, one car), cellphones can be invaluable. And in an age with heightened fear of school shootings and other emergency situations, many parents to do not trust the schools to provide the kind of quick crisis communication that they need.

But in the last few years, schools have reached their breaking point. In 2015, Mayor Bill De Blasio lifted New York’s cellphone ban, but New York—both city and state—are now contemplating a new ban. And AFT President Randi Weingarten in a 2024 speech took credit for helping Cleveland craft a ban of their own.

And while pressure to ban the devices has been building in education circles for years, works like Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation have fed the idea that internet connection is at least partly responsible for a growing mental health problem among children.

Some parents still pose an obstacle. Philadelphia principal Jose Lebron told Education Week of parent pushback on his cellphone ban, “You would have thought the world was going to end.” One teacher told me that when their school imposed a new rule requiring students to keep phones all day in magnetic lock bags, parents showed up at school to protest, complete with protest signs.

There are also logistical challenges. How and when are phones collected? Where are they stored, and how are these very valuable pieces of personal property safeguarded?

With all that settled, classroom cellphone bans still come down to one moment. The teacher sees a student with a cellphone out. The teacher tells the student to hand it in. The student says no. What happens next? Does the teacher stop class in order to engage in a battle of wills? Does the teacher let it go as not worth the trouble? Does the teacher involve the office, and if so, does the office provide meaningful support?

It’s the irony of large sweeping policies like this. Education Week counts at least twelve states that have laws or policies containing student cellphone use, and innumerable districts have created policies as well. But the effectiveness of all those policies will boil down to how effectively building principals back up their teachers.

State policies make it easier for local district to pass the buck (”There’s no point in arguing with us; this came from the state”). But as David Bloomfield, an education leadership, law, and policy professor told NPR, implementation is “going to take time. It’s going to take expense, and it’s going to take enforcement.” While some teachers are already writing about “the joy of a cellphone free school day,” it will be up to local school leaders to provide the support for effective implementation of these policies. Where administrators find the strength to handle all the various obstacles, this may be the year that teachers finally have one less device competing for student attention.

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