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Schools Are Giving Up on Smartphone Bans (gizmodo.com)
Bans on phones in schools are increasingly becoming a thing of the past, new research shows. From a report: A survey from the National Center for Education Statistics exploring crime and safety at schools indicates that there is a trend toward relaxing student smartphone bans. The survey reports that the percentage of public schools that banned cell phones and other devices that can send text messages dropped from nearly 91 percent in 2009 through 2010 to nearly 66 percent in 2015 through 2016.
This drop did not coincide, however, with more lenient rules around social media. In 2009 and 2010, about 93 percent of public schools limited student access to social networking sites from school computers, compared to 89 percent from 2015 through 2016. That's likely because these bans aren't lifted in response to student demands to use their electronics during school hours -- they are bending to the pressure of parents who want to be able to reach their kids.
This drop did not coincide, however, with more lenient rules around social media. In 2009 and 2010, about 93 percent of public schools limited student access to social networking sites from school computers, compared to 89 percent from 2015 through 2016. That's likely because these bans aren't lifted in response to student demands to use their electronics during school hours -- they are bending to the pressure of parents who want to be able to reach their kids.
As a teacher, I can tell that the main reason for relaxing the cell phone bans is the parents demanding it. the research is in, cell phones detract from learning.
The following is part of a letter I sent to my building administrator on this topic. The first point, that is cut out, but mentioned, had to do with my student to robot ratio.
The second is more generalized, yet it remains a problem. It is the cell phones in the school.
The research done by the London School of Economics showed that the benefit to a cell phone ban was the equivalent to an extra week of instruction. However, even more relevant to our district, is that the gain was driven by low income students. they showed an improvement equal to receiving three extra weeks of instruction per year.
Simply telling the students to put the phones is not enough. A study by the University of Chicago determined that the negative effects of the cell phone are present when the phone is in close proximity, such as in a backpack. When in close proximity, the addictive nature of the phone continues to interfere with the cognitive process.
Based on research, a simple ban of cell phones could improve the students education. In cases where the parent believes that their child needs a phone, and will not be swayed by research, a area of small lock boxes in the office would allow the students to secure their phones at the beginning of the day.
These are two proposals that would increase student engagement and learning.
Here I include summaries and abstracts from recent cell phone research:
a couple of studies that have been completed in an attempt to assess the impact the impact of having cell-phones in school on education.
The first is a study completed by the London School of Economics. Here is the abstract:
This paper investigates the impact of schools banning mobile phones on student test scores. By surveying schools in four English cities regarding their mobile phone policies and combining it with administrative data, we find that student performance in high stakes exams significantly increases post ban. We use a difference in differences (DID) strategy, exploiting variations in schools’ autonomous decisions to ban these devices, conditioning on a range of student characteristics and prior achievement. Our results indicate that these increases in performance are driven by the lowest achieving students. This suggests that restricting mobile phone use can be a low-cost policy to reduce educational inequalities.
Source: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/down...
A more readable summary is provided by CNN:
The authors looked at how phone policies at 91 schools in England have changed since 2001, and compared that data with results achieved in national exams taken at the age of 16. The study covered 130,000 pupils.
It found that following a ban on phone use, the schools' test scores improved by 6.4%. The impact on underachieving students was much more significant -- their average test scores rose by 14%.
Source: http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/1...
This study was supported by a recent study conducted by the University of Chicago. Further, they determined that the negative effect of the cell-phone were present even if the cell-phone is put away, such as in a backpack. From the Abstract:
Results from two experiments indicate that even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention—as when avoiding the temptation to check their phones—the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity.
Source: http://www.journals.uchicago.e...
Maybe even discuss different "off-book" topics and give the option of which questions to answer to not penalize absent students, but punish students who are perpetually on their phones and tuned out. "Professor, I should have got an A on this exam, it wasn't in the book..." "Next time, put away the phone."
I teach at the university level (upper level undergraduate course) and I am shocked at the number of students who simply do not show up to class and of those that do show up the number that spend the entire period playing games on their phones or computers.
I personally don't care, as at that level they are grown ups and can make their own decisions. However, I do make sure to tell them several times in the first few lectures that three will be material discussed in lecture and that will appear on the exams even though it is not in the text. Usually by about the third or fourth week of the term I can tell which students will be in A/B/C/F territory for each exam. The tiresome part for me is having to deal with the whiners who think they deserved a better grade. My response to them is always, "I grade very leniently, so if anything, your grade is a rather charitable reflection of the amount effort you put into the course."
