> In crafting its policy, Estacada incorporated feedback from parents. That led to some key decisions around the cell phone ban. Rather than use pouches or lockers, students are allowed to keep their phones safely stored in their backpacks. That was for two reasons — it allows students to contact loved ones during emergencies, and many parents use phone trackers to keep tabs on their kids.
I'm glad to hear this. They're currently trying to shill the magnetically sealed pouches in the UK, but the flaws are obvious: massive bottleneck at the pouch station would delay entry and exit from the building, phones would be unavailable during emergencies or to record incidents of crime or staff malpractice, and financial burden on schools.
Students can be trusted to obey a simple "no phones in class" rule.
A friend's kid needs an exemption from their doctor because their phone is also their glucose monitor and diagnostic tracker, and the exception only allows them to unlock the pouch under supervision when necessary.
There can be moral (or other) panics to real dangers. That doesn't mean cool heads don't lead to better solutions.
People panic in fires, trampling one another trying to get out. The danger is real, but so is the damage caused by the panic.
Here people are responding to real harms but we're often jumping to conclusions. Trying to act too fast. Thinking it is better to do something rather than nothing. But that's not always true. We see this happen with all sorts of complex problems we face these days. People care more about having an answer than they do a solution. This one is no different. We get bad answers like the above because people are rushing and not thinking about the consequences. But if things were as easy to solve as were wish they were then they'd already have been solved. The "easy" part only comes after a lot of hard work and really only from a high level
I'd argue you don't need a study, just reasoning. I mean, a study would be good, but we also have brains on our shoulders.
Learning to read or to do mathematics is like anything else, it takes practice. We know, intuitively from our own lives and observes virtually all humans, that humans perform better with less distractions. It would be hard to learn how to play the Tuba with me screaming behind you. It would be hard to learn chess with a movie playing in front of you.
Phones are distractions. Less phones = less distractions = better performance, smarter kids, more likelihood to graduate, higher average income.
More meaningless words that can be defined as needed by you to support your rather bizarre agenda.
Numerous peer reviewed articles published in reputable journals have reported that there are advantages to banning cell phones in the classroom, yet you as the sole arbiter of "actual science" declare otherwise.
We don't actually need "actual science" to conclude that phones in classrooms are likely causing problems. We can observe them in action causing problems and take actions even if the peer reviewed double blind study hasn't been done
Kids are smart. My school district has sealed pouches.. Its amazing how many kids throw an old phone in there, and put their actual one away hidden on silent.
Which I guess gets looked the other way, since they aren't using it in class.
It's definitely a mix of the actual phone pouches and the bans giving teachers actual authority and permission to confiscate phones when they're out and disruptive. IMO there's likely a shift that happens with pouches where there are enough kids following the rules and only having one phone in the pouch that it tips the social balance over. That would be harder with just teacher enforced bans I think.
It's definitely a hard problem over all balancing their completely disruptive nature if there's no bounds to the issues around safety and parental worry from not being able to contact their kid all the time which phones have made the norm.
This is how it works in my kids' school. Not Estacada, but not that far away, and not in Portland. No pouches or lockers, just an understanding that phones which are seen will be confiscated. First time they get sent to the office and returned as the student leaves school. Second time they have to be picked up by a parent.
You'd think it would be a huge deal with rebellious teens, but my daughter says it has basically been a non-issue.
>Students can be trusted to obey a simple "no phones in class" rule.
I'm honestly not educated on the topic right now since I haven't been in school for 15 years and have some time left before my daughter starts, but is this rule really not in place in most schools? How could any school justify not having this rule at the very least, regardless of how well-enforced it is?
I always assumed it was a lack of enforcement due to understaffing that was the problem
I tend to avoid placing the blame on individuals (parents in this case) when the problem being described is so widespread. People act as rationally as they can, so if it's that common, it's a systemic failure. Scolding the masses is a fool's errand.
We’re talking about underdeveloped minds in the face of excruciating social and physiological pressure.
