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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.
They are shit anyway.
Or send the kids overseas for better education.
That's any cell phone made in the past 20 years, not just a smartphone. Personally, I don't think smartphone bans can be enforced easily. The way to enforce them is via grading. Discuss a topic that's not "in the book." Test students on it. 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."
it'd be nice for my kid to be able to use a backpack to carry her schoolwork in. They aren't even allowed clear backpacks.
That and the fact that austerity has led to more reasonable demand for mobile phone service among students.
1. Fiscally conservative voters approve property tax caps
2. School districts have to pinch pennies to make ends meet
3. School districts decide to cut bus service to the bare minimum (1 mile radius for elementary school, 1.5 mile radius for middle school, 2 mile radius for high school)
4. Students switch from discontinued student transit to riding a bicycle
5. Payphone operators cease maintaining payphones due to reduced use by adults
6. Each student then needs a way to contact someone in case of a bicycle accident or some other way to get a ride in case of a thunderstorm or other weather not conducive to cycling
If kids are playing mobile games during class, it is effectively the same as not showing up to class at all.
To what extent is this also true of the time between the end of the lecture and the bell that signals the end of the class period? Truancy law requires the student to remain in the classroom until that time.
Parents are presumed old enough to drive and rich enough to own a car and can therefore leave their phones in a locked car. Students not old enough to drive have no outside place in which to lock a phone, and some of these phone bans apply as well to indoor lockers.
3. Is a good thing - students who walk/bike a few miles a day are less likely to be obese. I grew up in a town with no busing, and this was in the 90s -- unless they're handicapped, kids have legs for a reason.
6. Doesn't actually preclude a cell phone ban -- students could be required to keep them in their lockers during school hours and only remove them during lunch or when going home.
We got to actually grow up and enjoy things as a kid, and to learn more quickly (I think) about independence and self sufficiency.
And at the very least....we weren't tracked everywhere, and could get into a bit more mischief and the world didn't end for any of us.
I've recently visiting with friends I've known since I was about 11yrs old, and we were talking old times, our exploits (we still remember some), and decided that some of the shit we pulled back in the day, would have put us on a terrorist watch list today?!?!
Hell, the way our parents let us alone in the neighborhood to run around "unsupervised" would today likely have had us taken by social services and put into freakin' foster care.
I don't get it, but man, I'm sure glad I grew up when I did. I was nice to NOT be in touch, to have an excuse to NOT be reachable by parents, etc.
And most of all....no one generally had a damned camera around to get pictures of you, and publish them where you might not only get into trouble right then....but also to maybe haunt you later in life.
I'm glad I've grown up to see the rise of the internet and lots of tech, but man...I feel for the kids today as that they have lost something....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Can I get my kid's phone usage records, and if I see any text messages or network activity on his phone during school hours, he gets punished?
students who walk/bike a few miles a day are less likely to be obese
But then who pays for a bike before the student is old enough to be employed, particularly if another child in the same neighborhood already snapped up all the lawns to mow and sidewalks to shovel?
unless they're handicapped, kids have legs for a reason.
Which raises the question of what to do with the handicapped students.
6. Doesn't actually preclude a cell phone ban -- students could be required to keep them in their lockers
Some districts have banned electronic devices even in school lockers.
My God...how did we EVER make alive to adulthood in the (not so long ago) days before cell phones of any type????
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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...
5. Payphone operators cease maintaining payphones due to reduced use by adults
How did we ever survive before cell phones?
Payphones were around then. I thought I mentioned that. But what I initially neglected to mention is that there wasn't quite as much "stranger danger" hysteria back then as what we have had lately, where police arrest parents for neglect for letting students walk to and from school. It took a federal law to curb that.
I can't imagine the absolute fucking distraction in class that goes on with either SMS, social media, watching kids make a goofy damn face 'snapchatting', etc. As much as I want to dismiss it as back in the day when I'd doodle or sketch nonsense in a notebook while a teacher was droning on, passing notes, counting ceiling tiles or what-the-hell-ever all of us non-millennials did as being just as non-productive, it's a complete different type of blatant disrespect and lack of dedication without being able to 'disconnect' and focus on something other than _you_.
