The same day, NPR Illinois was reporting that Illinois has passed a school cellphone ban this year, and that schools and parents are now looking hard at the laptops, too.

Here’s the thing. Our policies are getting simpler at the exact moment the research is getting more complicated. We’re counting minutes. The researchers are telling us minutes aren’t the whole story.

What the twin study found about screen time and mental health

The study is titled “Recreational screen use and internalizing problems from preadolescence to young adulthood in a longitudinal twin cohort with co-twin comparison.” It was published online in Nature Human Behaviour on October 8, 2026, led by Tong Gong and Yi Lu of Karolinska Institutet with a team of co-authors.

The researchers used the Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden. They had screen-use and symptom data at ages 9, 15, 18 and 24, and they linked it to Swedish national health records to see who was later diagnosed with depression or anxiety or prescribed an antidepressant.

Why twins? Because twins share a home, a family and, in the case of identical twins, their genes. If one twin used screens heavily and the other didn’t, and the heavy user still did worse, that points more toward the screens. If the difference mostly goes away inside the family, that points toward something the family shares.

Here is what they found, according to Karolinska Institutet’s announcement of the study:

• Fifteen-year-olds who spent more than six hours a day on interactive screens had more depression and anxiety symptoms and were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed later, compared with peers who used screens two hours or less.
• The clearest links were with interactive activities like gaming, chatting and browsing. Passive activities like watching TV or videos showed weaker or no links.
• When twins were compared within the same family, most of those links got weaker, especially among identical twins.

Gong put it plainly: “The correlations did not disappear entirely, but they did become significantly weaker.” He added that “the association may in some cases have been overestimated.” In the paper, the authors wrote that the “co-twin estimates provided limited evidence for clear causal effects.”

And co-author Emma Frans said the line I’d like every school board to read: “Future recommendations should not focus solely on how much time children and young people spend in front of screens.”

Let’s be fair about what this study doesn’t say

I’ll admit this is where it would be easy to overreach. So let’s not.

This study does not say screens are harmless. The researchers are clear that interactive use in adolescence was still linked to later mental health problems, just with more uncertainty once family factors were included. The authors note that most of the within-twin estimates stayed above zero, which could mean there is some real effect left, and they call for the work to be repeated in other twin samples. The associations were also stronger among girls and concentrated in the heaviest users.

There are honest limits, too. The data were self-reported. They didn’t capture what young people were actually doing online or why. And the data were collected before smartphones and social media were as central to teenage life as they are now. If you’re a parent who believes today’s phones are different from the screens of 2010, this study doesn’t prove you wrong.

So the fair reading is not “screens are fine.” It’s this: the simple story, more minutes equals more harm, explains less than we thought, and the family and the kind of screen use explain more.

We’ve been measuring the wrong thing

None of this is new to anyone who has been in this conversation for a while. I wrote about it back in 2010 in Active vs Inactive Screen Time. Two kids can spend the same two hours on a screen. One is building, writing, coding, talking with a classmate about a project. The other is scrolling with no purpose. A minute counter treats those hours exactly the same.

Here’s what’s interesting. This study split screen use a different way, into passive and interactive, and found the interactive stuff carried the clearer link. That’s a good reminder that “interactive” isn’t automatically “active learning.” Gaming and chatting at midnight is interactive. So is designing a robot in a library with your teacher. Same category, very different experience. The study couldn’t tell those apart, and the researchers say their next step is to look at content, motivation, problematic use and what screen time replaces. That’s exactly the right question.

Which brings me back to policy. When a district writes a rule that caps daily minutes on a school device, what is it actually measuring? Time. Not purpose. Not quality. Not what the student was learning or making. And the research we got this week says time alone is a weak signal.

Who’s setting the habits? That’s the other half of this. If shared family factors explain a big part of the link, then the conversation about kids and screens has to include the adults. Genes, home routines, stress, sleep, how parents use their own devices…. the study can’t sort out which of those matters most, but it tells us the family is part of the picture. I wrote about this in Parenting In A Digital Age, and it’s still true: kids learn their digital habits by watching us.

This is why I keep saying our job is preparing students for their future, not our past. Their future is full of screens. Their jobs, their relationships and their civic life will all run through them. A rule that removes screens can buy some calm. It can’t teach a 15-year-old how to notice when six hours of gaming is crowding out sleep and friends. Only teaching does that.

I make this argument a lot with school leaders. In Human Still Required, I write about how the tools keep changing but the leadership work doesn’t: judgment, relationships and trust. “Different tools. Same leadership work.” A screen-time policy is a leadership decision. It deserves the same judgment we’d bring to any other decision about student well-being, not just a number someone can count.

What schools can do this week

• Ask what, not just how long. Before your next tech policy conversation, list how students actually use school devices in a typical week. Creating, practicing, researching, watching, scrolling. Then decide which of those you want more of and which you want less of.
• Look for heavy use, not average use. The clearest risks in this study showed up among the heaviest users. Counselors and advisors can ask students about late-night use, sleep and gaming in their regular check-ins, the same way they ask about attendance.
• Bring families into the conversation. Host a session that isn’t a lecture about kids’ phones. Talk about the whole household’s habits, including the adults’. The research says the family is part of this story.
• Teach the connect and disconnect skill. Build in lessons where students track their own use, reflect on how they feel, and set a goal. That is a skill they’ll use for the rest of their lives.
• Read the study before you cite it. If a board member, parent or vendor sends you a headline about screens, ask for the study, the sample and the limits. Model the critical thinking we want from students.

Frequently asked questions

Does screen time cause depression and anxiety in teens?

The research doesn’t give a clean answer. This new twin study found that heavy interactive screen use at 15 was linked to later depression and anxiety, but much of that link weakened when twins in the same family were compared. That suggests shared family and genetic factors explain a big part of it, though a smaller direct effect can’t be ruled out.

Is all screen time the same for kids?

No. In this study, interactive activities like gaming, chatting and browsing showed clearer links to later mental health problems than passive viewing like TV and videos. Neither category tells you whether a student was learning, creating or just killing time, which is why what kids do matters as much as how long.

