> 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.

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.

Hundreds of comments and not one seems to think this is misguided - unusual for this community. Save the children I guess.

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.

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)

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).

Smart phones came out like 20 years ago. Why did it take so long to ban them in schools?

It's crazy to me that cell phones, and especially smart phones, were ever allowed in the classroom during class.

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.

Sounds dystopian and backwards, especially now with cutting access to AI tools that could accelerate educational achievement

"decreed by executive order"

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.

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.

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.

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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.

Phone bans are bad.

I don't think banning is the right solution to this. At some point, I think we are going to have comms devices imbedded in our heads and whatnot.

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.