We checked in with Broward County Public Schools to see how its restrictive cellphone ban is faring. NBC6’s Ari Odzer reports
The school year is at its halfway point, a good time to evaluate the controversial cellphone policy of Broward County Public Schools, which began on the first day of school. Students are not allowed to use their phones throughout the school day, not even at lunch, unless there’s an emergency.
According to the school district, academic performance is up and school fights are down.
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Dan Katz teaches drama and law at Fort Lauderdale High School, and without the distraction of cellphones in the classroom, he’s seeing much less drama but higher performance.
“I’ve noticed a lot more creativity with students, I think their attention spans are a little longer, they have excellent conversations in their groups, those conversations are lasting longer, our class discussions are definitely a lot longer and they’re a lot deeper because no one’s really focused on checking their phone,” Katz said.
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There are some exceptions to the cellphone ban, but students must keep their phones on airplane mode during the school day.
School board member Dr. Allen Zeman says school fights are down 17% from this same point last year, and he says anecdotal evidence from school administrators shows the reason for the decline is the restrictive cellphone policy.
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“And what they’ve said is the lack of cellphones is taking away an ability for people to organize fights and organize big numbers of people to get together and fight during or after school,” Zeman said. “The lack of cellphones leads to fewer fights to fights with fewer people that last fewer minutes and it also reduces cyber bullying which is something that causes fights and then it stops the recording of fights which stops people from doing the right thing and trying to make sure that the fights are ended.”
As for academic performance, Zeman says what Dan Katz sees in his classroom is repeating itself all over the district.
“This year, at the halfway point, our gains are greater than they were, the gains, from last year,” Zeman said, attributing the academic gains to the restrictive cellphone policy. “Absolutely, I had a teacher write to us and say for the first time in 10 years, for each student in her classroom, she had two eyeballs watching her give a lecture.”
The school district will continue to study the impact of the cellphone policy in the second half of the school year.