Should schools set daily screen time limits?

Limits can help when they target clearly unhealthy use, but a minute cap alone measures time, not purpose. Schools will get more from deciding which kinds of device use support learning, teaching students to manage their own habits, and working with families on what happens at home.

I’m glad researchers are doing this careful work. I’m glad districts are taking student well-being seriously, too. I just want those two things to meet in the middle, with policies built on what students are doing and who’s around them, not a stopwatch.

If your school or district is working through screen time and AI policy right now, this is the work I do with leaders every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So I’ll ask: when your school talks about screen time, are you measuring minutes, or are you asking what students are actually doing?

Sources

• Recreational screen use and internalizing problems from preadolescence to young adulthood in a longitudinal twin cohort with co-twin comparison — Gong, Lu et al., Nature Human Behaviour, October 8, 2026
• Twin study sheds new light on screen time and mental health — Karolinska Institutet, October 8, 2026
• Statewide: Schools and screentime — Sean Crawford, NPR Illinois, October 8, 2026

The post Screens Aren’t the Whole Story. A Twin Study Just Showed Why. first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

What can picture books teach us about helping children feel heard—and learning to ask for help ourselves?

Author and illustrator Christy Mandin returns to explore Millie Fleur’s Pumpkin Problem and Millie Fleur’s Worst Day Ever. Through her imaginative characters, Christy opens up conversations about creativity, community, and respecting children’s emotional experiences.

Together, we consider why a child’s “worst day ever” deserves our attention, even when the problem seems small to an adult. Christy shares how life in her neurodivergent household shapes her approach to communication and why supporting someone involves both expressing our needs and noticing the needs of others.

We also go behind the scenes of her creative process—from gardening and escaping chickens to a beloved shed character—and hear her refreshingly honest three-day rule for processing feedback.

In this episode, we explore:

• Respecting children as whole people with experiences that matter.

• Asking for help and challenging the fear of burdening others.

• Using picture books to spark conversations and build community.

• Finding characters and creative inspiration in everyday life.

• Making space to process feedback before deciding what comes next.

For educators, librarians, parents, and anyone nurturing creativity, this conversation offers an invitation to notice more, listen closely, and make room for support.

Explore Christy’s books and work:
https://www.christymandin.com

Discover the Millie Fleur series:
https://www.scholastic.com/site/millie-fleur.html

Check out this episode of Shifting Our Schools

The post Googly Eyes, Big Feelings, and Asking for Help with Christy Mandin first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

Ninety-five percent believe in it. Twenty-eight percent often say it out loud to a student.

Here’s the thing. That gap isn’t really about counselors. It’s about what our whole system has been built to recommend for a very long time. And it’s fixable.

What’s happening

The report is The State of America’s Skilled Trades, released by the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades, a coalition led by Ford whose members include Google, Carhartt and Black & Decker. The research behind it was done by the Burning Glass Institute and Jobs for the Future. Patrick O’Donnell wrote it up for The 74 on October 8, and Marshall Benveniste summarized the findings for ConstructConnect News on October 6.

A few numbers from those two write-ups:

• The country needs about 1.7 million additional skilled trades workers each year, and formal training through schools or registered apprenticeships fills only 55% of that need (The 74).
• Only 11% of skilled trades workers are under 25, while 24% are 55 or older (The 74; ConstructConnect).
• Of every 100 people who start an apprenticeship, 48 complete it and 29 are working in a trade within five years. The report points to program quality, mentorship, supportive services and direct employer connections as things that improve persistence (ConstructConnect).
• An Ad Council Research Institute survey for Ford found 95% of school counselors see trade school as valuable, about half recommend it, and only 28% often recommend apprenticeships (The 74; ConstructConnect).
• A University of Chicago survey commissioned by Harbor Freight Tools for Schools found 81% of parents of high schoolers think more high school trades courses would better prepare students (The 74).

And yes, AI came up. Ford CEO Jim Farley argued that automation still needs people who can run, program and maintain the systems, and he put it this way:

Most of these jobs will be both using AI and also protected from it.

Jim Farley, Ford, via The 74, October 8, 2026

Stanley Black & Decker CEO Chris Nelson said a company survey found almost 90% of construction trades workers expect to use AI in their work.

The same week, Getting Smart ran a piece I keep coming back to. From Compliance to Contribution: What Happens When Students Do Work That Matters is written by Nikki Stancampiano of the PAST Foundation in Columbus, Ohio, and Reem Al-Adhami, a recent Hilliard Davidson High School graduate who went through the foundation’s eight-week Power Up Your Potential work-based learning program. Their argument: the biggest effect of real work wasn’t career exposure. It was identity, agency and belonging. Reem’s team built 3D-printed fidget toys for younger students with sensory needs, and it mattered because someone actually used them. Reem is now starting aerospace engineering at Ohio State.

Kids aren’t inherently lazy. They have passion. They have creativity.

Reem Al-Adhami, Getting Smart, October 6, 2026

High school career guidance only recommends what the system can see

Let me be fair before I push. This report comes from an industry coalition that needs workers, so of course it wants more students in the trades. That doesn’t make the numbers wrong, but it’s worth knowing who is asking. And there is a real, historical worry on the other side: for decades, “vocational” was where some students were sent rather than a path they chose. Nobody should want to go back to that.

I’m also not blaming counselors. If anything, I’d ask: how many students is each counselor responsible for in your building? How much of their day goes to schedules, testing and crisis support? What does your school actually measure and celebrate in May? College acceptances get the bulletin board. Does a signed apprenticeship agreement?

Here’s what I think the 95-to-28 gap is really telling us. Belief is not the same as a pathway. A counselor can believe in apprenticeships and still not recommend one if they don’t know a local employer who runs one, if the program doesn’t fit the bell schedule, or if nobody in the building has seen a student come out the other side. You recommend what you can see.

And students can only choose the paths someone puts in front of them.