I’m pretty sure the systemic failure is, in part, that parents are, en masse, abdicating their responsibilities of guiding their children through the minefield of modern technology, from iPad kids on up.
The reasons why vary - and include being addicted themselves.
I’d love to hear any anecdotal evidence to the contrary - not just a dismissal, or being called a fool.
The society that supports phoneless children no longer exists. It stopped sometime in the 2010s. Taking away phones doesn't bring that infrastructure back, it culminates in something new and worse.
One example is the tension between childrens' independence and roaming and the now lack of payphones. Taking away a cell phone doesn't bring back payphones. It either reduces a child's independence or puts them in more dangerous situations. What it doesn't do is return them back to a time when a couple of quarters could call mom or dad.
The sealed pouches are a bit of theatre. My son's school has a policy that pupil's can take their phones to school but if one is seen or heard on the school grounds it'll be confiscated and the owner's parents called to come pick it up on their behalf. From what I hear they're not shy about applying that policy either.
I don't understand. We had a "no phones in class" rule when I was in school over a decade ago. It was the obvious default. How did it go away, and how is this new policy different from the obvious? Are they saying that until now their policy was that phones are openly allowed in class? Why??
My son, who recently graduated high school, went to a school that banned phones but insisted on laptops (providing them for the kids who couldn't afford one). He said it was ridiculous, as none of the kids had any problem using their laptop for anything they would have used the phone, which was mostly texting, scrolling social media, watching videos, and playing games. Even when the school tried to lock down services, as soon as one kid found a way around it, they all did.
I remember reading somewhere else that there was a psychological benefit for kids as well. Not having the constant pressure to check the device. Just seems like a big win all around.
I think this more about it coming from a higher authority than the school itself.
Many schools have similar bans but they don’t get support from many of the pupils or their parents as both groups have members that just believe it is the school choosing to overstep their authority.
Now it is a diktat from above it makes the school’s job in enforcing it much easier. They can just point to the relevant legislation/diktat and say that their hands are tied, if you disagree here are the places you can go to voice your opinion. Meanwhile we (as a school) have no choice but to apply the rules, etc.
It's tough to imagine how different it must be for kids now than when I went to school.
I know there's a billion other reasons, but I've heard parents say they want their kid to have a phone so they can keep in touch if they need to.
When I was a kid, cell phones weren't a thing (at least for kids) so the once or twice a year I needed to call a parent I went down to the office and asked to use their phone.
Then I got to have whatever, usually embarrassing, conversation with my mom while everyone in the school office stared at me. Good times.
I agree with the cell phone bans (I would extend it to all electronic devices, schools should be pen and paper). But we just got our phones taken away in highschool.
This has absolutely been the standard in every school around where I live for years. Anecdotally, however, I wouldn't go so far and say it lead to "engaged students" and "joyful teachers" :)
UK here. My kid's school is insane. They think they are so progressive because they banned personal phones entirely, which is fair enough. But they forced us to buy marked up Yondr pouches, which is not fair.
However this isn't the only problem. They also force us to pay monthly for iPads with wonky ass Logitech cases to be issued on which they do everything on Google classroom.
Google Classroom is an abhorrently bad bit of software on an iPad. It's just horrible in every possible way. Clunky, interface sucks, slow, unreliable.
Then they give detentions when children can't submit work, some auth issue means the entire device goes down the toilet for two days, documents won't open because the staff use Office instead, they keyboard case craps out and you can't type with anything but the screen, the staff forget to submit the work until an hour before it's due, the entire school wifi network is down for a week and they have no backup.
They should ban that too. Technology MUST be fit for purpose in a classroom and most of it isn't.
Go back to paper for everything. Work, journals, timetables, the lot. And the teachers can use whatever to drive projectors in the classroom.
Not having distraction devices in a classroom is such a basic concept. I'm surprised it required government intervention. Every half decent school principal should've banned them in their school, and if the principal didn't, the individual teachers should have banned them from their classrooms. The first time a kid had to have a question repeated to them because they were looking at their phone should've been the last time phones were permitted in that class.
