AILSA CHANG, HOST:
It's hard to find anything in the American education system with bipartisan support today, but keeping students from using smartphones during the school day is a rare exception. Almost three-quarters of states have restricted or banned phones in schools, according to Education Week. And now the first big study on the effects of those restrictions is out today from the National Bureau of Economic Research. And the results are mixed. Thomas Dee, an education economist at Stanford and one of the study authors, joins us now. Welcome.
THOMAS DEE: Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
CHANG: Glad to have you. OK, so how did your group conduct this study exactly? Like, how did you make sure that these students were kept away from their phones during the school day?
DEE: Well, as you noted, schools across the nation have been adopting phone bans, but there's great variation in exactly how they're doing it. We partnered with a company that sells lockable pouches to schools.
CHANG: These are, like, magnetic pouches, yes?
DEE: Exactly, that are sealed at central locations and lock up students' phones until schools decide they can open them back up again. And the reason this matters is we see a dramatic decline in phone activity in school locations. So that tells us we're picking up school bans that actually reduce student use in schools.
CHANG: Ah, OK, interesting. Well, let's talk about some of these mixed findings that I mentioned. Your study reports that these policies improved test scores close to zero. What does that mean?
DEE: Well, we saw no appreciable effect on student test scores at either the middle school or the high school level. The really striking effects were on non-test student outcomes.
CHANG: In what way?
DEE: We see a sharp increase in disciplinary incidents in schools after a ban is adopted, and that can reflect two mechanisms. One is teachers and other adults in the school building simply having to enforce these bans. But there may also be an increase in disciplinary problems because students who had been kind of complacent and docile while using their phone may act out more in the classroom when...
CHANG: So interesting.
DEE: ...That's no longer available to them.
CHANG: Right, I saw that student suspensions went up an average of 16% at first, right?
DEE: That's right - so a pretty large increase. But the other thing to note is that disruptions are short term. The increase in exclusionary discipline is really concentrated in the very first year in which schools ban phone use. And within just two years, they're back to the baseline they were before they adopted the ban.
CHANG: Well, in this study, I know that you talked to teachers, and many of them had quite good things to say about these cellphone bans. Talk about what you heard from them.
DEE: Teachers see really positive aspects of restricting student phone use in schools. It's easier to keep students' attention and keep them on task. Though I think many of them are also recognizing the at least short-term challenges of maintaining classroom order and discipline. And one of the concerns I have about this study is that it might encourage people to walk away from phone bans as a compelling reform. And I think that would be a major mistake. I mean, managing child development in the digital age is arguably a major national challenge for us. There are some encouraging results in the midst of these mixed findings. They are driving down phone usage, and as schools have longer experiences with phone bans, we're seeing a shift towards more positive outcomes.
CHANG: Stanford education economist Thomas Dee, thank you very much.
DEE: It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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