Two years after the imposition of a student cell phone ban, student test scores in a large urban school district were significantly higher than before, David N. Figlio and Umut Özek find in The Impact of Cell Phone Bans in Schools on Student Outcomes: Evidence from Florida (NBER Working Paper 34388). The study examines data from one of the 10 largest school districts in the United States, a large urban county-level school district in Florida. While Florida's statewide law banned cell phone use during instructional time, this district implemented a stricter policy requiring students to keep phones silenced and stored in backpacks during the entire school day, including lunch and transitions between classes.
An all-day cell phone ban within a Florida school district improved test scores, particularly for male students and in middle and high schools.
The researchers combined two datasets to conduct this analysis. First, they accessed student administrative data for the year prior to the ban (AY 2022–23) and two years following the ban (AY 2023–24 and AY 2024–25). These data are reported to the district three times annually and include information on student demographics, attendance, disciplinary actions, and standardized test scores. Second, they examined building-level smartphone activity data from Advan for district schools. This data traced the average number of unique smartphone pings between 9 am and 1 pm on school days. To isolate the effects of student usage, the team compared normal school days to professional-only working days. They then compared the last two months of AY 2022–23 (pre-ban) to the first two months of AY 2023–24 and AY 2024–25 (post-ban) and found an average drop in usage of approximately two-thirds. The relative level of usage reduction was used to sort the district’s schools into high-effect (top tercile of pre-ban usage) and low-effect (bottom tercile of pre-ban usage) pools.
During the first month of the ban (September 2023), student suspensions rose 25 percent relative to the same month of the prior school year. Elevated disciplinary rates persisted for the full school year. The effects were particularly stark among Black male students, whose in-school suspension rates increased 30 percent at the highly affected schools. Even among the most affected schools and population groups, however, disciplinary action rates fell to near pre-ban levels by the start of the following school year. The researchers posited that this represented a period of adjustment to the new policy rather than an indication of a long-term negative effect of the ban’s implementation.
There were no statistically significant changes in test scores during the first year of the ban, when disciplinary rates were high. During the second year of the ban, in contrast, test scores increased significantly, with positive effects concentrated during the spring semester (scores increased 1.1 percentiles, on average). The researchers suggest that this may be due to the higher stakes of spring tests, which can affect grade advancement and high school graduation. Test score improvements were also concentrated among male students (up 1.4 percentiles, on average) and among middle and high school students (up 1.3 percentiles, on average).
When comparing high-effect and low-effect schools, the researchers note significant reductions in unexcused absences during the two years following the cell phone ban. They posit that increased attendance could explain as much as half of the test score improvements noted in their primary analysis.
- Emma Salomon
The researchers thank the Smith Richardson Foundation for generous research funding.