For what it's worth — my last workplace did not allow cell phones in the building and I learned to love it. When people attended meetings, we all made eye contact and talked about the task at hand. Nobody ever got distracted by notifications or tuned out with boredom. And since we all had traditional telephones at our desks, someone would come get you if your family was calling with for an urgent crisis. I miss it.
My kids' school banned phones during the school day. The principal promised that the office would relay any messages if parents call, and they do. I would be interested to see if there are already statistics showing academic success. That is, are grades and test scores affected by phone bans? The article talks about graduation rates, but doesn't directly address grades and scores.
Here in Amsterdam, most of the schools have a complete ban(!) for pupils below age 15 or 16. It has been a great decision so far. My daughters are essentially phone (and internet) free until they come hone from school. I love it
It’s the right idea but it also puts the burden of enforcement on teachers that are already over extended, especially in schools where behavioral challenges are more prevalent. Great in a scenario where students are compliant, and a nightmare in environments where they’re not.
I don’t have a solution to that problem, but I also think it’s important to acknowledge it’s not all sunshine and roses.
I’m saying this as a person with close friends in Oregon school systems, based on the experiences they’ve shared with me.
Given the free market nature of cellphones, where vendors and companies have unfettered access to monetize users, having cellphones in school is akin to making school children line up and listen to sales pitches from companies around the world for several hours a day, instead of focusing on education.
I think this is likely a good concept for schools, but I want to see the data and not opinions. Lack of evidence based policy is what got us here, we should at some point start using evidence based policy to get us out of it.
My understanding is that these are already banned in most schools and the practical difference between enforcing this at a state or national basis is basically nonexistent vs simple local enforcement.
I would love it if my laptop had a "study mode" for when I am trying to debug something or learn something new using my laptop. Some of us have less than stellar self-control, so a study mode which requires a multi-step rigamarole to shut off might prevent me from casually checking my email or a news website when I am supposed to be learning a new data structure or figuring out a data corruption bug. I have no idea how it would work in real life: I need access to the internet to lookup API documentation, download libraries, and read online books, but I imagine something could be worked out.
(This article mentions that not only are cell phones banned at the featured school, but these kids have hobbled laptops that supposedly help them focus on school work, although the imperfect nature of the hobbling has unintended consequences).
its a blanket rule, which has almost no exceptions. So there are some silly parts. One of my kids is in band and the school uses YONDER pouches. They have had to dig out some really, really old analog tuners to use. They have a fraction of the capability of a $4 IOS app, but the kids are supposed to keep their phones in a special sleeve with no exceptions... (so many kids break that rule, or throw an old dummy phone in the pouch)
Now ... what do we do about the rest of society. This problem isn't just a school problem, it is whole of society, escpecially senior citizens. They are more prone to the problems of phones, social media, and continuous disinformation ... and they vote.
Just wait until you find out the benefits of taking them away from kids altogether! Phones are a mental health hazard for children, there is no benefit for them having a phone. The only downside is they feel left out when their friends only want to sit around and scroll TikTok, and can't manage to have any in person interactions without their face in a screen.
None of my children have phones, and when they do get one, it will be when they are driving and will be a dumb phone for sending text messages and making calls.
That's the only bummer here. I do agree with this policy, but no one voted for it. The governor just said "you're going to do this".
Yes, yes, I know - people elected the governor. But this sort of policy seems like something that should require legislative approval, not just one person deciding the whole state must do something.
For every time something good comes of that kind of behavior, there's 10 times when it's a disaster.
I'm a little confussd... was there a point they were allowed? I went to school in the late 2000s, and even at that point if a teacher saw you with a cell phone it was immediately confiscated.
'Engaged Students, Joyful Teachers' ... but sad Zuck !
