Phone Ban Suspensions: The Discipline Side of School Phone Bans

School phone bans do what they promise on phone use. They also come with a cost that gets less attention: phone ban suspensions. In the largest national study, covering about 4,600 schools, suspension rates rose about 16% in the first year after lockable pouches arrived. In a large Florida district, the overall suspension rate jumped 25% in year one, and in-school suspensions for Black students at high-use schools rose 30% while rates for white and Hispanic students stayed steady. Both spikes faded by year two or three. That pattern is why Illinois, when it signed a statewide bell-to-bell ban in July 2026, wrote into the law that schools can’t enforce it with suspensions, fines or police. For parents, the takeaway isn’t that bans are bad. It’s that how a school enforces its ban may matter as much to your kid as the ban itself. Here’s what the data show and the questions worth asking your school.

Key Takeaways

• A 2026 NBER study of about 4,600 schools found phone pouches cut in-class personal phone use from 61% to 13% of students, but suspensions rose about 16% in the first year before fading.
• In one large Florida district, suspensions rose 25% in the ban’s first year, with the biggest effects on Black students; rates returned to pre-ban levels in year two.
• Test-score effects were near zero nationally in the first three years; the Florida district saw gains of about 3.5 percentiles by year two.
• Illinois’s SB 2427, signed July 28, 2026, requires bell-to-bell bans from 2027–28 but bars enforcement through fines, suspensions, school resource officers or police.
• Parents can ask a concrete question: what happens, step by step, when a student is caught with a phone?

Phone Ban Suspensions: What the Data Show

The national study: pouches, GPS pings and discipline records

“The Effects of School Phone Bans: National Evidence from Lockable Pouches” is an NBER working paper by Hunt Allcott, E. Jason Baron, Thomas Dee, Angela Duckworth, Matthew Gentzkow and Brian Jacob, released in 2026. A working paper hasn’t been through formal journal peer review, though this one was pre-registered. It combined a large teacher survey, GPS pings, test scores and school records with sales data from Yondr, the largest pouch provider, which also gave the researchers access to its administrative data.

As NBC News reported, the share of students using phones in class for personal reasons fell from 61% to 13% in bell-to-bell schools, and device pings during school hours dropped about 30% by year three. Then the discipline finding: “In the first year of adoption, schools that banned phones saw about a 16% increase in suspension rates — both in- and out-of-school — but this effect faded in subsequent years.” The researchers suggested the uptick reflected schools taking enforcement seriously, and students turning to other disruptive behavior.

Student well-being followed the same arc: down in year one, back up and positive by year two or three. Average test-score effects were “consistently close to zero.” Dee called the results “sobering,” while noting that indicators like well-being and suspensions improve as bans stay in place.

The Florida district: who got suspended

David Figlio and Umut Özek studied one large urban Florida district after the state’s 2023 classroom ban, publishing an update in Education Next in 2026. Daily phone “visits” during school hours fell by more than 80%, from 46 per 100 students to 10.

The discipline numbers were sharper. Once the ban was enforced, “the overall suspension rate jumps by 25 percent, with the biggest impacts on Black students.” At schools with high pre-ban phone use, in-school suspensions for Black students rose 30%, “while rates for white and Hispanic students remain steady.” In year two, discipline returned to pre-ban levels and test scores rose about 3.5 percentiles. Unexcused absences fell in both years.

Figlio, speaking to The 74, said phone-related suspensions were “disproportionately borne by male students and especially by Black students.” He laid out two explanations: students may have broken the rules more often, or the rules “were being more heavily enforced” for them. “Whenever I see any evidence of disproportionality in terms of any policy, that’s always a cause for concern for me,” he said, calling it “the dark lining in what I think is a silver cloud.”

Why Enforcement Can Backfire

The studies document that suspensions rose. They don’t trace each incident. But the mechanics of enforcement suggest how a phone rule becomes a suspension.

The phone is the trigger, not the offense. A student is asked to hand over a phone, refuses, and the incident becomes defiance or disrespect. Many discipline codes escalate on refusal, not on the phone.

Discretion invites unevenness. A teacher who lets one student’s glance at a phone slide and confronts another’s is making a judgment call. Across thousands of calls, small differences add up, which is one plausible reading of the Florida disparity.

Year one is the adjustment period. New rules mean new confrontations. In both studies the spike faded as students and staff adjusted, which suggests the rule’s novelty, not just its existence, drives the early discipline.

Suspensions cost learning. A day out of school is a day of instruction missed, and research links suspensions to worse long-term outcomes. We summarize that evidence in our article on school suspension research and long-term outcomes. A ban meant to protect learning can work against it if enforcement removes kids from class.

How Illinois Wrote Discipline Out of Its Ban

Illinois took the evidence on board. When Gov. JB Pritzker signed SB 2427 on July 28, 2026, the governor’s office noted that “many schools saw a temporary increase in suspensions, particularly among Black students,” and stated that school policies “are not to be enforced with fines, suspensions, or by school resource officers and law enforcement deployment.” WBEZ reported that the no-suspension language was added after members of the Legislative Black Caucus and Stand for Children raised concerns about disproportionate discipline. The version WBEZ described in June also ruled out expulsions.

