AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
For over a decade, student test scores in the U.S. have been on the decline, and education researchers are in a desperate scramble to figure out why. One possible answer - the rise of smartphones and the amount of time kids spend staring at them. NPR's Sequoia Carrillo has more.
SEQUOIA CARRILLO, BYLINE: Martin West is a professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, and he looks at a lot of data. He likes to keep an eye on how things are going for America's students. And a few years ago, he started to notice something. Test scores were falling off.
MARTIN WEST: Actually, if you look at the data over the long term, it's very clear that the declines started prior to the pandemic.
CARRILLO: There are several policy factors in the U.S. to consider, like a major change away from test-based accountability. But in looking at other countries, West saw a similar pattern of decline, even in places with wildly different testing strategies.
WEST: What is an explanation that can check all of those boxes?
CARRILLO: One possibility West and others are exploring revolves around a cultural factor.
DAVID FIGLIO: I'm 55 years old, and when my phone buzzes in my pocket, I have to resist the temptation to look at that text, right? Now imagine you're a 14-year-old.
CARRILLO: David Figlio, a professor of economics at the University of Rochester, says this may be one of the culprits.
FIGLIO: If we have these extremely addictive devices on our person 24 hours a day or near us 24 hours a day, it stands to reason that this has to be one of the contributing factors.
CARRILLO: Banning cell phones in schools has become a popular and bipartisan approach. At least 32 states now have some kind of restriction. Figlio and other researchers are scrambling to keep up. He's gathered data from a Florida district over the last two years. He says it's still too early to draw conclusions, but similar projects are underway around the country.
KATHY DO: It's important for us to slow down, look at what the research is really saying about the impacts of cell phones on learning and well-being.
CARRILLO: That's Kathy Do, a researcher at UCLA's School of Education. She recently released one of the first national surveys on the impact of cell phone bans.
DO: Oftentimes, these policy decisions are ahead of the science on this issue, especially looking at the - you know, the impact of cell phone bans in schools, like the actual policies themselves.
CARRILLO: Her survey focused on the need for building healthy digital habits and how cell phones are a distraction when not used intentionally for instruction. But in some classrooms, phones can be a learning tool.
DO: It's more nuanced. It's not all bad.
CARRILLO: She says schools shouldn't be afraid to reimagine or change their policies as more research comes out. All three researchers agree there's no one-size-fits-all approach to cell phones. And as much as legislators may want this to be a quick fix, the researchers say it's still too early to tell.
Sequoia Carrillo, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