This is why I keep coming back to the same idea I wrote about back in 2013 in Millennials and the Job Market: what a young person can show matters more than what a piece of paper says. An apprenticeship, an internship, a real project for a real client…. those are things a student can show. That was true then. It’s more true now that AI can write the paper resume for you.

This isn’t trades versus college

Notice what happened to Reem. Work-based learning didn’t push her away from college. It pointed her toward aerospace engineering. That’s the part the “college for all” versus “trades for some” argument misses. Real work for a real audience helps students figure out who they are, and then they choose. Some will choose an electrical apprenticeship. Some will choose a four-year degree. Some will do both.

I wrote in 2016 that school work needs to be meaningful. The Getting Smart piece is a good reminder of what that looks like from the student side: when the work matters to someone else, students stop doing school and start doing work.

It also lines up with something I argue in Human Still Required. AI didn’t break school — it exposed it. If AI is changing entry-level office work, and the trades leaders in this report are saying their jobs will use AI and still need skilled people, then our guidance systems can’t keep pointing students down one well-worn road and calling it preparation. Preparing students for their future, not our past, means putting every real option on the table and giving students the experiences to choose between them.

I wrote last week about why schools shouldn’t wait on AI and entry-level jobs. This report adds the other half: even where the jobs clearly exist, our pipelines and our conversations with students aren’t matching them up yet.

What schools can do this week

• Ask the 95/28 question in your own building. At your next counseling or leadership meeting, ask: how many students did we actively connect to an apprenticeship or paid work-based learning last year? Write the number down.
• Build a short list of local apprenticeship contacts. Not a brochure rack. Names. One employer, one union training center, one community college contact. Give counselors people to call.
• Celebrate every path the same way. If you hold a college signing day, add apprenticeships and work-based learning placements to it. What we celebrate is what we recommend.
• Give students one real problem this semester. Borrow the Getting Smart advice: a real problem, a real audience beyond the classroom, adults acting as advisors rather than only evaluators. You don’t need an eight-week program to start.
• Talk to parents early. Parents of high schoolers in the University of Chicago survey were open to more trades courses. Bring families into the career conversation in ninth grade, not senior spring.

Frequently asked questions

Why don’t more school counselors recommend apprenticeships?

According to the national skilled trades report covered by The 74, nearly all counselors surveyed value trade school, but only 28% often recommend apprenticeships. The survey shows the gap, not the reasons. Common questions worth asking locally are whether counselors have direct employer contacts, the time to build them, and schedules that make apprenticeships workable for students.

Are apprenticeships a good option for high school students?

They can be one of several strong options. Registered and youth apprenticeships combine paid work with training, and the report notes that mentorship, supportive services and direct employer connections help people stay and finish. The best fit depends on the student, which is why exposure to real work matters before they choose.

Will AI replace skilled trades jobs?

Industry leaders quoted in The 74 expect AI to change these jobs, not remove the need for people. Ford’s Jim Farley said most of these jobs will both use AI and be protected from it, and Stanley Black & Decker reported almost 90% of construction trades workers surveyed expect to use AI. That is a prediction from employers, so it’s worth watching how it plays out.

The conversation is the pathway

For a lot of students, the most important career moment in high school is one conversation with one adult who says, “Have you thought about this?” Right now, the data says we believe in more options than we’re naming. That’s a leadership problem, and leadership problems can be solved.

If your school or district is working on how career guidance, work-based learning and AI fit together, this is the work I do with school leaders every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So here’s my question for you: in your school, who has the conversation with a student about an apprenticeship, and when does it happen?

Sources

• Despite Rise of AI, More Skilled Trades Training Needed, Industry Leaders Say — The 74, Patrick O’Donnell, October 8, 2026
• Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades Report Spotlights Workforce Challenges and Priorities — ConstructConnect News, Marshall Benveniste, October 6, 2026
• From Compliance to Contribution: What Happens When Students Do Work That Matters — Getting Smart, Nikki Stancampiano and Reem Al-Adhami, October 6, 2026

The post We Believe in Apprenticeships. So Why Don’t We Recommend Them? first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

What can a horror novel teach us about friendship—and why might surviving together be its most hopeful message?

Author Ryan La Sala joins Tricia Friedman to explore the queer horror of The Dead of Summer, where estranged childhood friends must decide whether they can hold onto one another when disaster strikes.

Their conversation moves beyond the scares to examine representation, found family, grief, and the surprising relationship between terror and joy. Ryan explains why he writes queer characters whose lives extend beyond coming out, how each novel challenges his creative process, and what it means to see The Honeys adapted for film.

For educators, librarians, readers, and writers, this episode opens up questions about whose stories young people encounter—and how fiction can invite deeper conversations about belonging, loss, and care.

In this conversation:

• Why horror creates room for creative experimentation and queer storytelling.

• How friendship and community shape survival in The Dead of Summer.

• How humor and joy coexist with fear.

• Exploring grief across The Honeys, Beholder, and The Dead of Summer.

• Anticipatory grief: how fear of future loss can interrupt the present.

• Ryan’s collaborative role in the film adaptation of The Honeys.

Explore the books: The Dead of Summer, The Honeys, and Beholder by Ryan La Sala. Ryan also discusses Bodies of Water, the sequel to The Dead of Summer.

A question to carry forward: Which stories help young people imagine that they don’t have to face difficult things alone?

 Share this episode with a reader or educator who would appreciate a different perspective on horror.

Content note: Discussion of grief, sibling death, cancer, and fictional horror.

Check out this episode of Shifting Our Schools

The post What Horror Teaches Us About Grief and Belonging—with Ryan La Sala first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

Here’s the thing. If you only listened to the loudest story in education right now, you’d think the explanation for everything happening in our schools fits in a student’s pocket. These two stories say the picture is a lot bigger than that.

Last week, when I wrote about cell phone bans, I asked whether we were too sure the phone was the main story, and whether chronic absenteeism deserved more of our attention. This week we got fresh numbers. So let’s look at them.

