Cellphone ban helps Dallas school improve discipline

A low roar poured out the cafeteria at Robert T. Hill Middle School one morning last month as dozens of seventh graders chatted over lunch.

The noise was deafening, and Principal Candice Ruiz couldn’t have been happier.

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A few years ago, lunchtime would have been starkly different, Ruiz said. The cafeteria, she said, would have been silent. Instead of talking and giggling with their friends, students would have been buried in their phones.

Last year, state lawmakers passed a bill prohibiting students from using cellphones and other devices such as smartwatches during school days. The ban took effect at the beginning of the current school year, so it’s too early to gauge broad impact on factors such as school climate and student behavior.

However, a few Dallas ISD campuses, including Robert T. Hill, adopted cellphone bans well before the state law went into effect. Those campuses offer a glimpse of the impact — improved discipline and a healthier campus culture — other schools might expect to see in a few years, when their policies have had a chance to shape campus life.

Research into similar policies enacted elsewhere suggests school cellphone bans can be beneficial for students, but they aren’t the panacea many district leaders hope for.

About five years ago, Ruiz was growing concerned about behavior issues at Robert T. Hill, such as cyberbullying. Campus leaders convened a series of meetings to talk with parents and teachers about possible solutions. A participant mentioned a concert they’d attended where audience members were asked to lock their cellphones in special pouches to help minimize distractions during the show. 

School leaders decided to try something similar at Robert T. Hill. Each morning, students are required to lock their phones in Yondr pouches, which are magnetically sealed and can only be opened using special devices placed at the school’s exits. Students are allowed to keep their phones with them as long as they remain sealed inside the pouches.

It was still a new idea at the time, and Ruiz said it made some families nervous. Parents were anxious about not being able to reach their kids in an emergency, she said.

Ruiz explained to parents that the cellphone policy would be best for the kids. School leaders were focusing on relationship building, she said, and cellphones were getting in the way. Before she could implement the policy, the pandemic forced the district to close school buildings and shift instruction online.

When schools reopened for hybrid learning, students seemed surprised that Robert T. Hill went ahead with the policy even though the campus was only about half-full, Ruiz said. At first, enforcement of the policy was strict; if a student was caught using a cellphone during the day, the consequences were immediate. Teachers confiscated cellphones from students, and parents had to come pick them up. It took some time for students to adjust, she said, but once they did, the new rules were simply the norm.

School leaders also introduced electronic hall passes so teachers and administrators could better track how many students were out of class at once and added daily advisory periods where teachers could talk with students about how they’re expected to interact with their peers. They also introduced a house system, dividing the school into smaller communities, or “houses,” as a way of helping students feel more connected.

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It took time, but eventually, Ruiz began to see the effects of the changes. Altercations and disciplinary issues declined. During the 2021-22 school year, there were 429 disciplinary offenses at Robert T. Hill, according to district data. Last year, that number was 162. Although school leaders didn’t implement the policy for academic reasons, the campus has seen improvement in its state ratings, as well, climbing from a C in 2021-22 to a B last year. Ruiz is aiming for an A on this year’s ratings.

New research suggests school cellphone restrictions can lead to improved student well-being after they’ve been in place for a few years, but their effects on other metrics such as academics and attendance are minimal. 

Last month, a team of researchers from four U.S. universities published the first nationwide study on the impact of school cellphone bans. The study includes more than 43,000 schools nationwide that require students to stow their phones in Yondr pouches during the school day.

Researchers found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the bans led to reduced cellphone use at school. Other impacts were harder to pin down. In the initial years of those policies, researchers found no substantial change in student test scores, attendance or how much attention students paid in class.

The impact of cellphone bans on student discipline was more pronounced. In the first year after policies went into effect, suspensions rose by about 16%, researchers found. 

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There are a few possible explanations for that trend, said Stanford University professor Thomas Dee, one of the researchers behind the study. It’s possible that enforcement of the policies is leading to disciplinary issues, he said — when students have their cellphones out at school, they get punished, and those punishments may be driving discipline data. Another possibility is that the phone bans change student behavior for the worse, at least initially, he said.

“Students who may have been docile because they could sit there and scroll on their phones may be more prone to act out in the presence of a binding ban,” he said.

Whatever the reason for the increased disciplinary issues, those problems seemed to dissipate within a couple of years. By the third year of the ban, schools disciplinary issues had returned to their pre-ban baselines. Dee said it’s possible students are less likely to run afoul of the new rules once they understand them. It’s also possible that, as students grow more accustomed to a phone-free classroom environment, teachers are better able to establish a classroom order that keeps them from acting out, he said.

