Va. plans to create cell phone-free education guidelines. Developing them will be complex.

A Northern Virginia teacher shares her thoughts on cell phone policies in Virginia with Superintendent of Public InstructIon Lisa Coons during a public input session on July 18 in Manassas City. (Nathaniel Cline/Virginia Mercury)

As concerns mount over student performance, echoed in an executive order from Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Virginia is developing policies and guidelines to restrict students’ use of cell phones during school hours. Some educators and advocates question the effort and believe that cell phone-free policies could be hard to enforce and may harm certain students.

Research shows that some students use cell phones to message people and browse the internet and social media apps during instructional time.

Youngkin signs executive order to establish ‘cell phone-free education’ in Va. public schools

Others use them to record events in school and post them on various platforms. The resulting videos aren’t always positive: Earlier this month, a Pennsylvania school district acknowledged that several middle school students had made fake TikTok accounts impersonating their teachers, “and apparently made some posts using racist, homophobic and sexually explicit language” according to NPR.

“I hate TikTok,” said Oveta Scott, a teacher in Northern Virginia, at a Thursday listening session hosted by the state’s education department about the proposed cell phone ban in schools. “If I hear another TikTok challenge where they are destroying the bathroom, making noises in class, chirping like birds, I go insane, and I can’t take it anymore.”

But she said she understands some circumstances in which a child needs a cell phone including for health reasons.

Last Thursday’s listening session was the first of several seeking public input on the future cell phone-free policies and procedures, which school boards must adopt by Jan. 1, 2025, or before. Some of Virginia’s school boards have already begun banning or restricting cell phone use in schools.

The initiative is spearheaded by the Virginia Department of Education, the Departments of Health, and Health and Human Services as part of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order signed earlier this month that requires the departments to create guidelines to limit students’ time in front of “addictive” cell phones and eliminate “clear distractions” in the classroom.

Senate Democrats also announced on July 10 the creation of a Senate Democratic workgroup on school mobile phone policy.

Many said teacher input on the forthcoming policies is vital to eliminating distractions at a time when questions are circulating about the use of technology in schools and artificial intelligence’s impact on learning.

“I certainly am not opposed to a ban. I just think it’s a bandaid for a much bigger issue that we have in public education that speaks to so many things about how we’re able to hire amazing teachers and retain them,” Del. Laura Cohen, D-Fairfax, a former preschool teacher and school board member.

The benefits: technology tools, expanded internet access

While cell phones are often considered a distraction for students, researchers and professors say they also have their share of benefits and tools that can help with students’ studies, like language translators, rulers and calculators.

“There’s reasons we should be concerned about cell phones as distractions to learning, but they’re also very powerful learning tools potentially, you know, their access to information,” said Jesse Senechal, executive director for the Institute for Collaborative Research and Evaluation in the School of Education at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Senechal said that cell phones offer support in some cases when schools have a limited number of computers and internet access. He said policies could also create broader equity issues in how marginalized students are disciplined in contrast to socio-economic privileged students.

Leon Rouson, a professor in the School of Education at Norfolk State University, said the phones also allow students to do research without a computer or laptop, which is helpful for high school students he assists in preparing for college during the summer.

“If we say ‘no cell phones, ‘get rid of them,’ ‘throw them out,’ ‘they should not exist’ — I think we would also be creating some disconnection,” Rouson said.

The challenges: Enforcement questions, negative impacts on some learners

Teachers have also questioned who will enforce cell phone restrictions. Some are worried that the restrictions will create additional responsibilities for teachers and contribute to further burnout.

In 2022, a Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission study found that increased workloads and behavioral and mental health issues among students were some of the factors leading teachers to leave the career field.

Researchers also found that teachers were dissatisfied with the lack of respect from parents and the public.

Virginia report shows more teachers leaving the workforce than entering it

“If students are simply told not to have cell phones out during class, then teachers become the cell phone police,” said Nancy Bradley, a Salem City School Board member and associate director for the Office of Academic Programs at Virginia Tech. “As they are trying to teach, they are also trying to monitor which students are on their cell phone and asking that they put the cell phones away or taking the cell phones from these students. It is not a productive use of instructional time.”

While studying teacher burnout and their well-being, Tim Pressley, associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Christopher Newport University, found that student behavior has “drastically changed” since returning to in-person learning due to the pandemic. Further research found that students relied heavily on their phones, scrolling through social media and talking through classroom lessons.

“Technology is kind of just getting out of hand with students using it,” Pressley said.

Critics are concerned that parents’ and students’ anxieties about special learners’ needs and gun violence in schools will increase if policies restrict cell phones in schools.

Cohen raised similar concerns after an unsuccessful cell phone bill was returned to the House Education Committee for review in March. She said the bill could have negatively impacted English Language Learners and students with disabilities.

The bill would have empowered local boards to prohibit cell phones and other “handheld communication devices” such as Chromebooks, which can be used to message other students during class.

“We want to make sure … that we are not doing anything to stigmatize or not support our students with disabilities,” Cohen said.

Cohen said another common reason parents want their children to have their cell phones is in case of a school emergency, such as a school shooting.

Public alarm about gun violence in Virginia schools was heightened after a then-six-year-old student brought a firearm from home to his Newport News elementary school and shot his teacher.

“Providing assurance to parents that even if their child doesn’t have their cell phone on them during the school day, that they will receive communication from the school regarding emergency situations, is an important component to get them to buy into the changes to cell phone policies,” Bradley said. “I do think that’s probably going to be one of the tougher hurdles to overcome.”

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