Distracted Kids: 75% of Schools Say ‘Lack of Focus’ Hurting Student Performance

Nearly three years after most kids returned to in-person classes, new federal data reveals troublesome student behavior – from threatening other students in class and online to lack of attentiveness – continues to make learning recovery challenging.

Top challenges in more than half of the country’s schools were students being unprepared or disruptive in the classroom, according to the Department of Education’s research arm in its 2023-24 School Pulse data release .

For 40-45% of schools, student learning and staff morale was also limited by students’ “trouble” working with partners or in groups and use of cell phones, laptops, or other tech when not permitted. In 75% of schools, students’ “lack of focus” moderately or severely negatively impacted learning and staff morale.

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Fighting and bullying were also pervasive: In about one in five schools, physical fights occurred about once a month, while weapons were confiscated at 45% of schools. Thirty percent report cyberbullying is a weekly occurrence; for 11%, it is daily.

Researchers say while overall, key adverse student behaviors have been on a downswing compared to prior generations, such as illicit drug use, violent crime and teen birth rates, several forces are compounding for students and impacting their wellbeing: High rates of trauma , a fraught political climate, and feeling they are being left behind, unsafe or unseen in school.

“Look what these students have gone through … not only the pandemic, through wars. Through a tumultuous, divisive political environment in the last six or seven years that’s only intensifying between right and left, between Black and white, between immigrant and non-immigrant. [Those separations] are filtering into schools and classes, perhaps with an awareness that we have not had before,” said Ron Astor, UCLA professor of social welfare and expert on bullying, school violence and culture.

Students are also witnessing state legislatures and local school boards limit what classrooms can and cannot teach, leading them to question whether they belong in their school, he said. The atmosphere is impacting families across the political divide: “If parents and society see the school as teaching the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, if you’re not reflected in that school – that’s going to impact your attention, too.”

From coast to coast , districts are weighing phone bans amid rising concerns about bullying and distractions. But some researchers say solely nixing phones without boosting mental health supports or addressing overall school culture wouldn’t curb the negative attitudes students may be forming about school and the purpose of their education .

Astor said some young people are experiencing conditions like ADHD, depression and PTSD, which can manifest in dissociation. Lack of focus can also stem from feeling irrelevance, either that the subject matter is not important to their future or that some part of who they are is not represented at school.

Framing students’ inability to focus as the cause for delay in learning recovery, “ignores the fact of why they’re maybe not motivated, why they’re not connected as they should be, why they don’t see themselves in the curriculum,” he added. “Why, when they did see themselves, they’re being taken out or not allowed to say or do things because they’re part of an oppressed group,” referencing book bans, history challenges, and restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion curricula and positions.

Astor and Johanna Lacoe, research director with the California Policy Lab, point to several ways school leaders can address these behavioral concerns: stronger classroom management training for teachers and keeping counselor, nurse, psychologist and social worker roles filled.

“Young people who are in the classroom and who are behind, frustrated and struggling are just so much more likely to check out,” said Lacoe, a commissioner on San Francisco’s Juvenile Probation Commission. “For a teacher with 33 kids, who has maybe not that much experience managing a classroom, to teach to the range of abilities that present themselves with no support, is what we’re currently asking teachers to do.”

How schools handle disciplinary action after cyberbullying, violent behavior, and disruptions can greatly impact student perceptions of school. Lacoe pointed to several models that help students feel belonging after an incident such as restorative justice in lieu of suspensions for low-level infractions, particularly as school leaders’ concerns about chronic absenteeism grow.

In the community school model , schools provide services such as healthcare, behavioral and housing support to children and families.

There are models at work where, “you’re always telling a student that they belong here even in the time of this [adverse] behavior – that they can make right what happened through a process, inclusive of the people involved,” Lacoe said. “You can figure out a way to resolve it that works for everyone and if possible, keeps the young person engaged at school.”

The vast majority of school leaders surveyed in late May by the National Center for Education Statistics – over 80% – agree the pandemic’s impacts are still lingering, negatively impacting the behavioral and socioemotional development of their students. At least 90% of public schools reported increasing social, emotional support offerings for students since 2021.

Students, including Astor’s own undergraduates, are asking, “‘Where do I fit in this world? How do I fit in society?’ … I think all of this impacts your ability to focus and your attention, including your motivation.”