ANALYSIS: Off, Yondr, and Away
New cell phone policy is working, say Fredericksburg Public Schools leaders; it's a much-needed win for a district facing challenging test scores.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Editor’s Note: In the interest of full disclosure, the Advance’s editor-in-chief and author of this opinion piece is a part-time faculty member at James Monroe High School. This piece draws upon his personal experiences with the Yondr pouches; the views expressed herein are his alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Advance as a company, or the Fredericksburg Public Schools system.
Since June, the Advance has closely covered area school districts as they rolled out their cell phone policies. Fredericksburg has been a leader in this region, adopting this summer the strictest cell phone ban in the area.
As noted in a June opinion piece, the early research behind banning cell phones in schools is delivering encouraging results. An influential study out of England, for example, showed the following results:
Performance on high-stakes tests following cell phone bans in [the Birmingham, London, Leicester, and Manchester] districts improved student test scores by 6.41% of a standard deviation. More eye-opening was the finding that the improvement was 14.23% of a standard deviation among the most disadvantaged and underachieving pupils.
Not all researchers and teachers agree, of course, but teachers in Fredericksburg were near-united this past summer in their support for the policy.
By the first day of school, the district had purchased Yondr pouches for every middle and high school student. The pouches have room for cell phones and other blue-tooth enabled devices and are locked at the beginning of the day. Students can only unlock their Yondr pouches at the end of the day.
As reported in early August, the early indications were that the effort was being accepted and embraced by students.
At the December 3 Fredericksburg School Board meeting, the district presented a roughly 8-minute video that outlined what led to the ban, and the results of it thus far.
“Today’s generation,” said assistant superintendent Matt Ebehardt, “has developed a relationship with their phone and not with other people.”
The video reports a number of improvements that the district attributes directly to putting the phones away.
James Monroe High School assistant principal Nick Brousse says there’s been “a decrease in bullying.”
“You can see the kids interacting more,” said Walker-Grant Middle School assistant principal Keish Frye. “The teachers have even shared how they’ve been able to interact more with the kids.” She also noted that “I’ve seen improvements in academics — that’s what I want.”
Superintendent Marci Catlett talked of the culture change at the middle and high schools.
“We did lunch at James Monroe,” she said, “and it was the beautiful noise of a cafeteria that we hadn’t heard in many years” as the students were “talking, laughing and interacting.”
“There’s not a doubt in my mind,” Eberhardt said, “that at the end of this year we’re going to see increased academic achievement with students.”
A Critical First Step
Though the schools in the Fredericksburg district have seen some very modest academic gains in recent years, the school system is far from where Catlett, Eberhardt, and the faculties want the students to be.
As a teacher in that system, I know first-hand that the challenges before the school system are multi-layered and complex.
However, as a teacher, I’ve also seen first-hand the impact these Yondr pouches have had on student behavior in the course of the day. And the difference this year is fully 180 degrees apart from last year.
As the district learned last year, placing the onus on teachers to police student cell-phone usage was not working. Yondr pouches have taken that task off of teachers’ plates and allowed them to focus on other challenges that are well-known in the district.
While the removal of the phones themselves will not fix the academic challenges the district faces, it does remove a major barrier to students’ attention. Students can’t learn when teachers much compete with screens for attention.
Whether the district realizes academic gains this year remains to be seen. Another new program — the Curriculum Instructional Program — has also been adopted this year that marks a significant change in the way that teachers set pacing guides, select classroom materials, and focus their attention.
There are over 70 districts in the CIP consortium, and they include some of the best-performing districts in the state on SOL scores. Not all districts are equally successful, of course, but Fredericksburg has adopted this program in hopes of making substantial academic gains.
Any culture and academic change, of course, requires time to work.
While gains are a reasonable expectation this year, how much and how broad is tough to anticipate. In Colonial Beach, where now-Spotsylvania County Schools superintendent Clint Mitchell previously served, it took two to three years for the schools in his area to realize significant gains.
How quickly the Fredericksburg School district adapts to the CIP approach will have a great deal of impact on what type of improvement the district sees on SOL results.
But five full months into the school year, it’s not too early to say that the cell phone ban in the school system has been a success.
The city schools needed a win. The cell-phone ban has delivered one.
Now the challenge becomes to identify, and address, the next major challenge that will build on the success the Yondr pouches have delivered
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