The policies’ impact on students’ self-reported well-being mirrored the effects on discipline. In the first year after the bans were enacted, student well-being declined. It rebounded after those policies had been in effect for some time. By the third year, student well-being was higher than it was before cellphone bans were rolled out.

The results of the nationwide study mirror previous findings in smaller-scale research. In a study released last year, researchers from the University of Rochester and the RAND Corporation found in-school suspensions in an unidentified Florida district rose during the first year of a statewide cellphone ban. By the second year, that uptick had largely dissipated, and the district saw small but meaningful improvements in test scores and attendance.

In a separate study released in 2024, researchers at Germany’s University of Augsburg found cellphone restrictions had limited academic impact, but led to improvements in students’ social and emotional well-being.

Jacqueline Nesi, a professor at Brown University, said there’s ample research to indicate cellphones can be a major distraction in a classroom.

“I don’t know if we need research to tell us that,” she said, “but we have it.” 

Most school cellphone bans in the United States are too new for researchers to see what kinds of long-term effects they’ll have, said Nesi, who wasn’t involved in the nationwide study, the Florida or the Augsburg study. But research on similar policies elsewhere generally indicates that when cellphones are taken out of the classroom, student engagement increases, she said.

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Robert T. Hill in Dallas has seen some of those less quantifiable cultural changes, said English teacher Karen Madrid. Before the cellphone ban, students would spend any spare minutes they had staring at their phones. Now, if her class finishes its work before the bell, students spend time talking with their friends, or with Madrid.

“Now, they’ll come and talk to me, and we’ll have a little conversation,” she said. “And that, again, kind of solidifies those relationships that we’re really trying to foster.”

As U.S. states have rushed to implement school cellphone bans, many have done so without giving clear guidance to school districts about how they should be applied. Texas is among the states that passed laws requiring districts to adopt policies barring students from using cellphones from the beginning of the school day to the final bell but left it to districts to work out the details. 

That means policies can look different from one district to the next. For example, several campuses in Richardson ISD require students to put their phones in Yondr pouches at the beginning of the school day. In neighboring Garland ISD, students are required to leave their phones at home or keep them turned off and in a backpack.

As districts and states move forward with cellphone policies, leaders need to keep in mind the legitimate purposes cellphones have served for students in the past, said Nesi, the Brown University professor. Students need to communicate after-school plans with their parents or caregivers, she said. Some students have jobs or share some of the responsibilities of caring for younger siblings. School leaders need to give students a way of coordinating schedules, even if it isn’t by using a cellphone during the day, she said.

Ruiz, the principal at Robert T. Hill, said school leaders made it clear to parents that they can call the office if they need to get a message to their kids. Likewise, students who need to reach their parents can go to the office and ask to make a phone call, she said. Students also still have their school-issued Chromebooks, so parents have the option of sending an email or online message.

After Robert T. Hill’s cellphone ban had been in place for some time, Ruiz said she began to see student behavior change in ways that didn’t show up in data. Students were more caring, she said. The first time she saw a student turn in a cellphone that had been left in the cafeteria instead of keeping it, she knew something had changed in the school’s culture.

As the school’s culture continued to shift, teachers and administrators wanted to give students more ways to interact with each other while doing something productive. Ruiz found funding to buy craft equipment such as a kid-safe cardboard cutter, a 3D printer and a collection of hot glue guns and set up a makerspace where students could work on projects on Fridays.

The room had been a computer lab, and about 20 computers are still there, but they see only sporadic use during the makerspace period. Looking around the room last month, Ruiz said it was gratifying to see the students working together on projects instead of spending their lunch period scrolling through social media.

“It’s cool to see kids being kids,” she said.

On one side of the room, Marilyn Coria and Kaniah Braggs, both seventh graders, dug through supply cabinets looking for inspiration for a craft project. The students had just finished reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and their project assignment was to make a magical piece of equipment. Marilyn and Kaniah were working on a pair of magical glasses that would warn the wearer if they were in danger.

After running through their options with their teacher, Marilyn and Kaniah had a project prototype they were happy with. They’d shaped their glasses out of pipe cleaners, and now they were looking for more craft supplies to decorate them. 

Although she was enjoying working with her friend, Marilyn wasn’t sure how she felt about the makerspace. When Ruiz asked if she was having fun, Marilyn wobbled her hand back and forth in a “so-so” gesture. But she acknowledged that working on craft projects is a good way for her to take her mind off her schoolwork.

Marilyn was much more sure of something else: There would be nowhere near as many students working together on craft projects, she said, if they were allowed to use their phones.

The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.

The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, Judy and Jim Gibbs, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Ron Steinhart, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks, and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.