	National pouch study (NBER)	Florida district (Figlio & Özek)	Illinois SB 2427
What it is	Research, ~4,600 schools	Research, one large district	State law, from 2027–28
Phone use	In-class personal use 61% → 13%	Daily visits down 80%+	Bell-to-bell, K–12 (high schools may allow lunch and passing periods)
First-year suspensions	Up about 16%	Up 25%; biggest for Black students	Suspensions not allowed as enforcement
Later years	Faded	Back to pre-ban in year two	n/a
Test scores	Near zero on average	Up ~3.5 percentiles by year two	n/a
Who enforces	Varies by school	Varies by school	No fines, no SROs or police

The Illinois law has required exceptions: medical need, IEPs and 504 plans, English learners who need devices for translation, and students who are caregivers for a family member. Districts can also allow emergency use and teacher-authorized educational use. The Illinois State Board of Education was set to share a template policy on September 1, 2026, with districts implementing at the start of 2027–28.

Questions to Ask Your Child’s School

These are US-specific; rules differ by state and district.

”What happens, step by step, when a student is caught?”

Ask for the actual ladder: warning, phone held until end of class or day, parent pickup, then what? A clear, predictable ladder that stops short of suspension for phone-only violations is the design the evidence favors.

”Is refusing to hand over a phone treated as a separate offense?”

This is where many phone incidents become suspensions. If refusal leads straight to removal from class, ask whether there’s a de-escalation step first.

”Do you track phone-related discipline by student group?”

Schools collect discipline data. Asking whether they look at phone-related incidents by race, gender and disability is a reasonable, non-accusatory way to check for the disparity Florida found.

”What are the exceptions, and how does my child use them?”

If your child has a medical need, an IEP or 504 plan, or caregiving responsibilities, make sure the exception is on file before the year starts so a legitimate use doesn’t become a discipline incident.

What not to do

Don’t tell your child to keep the phone hidden “just in case.” That’s the scenario most likely to end in a confrontation. If they need to reach you, agree on the school-approved way, such as the office, and stick to it.

What to Watch For Over the Next 3 Months

• Week 4: Does your child know exactly where the phone goes during the day and what happens if they forget? Have you read the written policy?
• Month 2 red flags: Repeated phone-related warnings, a referral or detention tied to a phone, or your child describing staff confrontations over phones as common.
• Month 3 self-check: If your school is in its first year of a ban, ask at a parent meeting how discipline numbers compare with last year. The research says year one is when problems spike.

For the broader research on whether bans work, see our school phone ban research overview, and for what teens think of the rules, do teens support phone restrictions at school?

Frequently Asked Questions

Do school phone bans increase suspensions?

In the first year, the best evidence says yes. A national study of about 4,600 schools found suspension rates rose about 16% in year one after pouch adoption, and a Florida district saw a 25% jump. In both, the increase faded within one to three years.

Why were Black students suspended more under Florida’s phone ban?

The Florida study found in-school suspensions for Black students rose 30% at high-use schools while rates for white and Hispanic students stayed steady. The researchers couldn’t separate two explanations: different rates of rule-breaking or heavier enforcement. Lead author David Figlio called the disparity a cause for concern.

What does the Illinois phone ban say about discipline?

Illinois’s SB 2427, signed July 28, 2026, requires bell-to-bell restrictions starting in 2027–28 and says policies may not be enforced with fines, suspensions, or school resource officers and police. It also requires exceptions for medical needs, IEPs and 504 plans, English learners and student caregivers.

Do phone bans improve grades?

Not quickly, on average. The national NBER study found test-score effects close to zero across three years, with small gains in high school math. The Florida district saw scores rise about 3.5 percentiles by year two, partly linked to fewer unexcused absences.

What should I do if my child is disciplined over a phone?

Ask the school for the written policy and the specific incident report, and whether the issue was the phone or a refusal that followed. Request a conversation about de-escalation for next time. If your child has an exception on file, confirm staff knew about it.

---

About the author

Ricky Flores is the founder of HiWave Makers and an electrical engineer with 15+ years of experience building consumer technology at Apple, Samsung, and Texas Instruments. He writes about how kids learn to build, think, and create in a tech-saturated world. Read more at hiwavemakers.com.

---

Sources

1. Allcott, H., Baron, E. J., Dee, T., Duckworth, A. L., Gentzkow, M., & Jacob, B. (2026). “The Effects of School Phone Bans: National Evidence from Lockable Pouches.” NBER Working Paper 35132. https://www.nber.org/papers/w35132
2. The Associated Press. (2026, May 5). “Largest-ever study of school cellphone bans finds mixed results.” NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/largest-ever-study-school-cell-phone-bans-finds-mixed-results-rcna343761
3. Figlio, D., & Özek, U. (2026). “Can Banning Cellphones Save Student Learning? Evidence from Florida, Home of the First Statewide Mandate.” Education Next, 26(2). https://www.educationnext.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/ednext_26_2_research_figlio_ozek.pdf
4. The 74. (2026, May). “Florida Study: Cellphone Bans Promote Academic Gains … After a Year or So.” https://www.the74million.org/article/florida-study-cellphone-bans-promote-academic-gains-after-a-year-or-so/
5. Office of the Governor of Illinois. (2026, July 28). “Gov. Pritzker Signs School Cell Phone Ban into Law.” https://gov-pritzker-newsroom.prezly.com/gov-pritzker-signs-school-cell-phone-ban-into-law
6. WBEZ. (2026, June 2). “What you need to know about Illinois’ new cellphone ban in schools.” https://www.wbez.org/education/2026/06/02/what-you-need-to-know-about-illinois-new-cellphone-ban-in-schools