Think public/private school issues are bad, anymore, I wish workplaces would eliminate phone usage from the damn work force, except for under extreme circumstances, where you actually need to use it. I can't even get away from it in meetings or presentations I do at work anymore; there is guaranteed at least one mega-douche with his face buried in his phone not even paying attention (but in a title and position to absolutely the fuck pay attention), then is always the person who has to have things repeated, or burning up questions that were already covered, or whatever waste presented on, the opposite (or nothing) gets done.
Just like most teachers already get paid shit, assuming they are par to upper quality educators and care, it's flat out an extreme waste of their time, expertise, educational background and breath when you can't even get someone to put down a device for 1/16th of their entire day they are awake for that one hour class to be dedicated and open to being taught and educated. We all know, the 15 other slivers of time are 'on that thing' anyway.
Well, back in my day, the parents of the child would sacrifice and save to BUY the kid things like bicycles and clothes, etc....
There was also probably more job security back in your day. Thus smartphones for children might be in part a workaround for the decline in labor union power.
Last time I looked, a basic bicycle didn't cost an arm and a leg. Hell, don't go to McDonalds for a month or so, and you could get close to money for a basic bicycle.
Some of these parents already shun fast food to make ends meet.
My God...how did we EVER make alive to adulthood in the (not so long ago) days before cell phones of any type????
We did it by walking to school in that thunderstorm that he thinks is an issue in his point number 6.
"His name was James Damore."
"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.
Seconded. I don't have mod points at the moment so I'm replying.
I grew up in the late 80's early 90's. Some of the computer related things I did would put me in Gitmo or federal-pound-me-in-the...... (you know the rest).
Things like finding open routers on X.25 networks (so I could check the mail when I couldn't afford Internet access, and there were no BBS's/public access Unix spots within local dialing distance in my small town. .... but the local AOL number was Sprintnet/Telenet ... so ....
Figuring out ways to break out of the local library's online catalog dialup so we could access systems local to that system (out of town). OMG you hacker! No, that's just software limitations/timing issues where we could break out of a dialing sequence and dial any local number we wanted. .... and I won't go into the home made potato guns we built. ;) Very fun times. Where's my time machine ? I'd love to go back and relive those moments.
How did we ever survive before cell phones?
We didn't. We are all dead now. And this is hell.
Have gnu, will travel.
But then who pays for a bike before the student is old enough to be employed
Who paid for the cell phone?
OMG mom! You expect me to go to school with last year's iPhone? iPhone X is only $1000. Everyone else is getting one.
Try to give a kid a bicycle and it had better be a bum bike.
Have gnu, will travel.
I remember years ago I worked at a place that didn't allow cameras on the property. Cameras in phones were just getting popular at the time. My phone was getting old and unreliable and so I went shopping for a phone without a camera. The guy at the store seemed very confused at this request. We looked through their catalog of phones and I was able to find something suitable, which I bought.
While we were looking for a phone without a camera the sales droid suggested I buy a nicer phone and just punch out the camera lens to render the camera inoperable, so I could find a nicer phone and yet still comply with my employer's demands. I thought the guy was insane to suggest such a thing. How would my employer know the camera was truly inoperable unless there was obvious damage to the phone? In which case I'd have a brand new phone that was intentionally broken. How would I explain this if I ever needed a repair later? "No, I want the phone fixed BUT NOT THE CAMERA IN IT!" How would I know that no other damage was done, and if I did then we are back to fixing the phone but still leaving obvious damage to the camera function.
Weeks after I got my camera-less phone they lifted the ban on phones with cameras. Too many people complained and the company gave in. They just said that getting caught taking a photo on the premises could be grounds for dismissal. That was of course impossible to enforce. They could certainly walk someone out the door for taking pictures of something and posting it on the internet but that's closing the barn door after the horses left.