As soon as this becomes popular and Zuck's engagement numbers tank, prepare for a propaganda campaign of nuclear proportions - maybe they even pull the OG Sheryl Sandberg back to steer the PR ship. And with the current crop of cronies in office, don’t be surprised if a new ID bill will be introduced that requires "social connectivity" as requirement for ID verification. Your "trust score" might eventually depend on how much data you feed Zuck's sucking machine and whether you’ve hit your daily scroll quota. If you think that sounds crazy, you haven't been paying attention to how fast the goalposts are moving.
For a country that likes to brag about being a "democratic republic", the 2 major areas of society (school and work) are the most fascistic top-down authoritarian structures we have.
And sure we can vote every 2 years. Yay.
But what freedom do we have when schools can steal student's property, or a business owner can fire you for speech made outside of work.
234 comments
> In crafting its policy, Estacada incorporated feedback from parents. That led to some key decisions around the cell phone ban. Rather than use pouches or lockers, students are allowed to keep their phones safely stored in their backpacks. That was for two reasons — it allows students to contact loved ones during emergencies, and many parents use phone trackers to keep tabs on their kids.
I'm glad to hear this. They're currently trying to shill the magnetically sealed pouches in the UK, but the flaws are obvious: massive bottleneck at the pouch station would delay entry and exit from the building, phones would be unavailable during emergencies or to record incidents of crime or staff malpractice, and financial burden on schools.
Students can be trusted to obey a simple "no phones in class" rule.
They also begged parents to help pay for them: https://www.govtech.com/education/k-12/portland-schools-ask-...
A friend's kid needs an exemption from their doctor because their phone is also their glucose monitor and diagnostic tracker, and the exception only allows them to unlock the pouch under supervision when necessary.
I'm not sure what argument there is for allowing all students unfettered access to their phones, but feel free to present one.
People panic in fires, trampling one another trying to get out. The danger is real, but so is the damage caused by the panic.
Here people are responding to real harms but we're often jumping to conclusions. Trying to act too fast. Thinking it is better to do something rather than nothing. But that's not always true. We see this happen with all sorts of complex problems we face these days. People care more about having an answer than they do a solution. This one is no different. We get bad answers like the above because people are rushing and not thinking about the consequences. But if things were as easy to solve as were wish they were then they'd already have been solved. The "easy" part only comes after a lot of hard work and really only from a high level
Learning to read or to do mathematics is like anything else, it takes practice. We know, intuitively from our own lives and observes virtually all humans, that humans perform better with less distractions. It would be hard to learn how to play the Tuba with me screaming behind you. It would be hard to learn chess with a movie playing in front of you.
Phones are distractions. Less phones = less distractions = better performance, smarter kids, more likelihood to graduate, higher average income.
Numerous peer reviewed articles published in reputable journals have reported that there are advantages to banning cell phones in the classroom, yet you as the sole arbiter of "actual science" declare otherwise.
The point of science is to provide better information for us to make decisions with, not to prevent us from making decisions at all until it's done
If we waited for science to settle and provide the best information possible, we would never get anything done
Which I guess gets looked the other way, since they aren't using it in class.
It's definitely a hard problem over all balancing their completely disruptive nature if there's no bounds to the issues around safety and parental worry from not being able to contact their kid all the time which phones have made the norm.
> Students can be trusted to obey a simple "no phones in class" rule.
Anybody who has spent even a day teaching knows how wildly inaccurate this statement is
Students are just little people
You'd think it would be a huge deal with rebellious teens, but my daughter says it has basically been a non-issue.
>Students can be trusted to obey a simple "no phones in class" rule.
I'm honestly not educated on the topic right now since I haven't been in school for 15 years and have some time left before my daughter starts, but is this rule really not in place in most schools? How could any school justify not having this rule at the very least, regardless of how well-enforced it is?
I always assumed it was a lack of enforcement due to understaffing that was the problem
in most regions’ school districts.
> People act as rationally as they can
We’re talking about underdeveloped minds in the face of excruciating social and physiological pressure.
