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School cell phone bans and student achievement

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Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#21

Post by uniqueuid »

gpt5 wrote: post #15

This is an area where hacker news shows its weakness. We have: 1. A chart showing a very low increase (1-2 percent) 2. Nothing to control scores rising in every school in America in the last school year (due to reduction of COVID effects). 3. Scores not moving immediately after the ban, but only after the start of a new school year, which means a new cohort of students muddying the data. Yet the data fits people's bi…

To be fair, all those details are in the paper. And a 1-2 percent increase does not seem low to me for such a measure.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#22

Post by uniqueuid »

You have to admit that it's quite clever how they approximate phone use:

> Our identification strategy relies upon our ability to calculate school-specific measures of smartphone activity that we can attribute to students, rather than adults in the building. To do so, we use detailed smartphone activity data from Advan between January 2023 and December 2024 that we link to LUSD schools using point-of-interest coordinates.13 In particular, we focus on the average number of unique smartphone visits (pings) between 9am and 1pm on school days (a common time frame that elementary, middle, and high schools in LUSD are all in session during school days) in the last two months of the 2022-23 school year (right before the ban took effect) and the first two months of the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years.14 To disentangle student activity from the smartphone activity of teachers/staff, we subtract the average number of unique smartphone visits between 9am and 1pm on teacher workdays (in the same school year) from the same average on regular school days.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#23

Post by ChrisArchitect »

i_c_b wrote: post #10

Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…

Your Phone Isn't a Drug. It's a Portal to the Otherworld. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46115659

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#24

Post by c22 »

moduspol wrote: post #11
HPsquared wrote: post #7

I wonder if there's a hidden confounding selection bias here, i.e. "ability of the school to ban phones". This is probably easier in less chaotic schools where the students listen to the teachers, say.

If the teachers and schools cannot implement a phone ban because the students won't listen to them, it might be time to reassess what their purpose is.

These sorts of schools already make kids pass through metal detectors on their way in so phones can just be confiscated at that point.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#25

Post by nineplay »

gpt5 wrote: post #15

This is an area where hacker news shows its weakness. We have: 1. A chart showing a very low increase (1-2 percent) 2. Nothing to control scores rising in every school in America in the last school year (due to reduction of COVID effects). 3. Scores not moving immediately after the ban, but only after the start of a new school year, which means a new cohort of students muddying the data. Yet the data fits people's bi…

I'd go further and say its a global weakness and unbelievably destructive. The bulk of current discourse today is:

1. Read a headline/tweet/instagram.

2. Decide whether or not it fits in your worldview.

3. Move forward with the confidence that you are better informed than everyone else who agrees/disagrees with it.

You see it everywhere on all sides of all beliefs.

It didn't use to be like this. We used to read articles, we used to read common news sources, we use to not have media overrun with bad actors who know exactly what to say to get the most engagement and solidify people in their own world views.

It's all over HN and I could have hoped there'd be more willingness to say "let me consider the contents and the source before deciding if I accept it". That attitude is just lost and I don't think it will be regained and I think it's the reason we are all in a death spiral.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#26

Post by uniqueuid »

gpt5 wrote: post #15

This is an area where hacker news shows its weakness. We have: 1. A chart showing a very low increase (1-2 percent) 2. Nothing to control scores rising in every school in America in the last school year (due to reduction of COVID effects). 3. Scores not moving immediately after the ban, but only after the start of a new school year, which means a new cohort of students muddying the data. Yet the data fits people's bi…

Ok here is the crucial part of the paper:

It's a difference in differences design, using individual-level test scores and de-seasonalized data (p. 13). Their wording is:

> Y_igst is the outcome of interest for student i in grade g in school s in time period t, HighAct_s is an indicator for high pre-ban smartphone activity schools, D_t is a series of time period dummies (t = 0 indicates the first period after the ban took effect), δ_s is school fixed effects, and θ_g is grade fixed effects. In this setting, β_t are the parameters of interest, reflecting the difference in the outcome of interest between treatment and comparison schools for each period, with the period before the ban serving as the omitted category, holding grade level constant.

To me some modeling choices seem a bit heavy-handed, but I'm not an economist and could not do better.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#27

Post by _vqpz »

aschla wrote: post #3

I'm not particularly old yet, in my mid-thirties, but I reacted like someone much older when I learned kids are allowed to carry around their phones all day at school. Back in my day (when we walked to school uphill both ways), we weren't allowed to carry around basic flip phones. They had to be in our locker and only used before or after school. When and why did it become acceptable for much more distracting and sti…

It became "acceptable" because the teachers and admin were already on their phones constantly. I went to grade school from 2005-2017, when iPhones came around the adults got them years before kids did, I had numerous teachers that would sit on their phones half the class.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#28

Post by QuercusMax »

HPsquared wrote: post #7

I wonder if there's a hidden confounding selection bias here, i.e. "ability of the school to ban phones". This is probably easier in less chaotic schools where the students listen to the teachers, say.

In our local schools, they don't make *teachers* responsible for enforcing the bans. Students have to keep their phones in a Yondr pouch. If they're caught with their phone it will be confiscated (and require a parent to pick it up), and the administration will give also give additional consequences such as being banned from extracurriculars or school activities like Prom.

My student tells me that in practice many students don't keep their phone in the pouch, but they are very careful about how and when they use them. Many teachers have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy - if I don't see you using the phone, and it's not disruptive, then they don't care.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#29

Post by stonemetal12 »

aschla wrote: post #3

I'm not particularly old yet, in my mid-thirties, but I reacted like someone much older when I learned kids are allowed to carry around their phones all day at school. Back in my day (when we walked to school uphill both ways), we weren't allowed to carry around basic flip phones. They had to be in our locker and only used before or after school. When and why did it become acceptable for much more distracting and sti…

Never. There has never been a time when it was OK to use a phone in class. What happened is A) Some kids do take their phone out and play with them and either get caught or not B) Something happens and kids record it aka school fight videos. C) giant moral panic that has very little basis in reality.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#30

Post by nemomarx »

nineplay wrote: post #25
gpt5 wrote: post #15

This is an area where hacker news shows its weakness. We have: 1. A chart showing a very low increase (1-2 percent) 2. Nothing to control scores rising in every school in America in the last school year (due to reduction of COVID effects). 3. Scores not moving immediately after the ban, but only after the start of a new school year, which means a new cohort of students muddying the data. Yet the data fits people's bi…

I'd go further and say its a global weakness and unbelievably destructive. The bulk of current discourse today is: 1. Read a headline/tweet/instagram. 2. Decide whether or not it fits in your worldview. 3. Move forward with the confidence that you are better informed than everyone else who agrees/disagrees with it. You see it everywhere on all sides of all beliefs. It didn't use to be like this. We used to read artic…

When was it not like this, though? I think people are rosey about the past here. A small educated set was different in the past but probably the bulk of the population has always done something like this - now you can hear them online easier.
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