School Cellphone Bans: Do They Work?

Roughly half the 50 U.S. states have imposed some form of cellphone ban in school classrooms, on the logic that fewer distractions result in more learning. Now comes a study showing that a ban can raise student test scores and attendance.

Florida was the first state to implement a statewide ban in May 2023. Researchers David Son from the University of Rochester and Umut Özek from Rand Corporation looked at results over the two years after the ban took effect in a school district that is one of the country’s largest. The unnamed district, they said, implemented an even stricter rule than required by law: Students couldn’t pull out their phones at any time of day.

It seems to be working. Students improved their rankings on standardized tests by 1.1 percentile points overall between the spring before the ban took effect and the spring two years later. Those improvements were more substantial for black students (1.2) and boys (1.4), and for middle and high schoolers (1.3).

Florida tests three times a year, and the effect was more modest—0.6 points of improvement on average—across all tests. But the spring tests are higher stakes because they’re used for school and student accountability measures.