Every district and school in the country should have a policy addressing whether—and how—students can use cellphones in school, the U.S. Department of Education recommends in new guidance released Dec. 3.
The department doesn’t take a position on whether schools should ban cellphones, allow them to be used at certain times of the day or in certain circumstances, or permit them for every student. Instead, the agency offered district-level examples of all three approaches.
And it recommends that cellphone policies be developed in close consultation with students, teachers, community members, and parents, outlining in a playbook what that process could look like.
The department’s move is part of a growing push among policymakers to set some parameters around cellphone use in schools. At least 18 states have passed laws or enacted policies that ban or restrict students’ use of cellphones in schools statewide or recommend local districts enact their own bans or restrictive policies, according to an Education Week analysis.
“Within each state’s guardrails, every elementary, middle, and high school should have a clear, consistent, and research-informed policy to guide the use of cellphones in schools,” said Miguel Cardona, the secretary of education, in a letter included with the playbook. “And that policy should reflect the insights and the engagement of educators, parents, and students.”
The guidance—which is steadfastly neutral on whether or not cellphones should be restricted in schools—comes as Cardona and the rest of the Biden team prepare to hand over the reins of the department to the incoming Trump administration.
Key questions to ask when crafting a cellphone policy
The playbook directs schools to consider questions such as:
- When can students have access to phones?
- When is phone use not permitted?
- When and how are phones stored?
- What are the appropriate consequences when a student doesn’t follow a school cellphone policy?
- Who is responsible for monitoring and enforcing policies?
- How can school districts and schools assess whether policies are working and how to refine them?
“Answering these questions can be complicated, but we know this: The best way to implement a policy that teachers, parents, and students will support and honor is to engage them in answering these questions,” Cardona wrote.
The department’s playbook focuses on three key principles for developing cellphone policies:
- Bringing students and parents to the table in designing a cellphone policy is likely to enhance buy-in and bolster the chances for success.
- Teachers, school leaders, and students should be aware of the policy. School and classroom culture should be built around it.
- Any device policy should be paired with lessons on digital citizenship.
The playbook includes some practical advice for building teams of students, teachers, and parents that can work together on crafting a cellphone policy. For instance, school and district leaders shouldn’t insist that students use their formal title (i.e. “principal” or “superintendent”) during discussions of the issue, because that might make students feel their input isn’t as valuable as the adults’. Instead, everyone directly involved in crafting the policy should adopt the same title, perhaps “designer” or “policymaker.”
And school leaders should consider looking beyond the student council president in choosing kids to serve on a committee or panel charged with cellphone policy development. Students who may struggle with cellphone restrictions—or unfettered access to devices—may bring a special perspective.
The guidance also recommends that the teams crafting cellphone policies read and discuss articles on the topic (think of it like a book club, the department suggests). And it recommends giving parents, teachers, and students the space to share their own experiences with cellphones.
Parents have been among the biggest critics of outright cellphone bans.
Even so, the National Parents Union, a nonprofit parent advocacy organization that seeks to raise the influence of parents’ voices in K-12 decisionmaking, applauded the guidance.
This “approach prioritizes students’ focus and learning during critical instructional time—while also acknowledging the real and valid concerns that parents have about maintaining lines of communication with their children and contact during emergency situations,” the organization wrote in a statement.
Students are more likely to honor a policy if they helped create it
The department’s recommendation that students play a key role in crafting school or district cellphone polices jibes with Kristy Zaleta’s experience. Zaleta, the principal of Rogers Park Middle School in Danbury, Conn., convened both students and parents to help develop her school’s cellphone policy, which is now in its third year.
Students were part of the committee that wrote the policy, and it was shared with all students so they could comment on it, Zaleta said.
At first, the school allowed individual teachers to come up with their own expectations around cellphones in their classrooms, she said. But that became a headache for both students and teachers; teachers were tasked with enforcing their individual policies while students had to deal with a wide range of expectations on phones.
Now, students must keep their cellphones in their backpacks or in a classroom cellphone caddy during instruction, Zaleta said. That’s prompted more in-person interaction during social times, she said.
Zaleta understands why students need a seat at the table on an issue that affects them so directly.
“I don’t like when I have things just dictated to me,” she said. “It definitely helps when people feel like they have a voice.”