What the new chronic absenteeism data shows

On October 2, K-12 Dive’s Anna Merod reported on a new American Enterprise Institute analysis of chronic absenteeism across 45 states. A student is chronically absent when they miss 10% of the school year, roughly 18 days.

The numbers tell a story of a long climb back:

• 2019 (before the pandemic): 15.4%
• 2022: 28.3%
• 2024: 23.5%
• 2025: 22.6%

So yes, things are better than the peak. But the drop from 2024 to 2025 was less than a point. At that pace, we are years away from where we were in 2019.

There’s good news inside the data, too. Iowa cut its rate from 21.6% to 15.8% in one year, which AEI’s Nat Malkus called “one of the largest drops in absenteeism for one state.” Rhode Island is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels. Both states are part of the 50% Challenge, which sets a goal of cutting chronic absenteeism in half within five years. States in the challenge averaged a 5.7% reduction from 2023-24 to 2024-25, compared with 3.2% for states that weren’t. Iowa’s McKenzie Snow described what it took as a “holistic approach” with whole communities working together.

The same day, the Magnolia Tribune reported (via the Meridian Star) that Mississippi’s chronic absenteeism rate fell from 27.6% to 26.5% in the 2025-26 school year, after the state adopted new attendance policies. Grades 6-12 had the highest rates.

Two days earlier, K-12 Dive’s Kara Arundel reported that SAT scores rose for the class of 2026. The average score was 1,045, up 16 points from the class of 2025, with gains in both reading/writing and math across all demographic groups. About 42% of test-takers met the college and career readiness benchmarks in both sections.

To be fair, that SAT number comes with real caveats, and the article names them. About 1.95 million students took the test, a 2.5% drop and the first decline in participation since 2021. Ninety percent of U.S. colleges are still test-optional. And the test itself changed in 2024 to a shorter, digital format with much shorter reading passages, although College Board research found the format change didn’t meaningfully affect reading performance. One year of SAT data from a smaller group of test-takers is not a trend, and I’m not going to pretend it is.

Here’s what the screen-time headline leaves out

Let me state the other side fairly, because a lot of thoughtful parents and educators hold it. The argument goes something like this: smartphones arrived, social media took over, attention spans shrank, and achievement followed them down. Get the phones out, and learning comes back. I understand why that story is appealing. It’s simple, it’s visible, and every adult has watched a teenager scroll.

I’m not saying screens don’t matter. They do. How students use them matters a lot. I wrote about this back in 2010 in Active vs Inactive Screen Time, and I still believe the difference between creating and consuming is the conversation we should be having.

But here’s what bothers me. The phone gets the headline. The empty desk gets a footnote.

Think about what a 22.6% chronic absenteeism rate means in a real school. In a class of 25, that’s about five or six students who will miss at least 18 days this year. Not 18 minutes on a phone. Eighteen days of instruction, conversation, feedback and relationships with the adults in the building. No phone policy in the world teaches a student who isn’t there.

And the SAT story, with all its caveats, is a reminder that achievement can move in the same years when nearly every teenager has a phone. That doesn’t prove phones are harmless. It does suggest the “screens ruined a generation” story is too simple to explain what we’re seeing.

So I keep coming back to questions. Why are so many students still missing so much school? What role does the long tail of the pandemic play? What changed about how students and families see school, and what school is for? Why are grades 6-12 the hardest to get back in the building in a state like Mississippi? And why did states that set a shared goal and brought whole communities to the table move faster than states that didn’t?

None of those questions has a lock box for an answer.

We have a choice about where we put our energy

Every school leader I work with has a limited amount of time, money and political capital. When a community debate gets loud, that energy flows to whatever is most visible. Right now, that’s phones.

But look at what the data says actually moved the needle in Iowa and Rhode Island: a clear goal, shared across a state, with a whole community working on it. That’s not a device policy. That’s leadership. In Human Still Required, I argue that the work that matters most in schools, the judgment, the relationships, the trust, has to stay human. Getting a kid who has drifted away from school to walk back through the door is about as human as this work gets. A text reminder can help. A relationship with an adult who notices you’re gone is what brings you back.

This is also an equity question. Students who miss the most school are often the ones who already face the most barriers. I wrote about this in 2020 in Inequity Should Not Equal Inaction. The answer to a hard problem isn’t to grab the easiest lever. It’s to do the harder work.

Preparing students for their future, not our past, starts with having them in the room. Then it means making that room worth showing up for, which includes teaching them how to use the technology that will be part of every job they ever hold.

What schools can do this week

You don’t need a new policy to start. Here are a few moves any school or district can make right now:

• Put your attendance data next to your achievement data. Before your next conversation about test scores, look at which students missed 18 or more days last year. Ask what that tells you.
• Name one adult for every chronically absent student. Not a system. A person who checks in, notices and follows up.
• Ask students why. Hold a short listening session with students in grades 6-12 about what keeps people home. You may hear things your data can’t tell you.
• Look at what Iowa and Rhode Island did. Read up on the 50% Challenge and ask whether a shared, public goal could work in your district.
• Keep the phone conversation, but make it a teaching conversation. Teach students when to connect and when to disconnect, and talk about why, instead of treating a ban as the whole plan.

Frequently asked questions

What is chronic absenteeism?

A student is chronically absent when they miss 10% or more of the school year, roughly 18 days, for any reason. According to the AEI analysis reported by K-12 Dive, the national rate was 22.6% in 2025, compared with 15.4% in 2019.

Are phones the main reason test scores dropped?

The evidence doesn’t support a single cause. Screens can matter, especially how students use them, but other factors are in play, including pandemic disruption and attendance that is still well above pre-pandemic levels. And as the class of 2026 SAT results show, scores can rise in the same era when nearly every teen has a phone, though that one-year result comes with caveats.

What actually helps reduce chronic absenteeism?

In the latest data, states that joined the 50% Challenge, a shared goal to cut chronic absenteeism in half in five years, reduced it faster than other states. Iowa’s education department pointed to a holistic approach that brings whole communities together. Relationships with caring adults and listening to students are good places for any school to start.

