The Positive Impact of Cellphone Bans in Florida’s SchoolS

The study clearly evidences that cellphone bans in Florida schools led to meaningful improvements in student test scores, reductions in disciplinary incidents, and decreases in bullying. The policy has clearly been a win-win. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
The news.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
You need to start your day in the bomb beaches
at the Treasure Coast.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Brian Mud Show. Yeah, I's tuck a
little bit.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
About the positive impact of cell phone bands in Florida's schools.
This is a pretty cool story here. But first we
have the latest elementary school rankings from US News and
World Report. Now, when you take a look at the
state of overall, for a couple of consecutive years, Florida
was number one in education pre K through college. This
year number two nationally the elementary school rankings, This gives

(00:35):
you a little bit of an idea.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
The US News and.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
World Report rankings take a look at forty seven thousand
elementary schools and more than twenty three thousand middle schools.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
But they're relying on math.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Data from standardized testing from twenty twenty two and twenty
twenty three and reading data from a year before that.
While standardized testing scores are most relied upon, student teacher
ratios are applied to break down high In the twenty
twenty five rankings, Jacksonville Beach Elementary School was ranked as
the best elementary school in Florida.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, and you take a look in South Florida. The
highest ranked elementary school in South Florida the Somerset Academy
in Broward and Mira mar.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Specifically tied for second.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
And then in the Palm Beaches and the Treasure Coast
there's one in the top ten that happens to be
the Moricami Park Elementary School in Delray Beach a number four.
And so as we take a look at the impact
of cell phone bands in Florida schools, there's a new study.
It's from the National Bureau of Economic Research, and what
they did is they took a look at the two

(01:38):
years since Florida put restrictions on cell phone use in
classrooms into place, and Joel.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
What do you think would happen here?

Speaker 4 (01:45):
I would think that maybe kids were paying more attention
to the teachers and getting on TikTok less.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, probably going to get better results when you have
more time focused on the person teaching the class as
opposed to whatever's on the phone and so on. That
note was a controlled process put in, so the analysis
used here did account for all of the underlying variables
that could be in place to come up with a
true comprehensive apples to Apple's comparison and what we saw

(02:17):
not surprisingly across the board improvement academically but also in
disciplinary action actions.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
But there were specific takeaways.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
So for example, on the academic side, cell phone bands
ended up producing an average increase in standardized test scores
of ten percent, the impact most significant in middle schools.
The gains were largest for students in lower performing schools,
students of low income families, and those with special needs.

(02:48):
Then on the disciplinary side, based upon category of disciplinary actions,
there was a ten to fifteen percent decrease in those
incidents and aary actions were consistent across all grade levels,
strongest with those who had a history of misbehavior. Bullying
specifically was down ten percent on average, the effect yet

(03:12):
again most significant in middle schools. So interesting the takeaways
there where you see middle schools in particular that is
the biggest area, and then you take a look at
kind of what could happen from here. So we only
have two years of this policy being in place. The
second year was found to be even more impactful than
the first having this policy in place. So will we

(03:33):
see continued improvement even above and beyond as for now
and to year three, that'll be something that is interesting
to watch going forward.

Speaker 4 (03:41):
All right, well, local residents with ties to Jamaica, they
are keeping a close eye on Hurricane Melissa, dangerous category
five storm one hundred and seventy five mile per hour winds.
We expect landfall to come sometime early this morning, and
folks are already getting together with nonprofits to help in
the wake of this storm.