Being someone who has a limited ability to multi-task, and recognizing my own limits, I can tell you that the vast majority of people that think they can multi-task greatly overestimate their ability. In fact, the younger they are, the more they tend to overestimate how good they are at multitasking.
"they are bending to the pressure of parents who want to be able to reach their kids." ...during school hours. If they need to reach their kids during school THEN THEY SHOULD CALL THE FUCKING OFFICE, the way it has always been.
At the 90% of schools that "block" social media, I'd say around 90% of the students use a VPN to punch through that noise. I found this out after I found one of my kids, who resisted programs like "Hour of Code" and wouldn't even help his old man maintain the home network, had a system of two VPNs and related AV on his phone to get around his schools' bans on SnapChat and the like. Frankly, I was impressed.
I teach at the university level (upper level undergraduate course) and I am shocked at the number of students who simply do not show up to class and of those that do show up the number that spend the entire period playing games on their phones or computers.
A good buddy of mine was a University prof. He, too, allowed students to make their own decisions regarding their effort. The one difference is that he kept attendance (and attentiveness) records, specifically to deal with one scenario. All too often, adult students would bring in their angry parents who had footed the bill for a bad grade from what the student claimed was an "unfair teacher". After getting the adult student's permission to discuss the issue in front of the parent, he was generally able to change the entire discussion simply by showing the attendance records to the parents.
Disclaimer: I'm a tech in a school district.
They know exactly what they've lost, that's the reason they are doing it.
Most of the smartphone bans are due to misuse. I.e. "Hey let's take a picture of that other kid and bully them on social media with it." They also know that will follow them, regardless as to what the school district or their parents might do, so they consider it the ultimate form of revenge / bullying. As the revenge / bullying happens in the court of public opinion where "they" are the ones handing out verdicts and sentances. The kids are basicly fucking over each other for life. All because of some stupid spat that they will now never forget after high school. That's something my own district knows very well, and indeed is the reason why the ban is inplace.
In my opinion, if the schools really wanted to prohibit this behavior, they'd not just ban phones, they'd tell the FCC to go fuck themselves, and put up cellphone jammers all over campus. Along with a "If we even see a cellphone in your possesion it's an automatic suspension. If we suspect you have a cellphone or camera, you'll be required to do a strip / cavity search, and a search of your belongings." policy change, in addition to manadatory anti-bullying classes complete with simulations for all students.
Some people may view this as extreme, but the consequences for allowing the bullying and harassment are just as bad and will follow them for the rest of their lives.
Granted the parents need to do their part as well, but the schools shouldn't have their hands tied into allowing this to happen because some parent wants to call their kid in the middle of class. That's what the front desk is for, call them, and let them handle it.
Finally, I'll address the elephant in the room: The fact that society permits this crap as a matter of SOP. The phones / cameras are just a symptom not the cause. The real cause is, not all, but quite a few parents tend to not bother raising their kids. It's obvious which ones. Then those kids terrorize the other kids because there is no enforcement mechanism made avaiable to the school, and school can't discipline them as a result. Many times the kid just doesn't care about their behavior one way or the other and with those kids there's nothing the school can do to make them come around or make the lives of the other kids eaiser. Then you add the cellphones / cameras and the problem spills out of the school and into the real world.
Some may say Special Ed. as a "solution". Others may just want to drug them, but neither is a real solution. It's just partially hiding, at best, or covering up the problem, until the pills wear off. The underlying behavior isn't affected at all, nor is the decision to act that way. There needs to be a real solution for these issues. Some districts have special "bad kid" schools, but most of those are just places to put "bad kids" the district wants nothing to do with. Further most of these kinds of problems stem from the home environment, but that's completely unaddressable by the schools.
In my personal opinion, the schools should have a say in how to discipline the kids. The schools should also be able to demand that the government step in and remove the kid from the household if the parents are not willing to discipline their kids well enough for them to behave in school, or provide training for those parents that have tried but need additional help. As to my justification for this, your kid benefits from the public school system, so that school system should be able to demand a certian level of adherence for acceptable behavior from your kid so that all students can fully benefit from that school system. Also, the school system is controlled by it's board members. Which are supposed to be members of the local community. Given that, popular vote should be enough to enforce a minimum level acceptability for student behavior that the majority of parents agree with, and allow for those that object to potentially find greener pastures elsewhere.
Second disclaimer: I, myself, would have been subject to that removal from the household comment as a kid and I would still support it.