The empty desk deserves the headline

I’ll keep pushing back on the idea that technology is the villain in every story about schools. Not because technology is perfect, but because the simple story keeps pulling our attention away from the harder, more human work that actually changes things for kids.

If your school or district is trying to sort out where to put its energy, attendance, AI, phones and all of it, this is the work I do with leaders every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So I’ll ask you: in your school, does the phone get more airtime than the empty desk? And what would change if we flipped that?

Sources

• Progress to reduce chronic absenteeism slows nationwide — K-12 Dive, Anna Merod, October 2, 2026
• SAT scores are up across the board for class of 2026 — K-12 Dive, Kara Arundel, September 30, 2026
• Mississippi’s chronic absenteeism rate shows decline year over year — Magnolia Tribune via Meridian Star, Jeremy Pittari, October 2, 2026

The post Before We Blame Screens, Let’s Count the Empty Desks first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

Put those side by side and you get a story that is a lot more useful than the one in most headlines. The headline version is “AI is making kids stop thinking.” The version the evidence supports is closer to this:

AI does what we design it to do. And right now, a lot of it isn’t being designed for thinking at all.

Here’s the thing…. Those are two very different problems, and they need two very different responses.

What’s happening: two reports, one story

On September 29, EdSurge’s Ira Apfel reported on a new EdReports study of AI in K-12 instructional materials. EdReports, the nonprofit that reviews pre-K–12 curriculum, looked at AI-enabled products from 10 vendors: four of the top 10 publishers of instructional materials, three mid-sized curriculum providers and three digital-first edtech companies. The finding that jumped out at me: only one of the 10 included third-party evidence that the AI features they embedded improved educational outcomes.

I knew that there wasn’t going to be much evidence, but I was surprised at how little there was.

Courtney Allison, chief academic officer, EdReports, quoted in EdSurge

The article also points to a transparency problem. Even figuring out whether materials contain AI can be hard, because it can be introduced without notification from the vendor. Matt Moyer, principal of Rupert Elementary School in Pennsylvania, told EdSurge that some tools his school was already using had AI built in that they “simply hadn’t been told about.” Lora Kaiser of the Center for Education Market Dynamics put the question every district should be asking simply: “Is it a feature I can opt in to?”

The next day, the EdSurge podcast went deeper with Allison and EdReports CEO Lewis Ferebee, including a distinction I think matters a great deal: some AI features let teachers review content before it reaches students, while others deliver content directly to students in real time.

Then on October 1, Michelle Miller, who teaches at Northern Arizona University, used her R3 newsletter to walk through a new systematic review on ChatGPT and critical and creative thinking. The review, by Li, Cui and Serra in Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, pulled together 67 empirical studies. One honest caveat: every one of those studies was in higher education, with undergraduate or graduate students, not K-12. Still, the pattern is hard to ignore. When tasks and classroom norms required verification, justification and revision, students were more likely to treat AI output as something to interrogate. Without that structure, the tool encouraged cognitive offloading and surface-level engagement.

Miller’s summary of it is the line I keep coming back to:

…the same exact tool can become a shortcut machine or a thinking partner depending on whether students are asked to question it, revise with it, verify its output.

Michelle Miller, R3 newsletter, October 1, 2026

AI and critical thinking: here’s what the headline leaves out

I want to be fair to the people who are worried. The worry is reasonable. When a tool can produce a passable essay in seconds, of course some students will use it to skip the thinking. Plenty of teachers have watched it happen. And the EdReports finding should make all of us uncomfortable. If vendors are putting AI in front of kids without evidence that it helps, and sometimes without telling the school it’s there, caution is the right response.

But notice what neither report says. Neither one says AI causes students to stop thinking. One says we don’t have evidence the AI in our products is helping. The other says the effect on thinking depends on how the task is designed.

That second finding should feel familiar to anyone who has been around educational technology for a while. I lived through the 1:1 laptop rollouts in international schools. Some schools handed every student a device and changed nothing else. Others redesigned the learning. Same laptops. Very different results. I wrote about this back in 2009 in What’s the purpose of going 1:1, and the question in that title is the same question we should be asking about AI today.

If an assignment can be completed by pasting the prompt into a chatbot, what was that assignment measuring in the first place?

That’s uncomfortable, but it’s the real conversation. A worksheet that asks students to summarize a chapter was never really a critical thinking task. AI just made that obvious. This is what I mean when I say “AI didn’t break school — it exposed it.” In Human Still Required, I argue that the judgment about what students should do, and why, has to stay with educators. The tool can draft. It can’t decide what learning is for.

Two problems, two different fixes

Here’s the distinction I’d offer school leaders. There is AI we buy and AI we design for.

AI we buy is the AI inside curriculum platforms and edtech products. That’s a procurement and accountability problem. The EdReports study says the evidence isn’t there yet, so the burden belongs on vendors. Ask for it. Ask what the study sample was. Ask whether the feature can be turned off. Ask whether a teacher sees the content before a student does.

AI we design for is what happens in a classroom when students use AI as part of a task. That’s a teaching and learning problem. The research Miller highlighted says the difference between a shortcut and a thinking partner is the structure around the tool: questioning it, verifying it, revising with it, explaining your choices.

Banning AI solves neither problem. A ban doesn’t make a vendor produce evidence, and it doesn’t teach a single student how to question a machine’s answer. Students are going to use these tools in college and at work. We have a choice about that. They don’t. Preparing students for their future, not our past. That’s the job, and it means teaching them to think with and against AI, not pretending it isn’t there.

And to be clear, I’m not saying every AI feature belongs in every classroom. Some don’t. A real-time AI feature talking directly to a seven-year-old with no teacher in the loop deserves a much higher bar than a tool that helps a teacher draft a rubric. Different uses deserve different scrutiny.