I later went back to university and had one instructor say during the first class period that anyone using an electronic device during class would be marked as absent that day. That's not just a ban on devices for quizzes and tests but during class discussion. That was the first and last time I saw that happen as every class since would have nearly every student with a laptop or electronic tablet for taking notes, or whatever. Of course some people were just goofing off, like one guy I saw that was watching a soccer game in the middle of class. It's not like people didn't goof off in class before electronics, I remember doing crossword puzzles during lectures.
I remember when pagers were a thing and schools wanted to ban those. They gave up on banning pagers a long time ago too, and not just because they fell out of use. Parents that were able to afford a two-way pager for their kids can have a lot of influence on the schools.
Everything old is new again. History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
"some of the shit we pulled back in the day, would have put us on a terrorist watch list today?!?!"
Ditto here. We made explosives with sugar and weedkiller put it in empty camping gaz bottles and blew up stuff. (nothing worth anything or dangerous) We also built our own mortars and tried to shoot at the water tower, (dangerous) but we always missed.
Nobody ever gave a shit because everybody was doing it in all parts of town. Every farmer and forest owner also blew up tree stumps all day long, sometimes with the same stuff that we used.
And now every other day is Panic Paranoia Day because somebody got drunk at the railway station and forgot his baggage with his dirty undies and the whole station gets evacuated, all trains halted and all the streets around blocked for hours.
But apparently we are more 'secure' now.
Who paid for the cell phone?
The parent bought an entry-level phone on a $50/year plan with limited minutes and no data. The parent's own phone may be a "Dubyaphone" on the Lifeline program.
In my school days the parents would call the office and the secretary would either take a message or the student would located in class and sent to the office to make or receive a call. I can recall hearing the school intercom calling people to the office or the in house system ringing in the class the student was supposed to be requesting the teacher send the student to the office.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
And for those of us who were bullied, the bullying typically ended once you left school. When I was in high school and walked in my front door, the bullies couldn't reach me anymore. Nowadays, bullies can still harass people no matter where they are. We had to complain one day when a kid in my son's high school band class took out a cell phone and began taking photos of my son without his - or our - permission. The kid was making fun of my child as he did this so who knows where those photos ended up. Kids today have some really cool new tech to play with that we didn't have growing up, but there's a dark side to all of it as well.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Oh so much THIS!!
Yep, most every pickup in the student (HS) parking lot had gun racks in them with loaded rifles, especially during deer season.
No problems, no one got shot. Hell, not to get into it, you had MUCH more easy access to firearms, yet, no one was mass shooting anyone, it seems to be more of a people problem than gun access problem these days.
But that's a different argment.
And yes, smoking was just outside the doors of the school....and it was an open campus, you could come and go as you wished. I think we actually did have student IDs, but they were only checked if you had a free meal at lunch or something, never for entrance or exit.
Hell, in the parking lot in the mornings...it was always a permanent haze, from various types of smoke, as you played frisbee before class. IN those days, you learned to throw the frisbee good enough NOT to hit cars as that that might get you into an ass whooping situation.
In general when I was in High School, you were treated more like a college student than a school child.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Err...and how many bicycles could you buy for the price of a single smart phone?!?!?!?
I just looked at Academy Sports, decent bicycles, multi-speed ones even, are between $50-$100.
Hell, can you get a modern smart phone for that money??? Not to mention the monthly payments you have to spend for service??
Ditch the phone and get the kid a bike. They'll get more exercise, and be less depressed, and *gasp* actually have to learn interpersonal skills in real meatspace with other kids!!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
No one to speak of is mass shooting anyone now either. Statistically gun deaths in schools are down since the early 90's. There have been a few highly mediagraphic outliers that have skewed our perception over the last decade or so, but overall schools are safer than they were when I was in school.
It does make sense I think to look at those outliers and have a level-headed conversation about 1) why those disturbed individuals had access to firearms 2) why they didn't get whatever help they clearly needed before they became homicidal.
