Bentonville West High School last school year hung pouches in classrooms where students stored their phones during class periods. Principal Dr. Jonathan Guthrie, left, said that compared to the previous year, there was a 57% decrease in verbal or physical aggression offenses and a 51% reduction in drug-related offenses. Eighty-six percent of teachers like English teacher Amy Groves, right, said they saw a positive effect in student engagement.
By Steve Brawner, © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
Ninth graders walking into English teacher Amy Groves’ classroom at Bentonville West High School slip their cell phones into pouches hanging on the wall, where they remain throughout the 90-minute class period.
The school instituted the practice last year for a simple reason: Students weren’t paying enough attention in class.
The results? In a survey, 86% of teachers believed the practice had a positive effect on student engagement, while 77% believed it had a positive effect on classroom behavior and 75% said it increased classroom interaction and socialization. Compared to 2022-23, verbal or physical aggression offenses fell 57%. Personal electronic device offenses, where students were using a phone when not allowed, fell 94%. Drug-related offenses such as the use of THC vapes fell 51%. The principal, Dr. Jonathon Guthrie, suspects it became harder for students to plan meetups.
Groves said the practice has “improved my students’ focus immensely.”
“What that provides is the opportunity for students to actually talk to each other in person and listen to the teacher and look at the teacher when they’re talking,” she said. “I very rarely have any issues with them following the phone policy. And because they’re paying attention, their communicating is better, their grades are better, their understanding is better, so overall it has created a more peaceful environment for us here.”
What Bentonville started last year is now happening on a statewide level. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has created an $8 million pilot project where schools can apply for grants to pay for magnetically locked Yondr cell phone pouches and mental health services for students. According to the Department of Education, 112 districts planned to participate this year.
Sanders started the program after reading “The Anxious Generation,” the best-selling book by Jonathan Haidt. He recommends four steps: no smartphones before high school; no social media before age 16; phone-free schools; and more outdoor play and childhood independence. Sanders sent copies to every governor and every Arkansas state legislator.
It’s Sanders’ second major initiative related to young people’s online activities. In 2023, she and state lawmakers passed the Social Media Safety Act. It requires minors to obtain parental consent before creating new social media accounts. Social media companies have challenged the law in court.
Meanwhile, Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, and Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, introduced a bill requiring the U.S. Department of Education to study the use of mobile devices and establish a pilot project awarding grants for schools to create phone-free environments.
Such policies would seem to have a lot of public support. Almost 65% of Arkansas parents favored restricting student school cell phone use in a poll commissioned earlier this year by the national school reform group ExcelinEd,
This year, Bentonville High and all middle and junior high schools are participating in the governor’s pilot project. Like Bentonville West High, Bentonville High students will store their phones during class periods. Students in grades 5-8 will store them in Yondr pouches in their backpacks starting at the beginning of the day and won’t have access to them. Elementary students will not be allowed to have cell phones.
Jones
Dr. Debbie Jones, Bentonville’s superintendent, is hearing that lunchrooms and hallways are louder. She called it “good noise.” Bentonville High’s band instructor emailed her saying the policy was the best thing the school had ever done for its culture. A Fulbright Junior High School teacher said she no longer saw students huddled with their phones. A high school teacher said students are playing chess.
Jones said the district had already been considering how to limit students’ screen time prior to starting this initiative. Like many others, it has provided digital devices to all of its students, but lately it’s been limiting their use. It’s even returned to small paper textbooks for English language arts and math, and students are taking home workbook pages so their parents can see what they are studying.
Groves, the ninth grade English teacher, said cell phones have changed modern life, but not human nature. Educators simply must respond to new realities.
“Kids are kids, and they have been the same from when I started to now,” she said. “We as educators and as the adults in their lives have to respond differently to what is happening in their lives. If there’s a new technology in their life that is consuming, we have to respond to that. But nothing has changed. I mean, a hundred years ago it would have been something different, and now it’s just phones.”
Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist published in 17 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com.