What schools can do this week

• Inventory the AI you already have. Ask your curriculum and edtech vendors, in writing, which features in your current products use AI. Based on the EdReports findings, don’t assume you already know.
• Ask for evidence, not badges. When a vendor claims its AI improves learning, ask for the study, the sample size and who conducted it. Third-party evidence was rare in the EdReports review, so ask directly.
• Sort features by who sees the output first. Teacher-reviewed AI and AI that talks directly to students are not the same risk. Set your expectations accordingly.
• Run one assignment through the “paste test.” Pick an assignment and ask: could a chatbot complete this without the student thinking? If yes, redesign it so students must verify, justify or revise, and explain their choices.
• Teach the verify step out loud. Model in front of students how you check an AI answer: what you doubted, what you looked up, what you changed. Thinking you can see is thinking students can copy.

Frequently asked questions

Does AI hurt students’ critical thinking?

The research so far says it depends on how AI is used. A 2026 systematic review of 67 higher education studies found that unstructured use encouraged cognitive offloading, while tasks that required verification and revision supported deeper thinking. The research base for K-12 is thinner, so schools should watch closely and design carefully.

Is there evidence that AI in curriculum products improves learning?

Not much yet. In a recent EdReports review of 10 curriculum and edtech vendors, only one provided third-party evidence that its embedded AI features improved educational outcomes. That doesn’t mean the features don’t work. It means schools can’t know yet, and should ask.

Should schools ban AI to protect critical thinking?

A ban may feel safer, but it doesn’t teach students how to evaluate AI output, which they will need after graduation. A stronger approach is to be selective about which AI products reach students and to design assignments that require students to question, verify and revise what AI produces.

The question isn’t whether. It’s how.

We’ve had this argument before, with calculators, with the internet, with laptops. Every time, the schools that did well were the ones that asked what the tool was for and redesigned the learning around it. The tool never did the thinking for them. Yes… it’s more work. It always is.

If your school or district is sorting out which AI belongs in front of students and how to design for real thinking, that’s the work I do with leaders every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So here’s my question for you: if you ran your last three assignments through the “paste test,” how many would pass?

Sources

• Study: EdTech Is Rushing AI Integration Before Proving It Works — EdSurge, Ira Apfel, September 29, 2026
• Can Schools Trust AI Features in Edtech Products? — EdSurge Podcast, September 30, 2026
• R3 4.9: Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, and AI — Michelle Miller, Ph.D., R3 newsletter, October 1, 2026 (discussing Li, Cui & Serra, 2026, Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence)

The post AI Isn’t Ruining Student Thinking. Bad Task Design Might. first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

What does it take to build a firm around the needs of people facing some of life’s most difficult circumstances?

Tricia welcomes the founder of USA4ALL to explore the purpose behind its work, including serving survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. The conversation begins with the firm’s origin story and the question of what makes its approach distinctive.

For educators and community leaders, this episode invites reflection on how compassion shapes the organizations we build—and how we recognize whose needs deserve greater attention.

As you listen, consider:

• What can an organization’s origin story reveal about its values?

• How does compassion influence everyday decisions about whom we serve and how?

• Whose needs might be overlooked by the systems we work within?

• What would it take to strengthen connections between our communities and people who can offer informed support?

Learn more about Renata Castro and USA4ALL, and use this conversation as a starting point for thinking about what purposeful, compassionate leadership can look like in practice.

Check out this episode of Shifting Our Schools

The post Building a Firm Around People Who Need an Advocate first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

Here’s the thing. When a young employee does something an older manager doesn’t expect, the easy story is that something is wrong with the young employee. These two stories point the other way.

What happened this week

The first story is a piece by Jeff LeBlanc, a learning facilitator in Boston University’s online MBA program, published by Fortune and The Conversation on September 28. LeBlanc surveyed 250 Gen Z professionals, and clear structural expectations, fairness and empathetic engagement came up again and again.

His best example is small. A young café worker texted her Gen X boss that she was running late. Her reasoning:

He’s super busy, so I felt a call was going to take up too much time. So I texted. I thought it was more considerate.

Gen Z employee quoted by Jeff LeBlanc, Fortune / The Conversation, September 28, 2026

Her manager read it the opposite way. To him, a text was too casual for something that serious; a phone call would have signaled she took it seriously. Same action. Two completely different meanings. Neither person was being rude.

LeBlanc also points out what Gen Z’s early working years looked like: classes went online, internships went remote, and when people came back in person, masks could make faces harder to read. A lot of the unwritten signals older workers picked up by watching were simply harder to pick up.

The second story is Fortune’s September 25 report on a Robert Half survey: around 55% of Gen Z professionals plan to look for a new job before the end of this year, compared with 32% in 2025. More than half believe switching employers could boost their salary. Robert Half’s Dawn Fay put it this way:

When they feel stalled or don’t see room to grow, they seem to be comfortable exploring new opportunities rather than waiting for those circumstances to change.

Dawn Fay, Robert Half, via Fortune, September 25, 2026

To be fair, this isn’t the whole picture. The same Fortune piece notes the job market is tough: entry-level postings made up 38.6% of all postings this March, down from 44% in 2023, according to ZipRecruiter, and Atlanta Fed data showed the pay bump for switching jobs (4.8%) barely beat staying put (4.6%). Glassdoor’s Daniel Zhao said many employed workers “feel stuck in their jobs.” Planning to look is not the same as leaving. But it does tell you where people’s heads are.

Managing Gen Z employees starts with the rules you never wrote down

Here’s what I take from these two stories together. In both, a young person is reading the situation and making a reasonable choice based on what they can see. The text was considerate from where she stood. Looking for a job is reasonable if you can’t see a path where you are.

What they can’t see is the leader’s job to show.

I’ve watched this happen in education for years. Back in 2015, in The Millennials are here!, I wrote about the moment I scanned a training room of future teachers and realized the next generation had arrived. Every generation walks into a workplace built by the one before it. The rules feel like common sense to the people who wrote them. They’re not. As LeBlanc puts it, the norms we learned reflect “the workplaces, technologies and moments in history in which we began our careers.”

So when a manager says “they don’t know how to communicate,” I’d ask: did anyone tell them how you communicate? Does “Friday” mean Friday at 9 a.m. or Friday at midnight? Is a text okay for running late? Who would know that on their first week?

