These Schools Banned Cellphones and the Results Were Meh

School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news. Subscribe here. If the hope was that ridding classrooms of mobile phones would bring about a much better world for learning, that has not quite materialized — at least, not yet. Stanford and Duke university scholars joined those from the universities of Michigan and Pennsylvania to conduct the largest study ever of school cellphone bans using data compiled from secure pouch-maker Yondr. The study encompassed 4,600 schools and, as my colleague Greg Toppo reported this week, found that attendance, attention and bullying were largely unaffected by locking phones away, while academic achievement gains were minimal. But other school climate factors rose and fell in noteworthy ways — discipline worsened, then improved, and student well-being dipped before bouncing back. Restrictions or prohibitions on cellphones have been embraced by at least 37 states and the District of Columbia. Not surprisingly, teachers and parents are typically in favor, while students are largely against. Stanford economist Thomas Dee admitted that the results could be seen as sobering and somewhat disappointing, but said more time was needed to really gauge impact. Researchers studied three groups of schools, which banned phones starting in 2022, 2023 and 2024. “I firmly believe that getting student phone use down, recapturing their attention in classrooms within schools, is a critical antecedent to realizing their academic potential,” he said. While not part of this study, one related data point being trumpeted by cellphone ban supporters: After taking away students’ phones, Dallas Independent School District reported a 24% increase in school library book checkouts, from 872,430 in the first seven months of last school year to 1 million over the same period this year. Ban on AI companions for kids advances on Capitol Hill: A Senate bill that would bar artificial intelligence companions from interacting with children and teens received unanimous approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 30 and now awaits Senate floor action. The measure would also require age verification for all users to interact with AI chatbots and subject chatbot makers to potential criminal penalties of up to $100,000 per offense if their tools describe or engage in sexually explicit content or encourage or promote physical or sexual violence with someone younger than 18. | K-12 Dive The National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, is facing charges it created hostile work environments and discriminated against Jewish members. The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over reported harassment of Jewish members at the union’s Representative Assembly meeting last July. The complaint alleges they were surrounded and screamed at during a debate on cutting ties with the Anti-Defamation League, and face other types of discrimination. The union denies tolerating antisemitism. | The 74 About that ChatGPT study. It’s been retracted. Citing “discrepancies” in the analysis and a lack of confidence in the conclusions, British-German publisher Springer Nature has retracted a study that claimed OpenAI’s ChatGPT can positively impact student learning. The unusual move came nearly a year after its publication and after the study had accumulated hundreds of citations and lots of social media hits. | Ars Technica The Vermont Principals’ Association paid $566,000 to a Christian school that was barred from participating in state sports after it refused in 2023 to compete against a girls’ basketball team that included a transgender player. The money settled a lawsuit brought by the Mid Vermont Christian School and two of its families. They were represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, one of several “out-of-state conservative legal groups (that) have had a growing presence in Vermont’s courts” litigating education and other cases. | VTDigger A state audit found a host of weaknesses in how New York City public schools protects the data privacy of its 900,000 students. It pointed to major gaps in state-required data security policies and vulnerabilities in how student information is tracked, secured and managed. The nation’s largest school district has experienced several data breaches in recent years, including through third-party vendors like Illuminate and PowerSchool. | Chalkbeat While TikTok and Instagram are scrutinized, YouTube rules in school. One Kansas mom logged on to her seventh grader’s school Google account last year to find that he had accessed more than 13,000 YouTube videos during school hours in two months. Schools’ overreliance on the Google-owned platform for educational content has opened the door to infinite video scrolling by students on their school-issued devices. | Wall Street Journal Connecticut lawmakers approved the state’s first homeschool regulations over the objections of Republicans and organized homeschooling families, who see the legislation as an attack on their parental rights. The rules will require all families to submit a yearly form stating how their children will be educated and will prohibit anyone from removing a child from school in order to homeschool if they are on the state child abuse or neglect registry or are being investigated by child protective services. Two homeschool students have died in the state in the past six months. | CT Mirror The algorithmic school-to-prison pipeline: With little transparency or oversight, technology is being used to flag youth as risks to public safety and deciding who is surveilled, arrested and confined. But young people haven’t been passive in the face of these systems. They’ve been among the most effective organizers against them. And they’ve been winning. | Inquest Get the most critical news and information about students' rights, safety and well-being delivered straight to your inbox. At 250, the Declaration of Independence Still Sparks Hard Questions in Class ‘We’re Adrift’: Arne Duncan on Democrats’ Education Agenda Researchers Find Strong Link Between Vax Hesitancy and ‘Fringe’ Right-Wing Media Senate Committee Presses Linda McMahon on Cuts to College Prep, Rural Schools Mika looks back and gives a smile to her human, The 74’s editor-in-chief Nicole Ridgway, on a sunny spring day in Prospect Park.