I’m pretty sure the systemic failure is, in part, that parents are, en masse, abdicating their responsibilities of guiding their children through the minefield of modern technology, from iPad kids on up.
The reasons why vary - and include being addicted themselves.
I’d love to hear any anecdotal evidence to the contrary - not just a dismissal, or being called a fool.
One example is the tension between childrens' independence and roaming and the now lack of payphones. Taking away a cell phone doesn't bring back payphones. It either reduces a child's independence or puts them in more dangerous situations. What it doesn't do is return them back to a time when a couple of quarters could call mom or dad.
>Students can be trusted to obey a simple "no phones in class" rule.
And what if they don't? En masse?
> it allows students to contact loved ones during emergencies, and many parents use phone trackers to keep tabs on their kids
That's such bullshit.
- There is no emergency that require students to contact anyone. Communication can go through the school
- Parents have no business tracking their kids when they're at school
> Students can be trusted to obey a simple "no phones in class" rule
That was the general policy before these bans. It was not working.
Many schools have similar bans but they don’t get support from many of the pupils or their parents as both groups have members that just believe it is the school choosing to overstep their authority.
Now it is a diktat from above it makes the school’s job in enforcing it much easier. They can just point to the relevant legislation/diktat and say that their hands are tied, if you disagree here are the places you can go to voice your opinion. Meanwhile we (as a school) have no choice but to apply the rules, etc.
I know there's a billion other reasons, but I've heard parents say they want their kid to have a phone so they can keep in touch if they need to.
When I was a kid, cell phones weren't a thing (at least for kids) so the once or twice a year I needed to call a parent I went down to the office and asked to use their phone.
Then I got to have whatever, usually embarrassing, conversation with my mom while everyone in the school office stared at me. Good times.
However this isn't the only problem. They also force us to pay monthly for iPads with wonky ass Logitech cases to be issued on which they do everything on Google classroom.
Google Classroom is an abhorrently bad bit of software on an iPad. It's just horrible in every possible way. Clunky, interface sucks, slow, unreliable.
Then they give detentions when children can't submit work, some auth issue means the entire device goes down the toilet for two days, documents won't open because the staff use Office instead, they keyboard case craps out and you can't type with anything but the screen, the staff forget to submit the work until an hour before it's due, the entire school wifi network is down for a week and they have no backup.
They should ban that too. Technology MUST be fit for purpose in a classroom and most of it isn't.
Go back to paper for everything. Work, journals, timetables, the lot. And the teachers can use whatever to drive projectors in the classroom.
My kids' school banned phones during the school day. The principal promised that the office would relay any messages if parents call, and they do. I would be interested to see if there are already statistics showing academic success. That is, are grades and test scores affected by phone bans? The article talks about graduation rates, but doesn't directly address grades and scores.
I don’t have a solution to that problem, but I also think it’s important to acknowledge it’s not all sunshine and roses.
I’m saying this as a person with close friends in Oregon school systems, based on the experiences they’ve shared with me.
(This article mentions that not only are cell phones banned at the featured school, but these kids have hobbled laptops that supposedly help them focus on school work, although the imperfect nature of the hobbling has unintended consequences).
None of my children have phones, and when they do get one, it will be when they are driving and will be a dumb phone for sending text messages and making calls.
That's the only bummer here. I do agree with this policy, but no one voted for it. The governor just said "you're going to do this".
Yes, yes, I know - people elected the governor. But this sort of policy seems like something that should require legislative approval, not just one person deciding the whole state must do something.
For every time something good comes of that kind of behavior, there's 10 times when it's a disaster.
And sure we can vote every 2 years. Yay.
But what freedom do we have when schools can steal student's property, or a business owner can fire you for speech made outside of work.
I think the right approach is finding teaching techniques that still work when every human has all the world's info at their finger tips 24/7.
At some point, an uninterruptible, 24/7 live connection to the rest of the world is inevitable.
I'm not convinced a human teacher is a required part of this.