Loyalty is earned in the first year, not assumed

In The Next Turn, I argue that we’re living through two turns at once: the definition of work is changing, and the structure of work is changing. Young employees make the first turn easy to see. They’re asking, out loud, what the exchange is — what do I give, what do I get, and where is this going? When that exchange stops making sense, they start looking. That’s not a motivation problem. It’s a design problem.

One line from the book sums up what that Robert Half number is telling us: “Organizations do not get loyalty upfront. They get scrutiny upfront.”

I’ll admit that can feel unfair if you came up in a time when you paid your dues and waited your turn. I understand that. But waiting your turn only works when people can see the turn coming. With AI absorbing more of the routine tasks new hires used to learn on, the path from “new” to “trusted” is getting harder to see, not easier. If leaders don’t make it visible, nobody will.

And another line I keep coming back to: “Gen Z is not the problem. Gen Z is the clearest signal.” When half your young workforce says they might look elsewhere, that’s information about your organization, not a verdict on a generation.

This is also where schools and employers meet. We talk a lot in education about preparing students for their future, not our past. The workplace has the same job on the other side of graduation. If we want young people to succeed in it, somebody has to explain how it works.

What leaders can do this week

• Write down three unwritten rules. How should people tell you they’re late or sick? What does a deadline mean? When is a text fine and when is a call expected? Put it in onboarding, not in someone’s head.
• Be specific about time. Following LeBlanc’s advice, give a day and a time. “Friday” means different things to different people.
• Make the path visible. For every early-career role, can you show what the next 12 to 24 months could look like and what someone has to show to get there?
• Check the exchange early. Don’t wait for an exit interview. At 90 days and again at six months, ask: is this what you expected, and what would make the next year worth it?
• Train managers to translate. The managers who lead young teams well aren’t the strictest or the softest. They’re the ones who explain the why.

Frequently asked questions

Why do Gen Z employees communicate differently at work?

Part of it is timing. Many Gen Z workers started college or work when classes and internships moved online, so they had fewer chances to pick up unwritten office norms by watching. Boston University’s Jeff LeBlanc argues the differences are mostly about context, not competence.

Why are so many Gen Z workers looking for new jobs?

A Robert Half survey reported by Fortune in September 2026 found about 55% of Gen Z professionals plan to look for a new job before year-end, and more than half think switching could raise their pay. Robert Half says young workers tend to explore when they feel stalled or can’t see room to grow.

What is the best way to retain young employees?

Treat retention as a design question. Explain expectations clearly, show a realistic growth path, give frequent feedback, and check in on whether the job is meeting expectations well before someone starts looking.

The rules were never common sense

Every workplace runs on rules nobody wrote down. That was always true. What’s changed is that a new generation is asking about them out loud, and a tight job market is telling them to keep their options open. Leaders can treat that as a problem, or as the clearest signal they’ll get.

If your organization is working through how to lead across generations while AI changes the work itself, this is what I help leaders with every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So I’ll ask you: what’s one unwritten rule in your workplace that a new hire would have no way of knowing?

Sources

• Gen Z isn’t bad at workplace communication—your company is bad at explaining its rules — Jeff LeBlanc (Boston University), Fortune / The Conversation, September 28, 2026
• Despite the entry-level job apocalypse, half of Gen Z are planning to look for new work elsewhere before the end of the year — Emma Burleigh, Fortune, September 25, 2026

The post Gen Z Isn’t Breaking Your Rules. You Never Explained Them. first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

Here’s the thing. The good news in that paper is real. But it is not a reason for schools to relax. If anything, it is a window. And the same week, North Carolina showed us what using that window can look like.

What the new research on AI and entry-level jobs actually says

The paper is “The Early Impacts of AI on Employment among Recent College Graduates”, released as an NBER working paper in September 2026 by Robert W. Fairlie and Jane Wu of UCLA. They used Census Bureau Current Population Survey data to look at bachelor’s degree holders ages 22 to 25 who were not enrolled in more school, across the summers of 2022 through 2026. Then they compared them with same-age workers without degrees and with older college graduates ages 30 to 49.

Their answer: unemployment for recent grads did not spike in summer 2026. As TechSpot reported in its coverage of the study, the rate was 7.3% this summer, higher than the 6.3% in 2022 but below the 7.8% recorded in 2024. Even when the researchers widened the measure to include people who said they wanted a job, they found no statistically significant increase.

That’s worth celebrating for a minute. The class of 2026 had access to ChatGPT before the end of their first semester of college, and they were not wiped out the summer they graduated.

But I want to be fair about what this study does and doesn’t say. The researchers themselves said it may be too soon to draw firm conclusions. The study measures unemployment, not how many entry-level jobs are being created or what those jobs now ask people to do. And it is not the only evidence out there. TechSpot points to a Stanford study that used ADP payroll records and found weaker employment trends for younger workers in AI-exposed occupations. As TechSpot put it, the finding “does not mean that AI has had no effect on the job market. It means the effect is not yet clear in this particular measure of employment.”

So the honest summary is: the research is mixed, and the people closest to it are telling us to keep watching.

Not yet is not never

Here’s what worries me about a headline like “not yet.” In schools, “not yet” has a way of turning into “not our problem.”

I hear some version of this question in almost every session I run with school leaders: should we change how we prepare students for careers because of AI, or is that just hype? I understand why they ask. Schools have been told the sky is falling about a lot of things. Waiting for the data is a reasonable instinct.

But think about who this study is about. These are 22-to-25-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees. The students sitting in our ninth-grade classrooms right now will hit that same job market around 2033 or 2034. Nobody can tell you with confidence what an entry-level job looks like then. What we do know is that the tasks we used to give new hires to learn on, the first drafts, the summaries, the basic analysis, are exactly the tasks AI tools are getting good at.

If the first rung of the ladder is going to look different, the bridge to it has to look different too. And bridges take years to build.

Preparing students for their future, not our past. That line has never felt more literal to me than it does right now.

