Parents and teachers at Richardson Independent School District (RISD) think the district’s “no-phones” experiment at one of its schools is proving to be a success.
RISD partnered with Yondr, a company that offers products and services to maintain phone-free environments, and implemented a no-phone pilot program at Forest Meadow Junior High at the beginning of the 2022-2023 academic year.
Since August, students at the school have had to lock up their smartphones, earbuds, and smartwatches inside magnetically-sealed Yondr pouches that students can only open at unlocking stations during approved times.
With the end of the first semester approaching, the district surveyed parents, students, and teachers about how they felt the new phone-free environment was working.
“The student [survey] was less positive than teachers and parents,” quipped RISD Superintendent Tabitha Branum, speaking with Fox 4. “I know we are all shocked by this.”
Both parents and teachers reacted very positively to the pilot program, with the vast majority of respondents registering noticeable positive differences in students’ academic performance, sociability, and behavior.
“[It] wasn’t long ago we were having strong conversations about this Yondr pouch. Here we are tonight praising the results,” said RISD School Board President Regina Harris.
At a school board meeting earlier in the month, the district presented the survey results to the Board of Trustees and the public. Administrators claimed that with teachers not having to monitor or discipline students for using their phones during class time, they essentially reclaimed 10 minutes of instruction per class per day.
“If I have 10 more minutes of instruction in my U.S. History class, that gives 29 hours of additional instruction in a school year,” stated Branum.
A trustee at the meeting even pegged a dollar amount to that time.
“In a school year, we recaptured 168,000 hours of instructional time. If you had to hire more teachers to fill that time, it is $8.4 million,” said Trustee Eric Eager.
As previously reported in The Dallas Express, several other school districts around the state are adopting similar policies with Yondr’s help, including Thorndale ISD, Abilene ISD, and Klein ISD.
Given the pilot program’s apparently warm reception, RISD may consider adopting the policy at all its campuses. Still, it is unclear whether maintaining a phone-free environment will meaningfully improve the district’s academic performance, which was not too impressive, according to the Texas Education Agency’s latest accountability report.
The report found that only 50% of the district’s students performed at grade level on the STAAR test last year, and more than 7% of its graduating class of 2022 did not graduate on time.
Even so, RISD outperformed Dallas ISD by double digits in both metrics. Only 41% of Dallas ISD students performed at grade level on the exam, and nearly 20% of last year’s graduating class did not walk at graduation.
This is a great idea. Students will actually have to verbally using their mouth to talk to each other. With the added benefit of less distractions and more learning.