Governor's Cell Phone Ban is Worth Gamble to Improve Student Outcomes

For years, Oregon has struggled to do its best in the arena of K-12 education. Graduation rates have crept up over the past several years in districts including Bend-La Pine Schools, but overall, the state continues to lag behind nearly every other state for on-time graduation rates. Many educators and parents can offer reasons for this — some of them centering around budgets and class sizes — but when it comes to student success, let’s not forget the low-hanging fruit.

For example: Gov. Tina Kotek’s latest executive order, which puts a ban on cell phones into place during the school day at all Oregon public schools — including charter schools. Budget-wise, districts may have to incur some costs, in the way of pouches or other storage devices for all those phones, and to shift staff time around to manage the issue, but those seem like fairly negligible costs when considering the potential benefits.

This month’s executive order cites a need for a distraction-free environment for students, and the mental health impacts of social media and increased personal electronic device usage as reasons for the move. With students continuing to lag behind in our state, it seems fair to employ this strategy as part of an overall effort to help students focus in school, and get back up to par. District leaders around the state already see the value in trying this approach, given that a number of districts — including those in Central Oregon — already had some cell-phone restrictions in place before this executive order.

Educators we talked to say that while it has been nice for local districts to have policies in place, those were not necessarily enforced in a uniform fashion across various classrooms. One teacher might be strict, another lax. With a statewide ban, the hope is that it creates that feeling of uniformity across the state — while also allowing each district to design policies that work for their students. The governor’s order directs all districts to develop their own policies by October, and to put them in place by the start of 2026.

As you might imagine, student reaction has been mixed. Some say they welcome a distraction-free classroom environment. Others say their phones are their social lifeline, helping them manage the ups and downs of a teenage social life. Among families, the biggest worry cited in a Pew Research study about cell phone bans is that they won’t be able to reach students during the school day. Both of these reasons seem to us to be rooted in just how deeply society’s obsession and addiction for mobile devices has gone. Students can connect with fellow students in real time during the school day. Families can always reach students through the school’s communication channels. Those drawbacks don’t seem to outweigh the benefits.

Executive orders are one way to see a state take action on a pressing issue, but they can come and go. Considering that a similar Senate bill got mired in endless debate and never made it out of committee this session, an executive order became a potent tool for making sure another school year didn’t pass by without trying something to tamp down on the use of cell phones and other devices during the school day, and boost retention. Yet perhaps, as the next school year unfolds, lawmakers who may have been on the fence during the last session will begin to see the benefits proving out and will once again take up this issue in a more-binding state law, rather than a governor’s order.

This article appears in Source Weekly July 17, 2025.