I personally don't think banning particular weapons is going to have the desired effect. Nor do I think locking down our schools or arming them to the teeth is conductive to learning. I think there are larger societal issues that are not going to be susceptible to a quick fix that need to get addressed before we see mass shootings completely eliminated.
periodically having to stand in class because there were 30 seats and 40 students did. And no, I'm not joking. And this was in one of the better school districts in my area.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
We got to actually grow up and enjoy things as a kid
Implying kids aren't enjoying themselves? Setting garbage bins on fire isn't the only thing people in life can enjoy. And for every miniature terrorist like you (and I for that matter) and your friends there was a cell-phone-child-precursor sitting in their bedroom devouring whole libraries of books in peace or another glued to the telly.
Life isn't about cell phones or fun, it's about many different people having fun in different ways.
We get it Gramps, I didn't see this story tagged, "tell us how much better your childhood was".
Cheap storage VM.
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.
I grew up in the 70's. During the summer all I could do was dial up the timesharing (MECC/MERITS) phone number and whistle into it strange. Sometimes I could get the modem on the other end to engage and warble strange stuff back. Other than that, the teletypes were locked up in the school's math classroom and inaccessible.
I didn't see it tagged as 'wah wah life is so shitty now that I need to cast shade on you.'
But then who pays for a bike before the student is old enough to be employed, particularly if another child in the same neighborhood already snapped up all the lawns to mow and sidewalks to shovel?
How about using the the money that would have been spent on the smartphone? Bikes don't have an additional monthly charge to remain useful, and a kid's bike is very much less expensive than a smartphone in the long run.
Some of these parents already shun fast food to make ends meet.
A lot of poor and lower-middle-class people are poor specifically because they regularly eat fast food instead of cooking/fixing meals at home.
Which isn't to blame the fast food places. But a lot of poor people are poor at managing money.
On the way to my new job, I drive by a local Middle School just before the school day starts there. There is a huge line of parents' cars that sometimes extends out onto the shoulder, which slowly crawls forward as each pupil is deposited on the sidewalk next to the school door.
I can only imagine the trouble you would get in if you just let your kid out in the parking lot and didn't queue up in the line to deposit them at the prescribed spot on the curb.
I walked to school when I was that age because of the bullies on the bus. But it was several miles.
Err...and how many bicycles could you buy for the price of a single smart phone?!?!?!?
I just looked at Academy Sports, decent bicycles, multi-speed ones even, are between $50-$100.
An entry level Android phone also runs about $100. Thus to answer your question: about one.
Not to mention the monthly payments you have to spend for service??
I don't pay more than $50 per year for service on my Coolpad Catalyst phone.
Bikes don't have an additional monthly charge to remain useful
I can think of chain lube and replacement tubes and tires. But I concede that a child's bicycle is less likely to need the other replacement parts as the child grows out of it.
Simply jam cell frequencies in the school except maybe at certain times of the day.
There is federal law prohibiting this "simple" solution.
Calls and messages from parents could be allowed and texts between students could be limited and monitored.
This, too is illegal throughout most of the world without notifying at least one and sometimes both parties to the conversation.
Requiring phone calls to students to go through the office is a pretty good solution. The office is much better prepared to minimize disruption in the classroom and is able to support a true emergency (e.g. death of a family member) with immediate emotional support / counseling to the student or the classroom.
How so ? They are not going to let the kid go anywhere, emergency or not without a guardian arranging it thru the school. They are not going to let even the guardian just show up at the school and take the child without checking in at the office. I am all for everyone having a phone or some means to reach emergency services etc. I see the kid getting an emergency message and jumping up and running to the office or just failing let anyone know what is going on causing far more impact as the campus is locked down, because the kid left without telling anyone anything. Having the teacher pause briefly to answer the class intercom and sending the child to the office would be far less disturbing than the child running out of class unexplained and much quicker than the child having to try and explain to the teacher, and then again to central office personnel.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Nah, life isn't shitty and his golden age wasn't so different.
Cheap storage VM.
Without a phone, how should a cyclist who gets a flat tire seek assistance?