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School cell phone bans and student achievement

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Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#51

Post by krferriter »

rootusrootus wrote: post #37
Ferret7446 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still had clear boundaries. They slept in the sleeping place and at the sleeping time, they worked at the working place and at the working time. See, they didn't have smartphones to fiddle with in bed.

> they didn't have smartphones to fiddle with in bed This is solvable for people who want to. We have a dedicated charging station in our house for all electronic devices. Before bed, all of those devices get put there. Including me and my wife's phones.

This definitely is the way to do it. I have started keeping my phone in my living room at night instead of my bedroom, but am still bad about doing this every night. Phones are addictive and it is mentally hard to break out of the addiction. It is essentially a "you just have to do it" situation, but "just do it", while technically simple, is still difficult if you're addicted.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#52

Post by johnnyanmac »

phantasmish wrote: post #41
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…

We weren't allowed to have any of several different individual devices the functions of which are present in a smartphone. Banning that stuff was more-or-less uncontroversial. Obviously kids in an ordinary classroom shouldn't have instant cameras, and video recorders, and audio recorders, and Walkmen, and radios, and game boys, and TVs, and flashlights, and... Now we have devices that are all of those things in one a…

I really don't understand why the parents would fight for them. My theoretical kid is there to learn, enforce any reasonable rules that can disrupt that goal.

It's also in general a good way to form work habits for future aspects. Be it college, a job, military, etc. You can't fight over having your phone out to your boss. You can do it to your professor, but that's your $20k/yr tuition talking.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#53

Post by johnnyanmac »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #29
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.

I think it's less about what's okay and more about enforcement. It does seem like post pandemic schools lost all their teeth.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#54

Post by vkou »

ryandrake wrote: post #31
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…

There's no study that's good enough for HN. I don't think I've ever seen a science or research article posted here that didn't immediately get picked apart for this or that in the comment section. The methodology is flawed. The data is flawed. The conclusions cannot be drawn. There are confounding variables not accounted for. The sources are questionable. It's become a trope at this point. Either our commenters' stan…

No study should be good enough for HN. If a single non-obviously-flawed study is enough to convince you to something, then you can be convinced of anything and everything under the sun.

One study can find any effect it's looking for.

A study shouldn't move consensus. A study finding an effect is a signal that more studies should be done.

Once they are done, and people who know their stuff pour through them and reach some consensus is the sort of bar that needs to be crossed for a reasonable non-expert to 'follow the science'.

And sometimes those experts get it wrong, and accepting that degree of uncertainty is part of it.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#55

Post by johnnyanmac »

ryuhhnn wrote: post #20
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's much more likely that simply changing the way they administer these tests had a more significant impact on test scores than phone bans. Why do you think that's more likely?

Put yourself in the student's shoes: instead of being required to rote memorise every detail and hold that in your head until the end of the year, you are now only required to be assessed at the time that you are learning the material. Do you think you'd fare better on that type of test, or a test done months after you actually studied the material? One of the first things they teach you in educational research is th…

A good student would do well regardless, a bad student would do bad regardless. Cell phones might help a bad student do a little less bad, but only a little.

For the middle, it really depends on the material covered. if it's cumulative, then results might not change as much. if it's "learn and forget", then it might be testing the wrong incentives.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#56

Post by beastman82 »

ryuhhnn wrote: post #16

Some very important context that the researchers don't mention: during the same period that they are claiming test scores improved because of phone bans, Florida changed the way they administer standardised tests. Starting in 2024, they switched from doing one end-of-year assessment and started administering more frequent tests throughout the year in order to better gauge a student's progress and provide a tighter fe…

In other words, correlation does not imply causation

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#57

Post by jeffbee »

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 don't think you are being totally fair to the paper, but you do point out something that drives me crazy: local freakouts about year-to-year changes in math tests scores. It's like people don't realize that these 8th grade students are not the same as those.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#58

Post by patcon »

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…

> rediscover the hard way the older wisdom about having separate spheres with separate hard constraints and boundaries on behaviors

This is something I also believe. Thanks for saying it.

I've been thinking and reflecting a lot on what I've been calling for myself "generative constraint". It's sure as heck not something that is the same for everyone, but I think we all have a set of them that might help us be our best person.

We've universalized constraints and expansivenesses in a way that seems really poor judgement. And yes, there is a capitalist critique in this too, as any good theory should have :)

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#59

Post by johnnyanmac »

nineplay wrote: post #40
nemomarx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We didn't always have bad actors directly injecting rage-bait into our blood streams.

Sure we did. Or is that also just us conforming to our preferred worldview of the past?

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#60

Post by fph »

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…

There is another major factor that could cause scores to rise globally: ChatGPT. It is now good enough that it can explain topics to students at home, like a private tutor.
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