What a real bridge looks like

Which is why the announcement from North Carolina Governor Josh Stein on October 1 caught my eye. More than 500 high school students completed summer pre-apprenticeship and youth apprenticeship academies this year through the North Carolina Business Committee for Education (NCBCE), in electrical trades, advanced manufacturing, agriculture, biotechnology and health care.

A few details stood out to me. In the Careers Electric academies, 220 students combined community college coursework, industry-recognized credentials and work-based learning across 12 community colleges. NC Career Launch, NCBCE’s statewide youth apprenticeship initiative funded by a U.S. Department of Labor grant, has now supported 1,067 students who completed youth apprenticeships in 48 counties, with more than 165 employers, since 2024. And a BioWork pre-apprenticeship served 13 rising seniors and recent graduates on the autism spectrum through a 140-hour certificate in biotech and pharmaceutical manufacturing.

These apprenticeships give North Carolina’s high school students the chance to learn hands-on and earn a paycheck as they explore career pathways in high-demand industries.

Governor Josh Stein, October 1, 2026

Learn hands-on. Earn a paycheck. Explore. That’s three things a paper resume can’t give a student, and three things an AI tool can’t do for them.

Now, I’ll admit 500 students in a summer is not a whole state. The Governor’s own workforce council has set a goal of doubling apprenticeships statewide, which tells you they know it isn’t enough yet either. But it is a working model, with employers, community colleges and K-12 at the same table. That’s the part most places are missing.

Not every experience is a learning experience

There’s a catch, and Chris Unger names it well in a Getting Smart post published October 1. His opening line: “Not all experiences result in impactful and valuable learning.” A field trip to a factory is an experience. So is a career day. Neither is the same thing as doing real work.

Unger points to three things participants kept naming as what mattered most: the chance to dig into a topic that was personally relevant and of value, the chance to try, practice and fail in authentic activities of the field, and detailed, constructive feedback from someone qualified to give it. He also warns about equity, and I think this is the line every superintendent should read:

If access depends on a family’s connections, unpaid time, transportation, or an adult who happens to make an introduction, these opportunities can widen gaps as easily as close them.

Chris Unger, Getting Smart, October 1, 2026

Yes… that’s exactly the trap. If the only students who get real work experience are the ones whose parents can make a phone call, AI won’t be what widens the gap. We will.

I wrote back in 2013 in Millennials and the Job Market that a public portfolio of real work would matter more than a paper resume. I believe that even more now. When anyone can produce a polished cover letter in thirty seconds, what a graduate can show — work they did, for a real audience, with feedback from real professionals — is the signal that still means something.

In Human Still Required, I argue that AI didn’t break school — it exposed it. The school-to-work bridge is one of the places it exposed. We’ve been running career exposure for years and calling it career preparation. The tools changed. The job of getting kids ready for real work didn’t.

What schools can do this week

• Count the real stuff. How many of your juniors and seniors did paid or credit-bearing work-based learning last year, not a career fair or job shadow? Get the actual number, and break it down by student group.
• Call your community college. North Carolina’s model runs through community colleges. Ask what pre-apprenticeship, dual credit or credential programs could pair with a summer placement for your students.
• Ask three local employers one question: “What does your entry-level job look like now that your team uses AI, and what would you want a 17-year-old to be able to show you?” Bring the answers to your next leadership meeting.
• Start a portfolio, not a resume. Pick one course or advisory where every student publishes one piece of real work for a real audience this semester, with feedback from someone outside the school.
• Remove one barrier. Transportation, unpaid time, or a missing introduction. Pick the one that keeps the most students out and fix it first.

Frequently asked questions

Is AI taking entry-level jobs from young people?

Not clearly, at least not yet. A September 2026 NBER working paper by UCLA economists found no statistically significant spike in unemployment for recent college graduates in summer 2026. Other research using payroll data shows weaker trends for young workers in AI-exposed jobs, so the evidence is mixed and still early.

What is a youth apprenticeship?

A youth apprenticeship lets high school students learn a trade or profession on the job, usually paid, while earning credentials or college credit. North Carolina’s NC Career Launch has supported 1,067 students in youth apprenticeships with more than 165 employers since 2024.

What can K-12 schools do to prepare students for AI-shaped jobs?

Give students real work for real audiences: apprenticeships, internships, dual credit and portfolio projects with professional feedback. Partner with community colleges and local employers, and remove barriers like transportation and unpaid time so access doesn’t depend on family connections.

The window is open

The best reading of this week’s research isn’t “relax.” It’s “you have a little time.” Use it to build the bridge while the river is still crossable.

If your school or district is figuring out what career-connected learning should look like in an AI world, that’s the work I do with leaders every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So here’s my question for you: how many of your students got to do real, paid or credit-bearing work before they graduated last year? And what would it take to double that number?

Sources

• The Early Impacts of AI on Employment among Recent College Graduates — Robert W. Fairlie and Jane Wu (UCLA), NBER Working Paper, September 2026 (covered by TechSpot, September 26, 2026)
• Governor Stein Highlights Summer Apprenticeship Academies Preparing More Than 500 High School Students — Office of North Carolina Governor Josh Stein, October 1, 2026
• Why the Experience of Experience Matters — Chris Unger, Getting Smart, October 1, 2026

The post AI Hasn’t Taken Their First Job Yet. So What Are Schools Waiting For? first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

Read those two stories back to back and you get the whole debate in miniature. Washington is ready to buy lock boxes. The data says the lock boxes are the easy part.

Here’s the thing…. I’m not here to tell you phone bans are wrong. I’m here to say a ban is a policy, not a lesson. And if that’s all we do, we’ve missed the point.

What’s happening with cell phone bans in schools

The bill is called the UNPLUGGED Schools Grant Act of 2026. According to Senator Kelly’s October 1 announcement, it would create a federal grant program for states that adopt policies keeping students from possessing or using personal devices during school hours. The money pays for storage: lockers, lock boxes, phone pouches. States would have to build their policies with districts, educators, parents and students, keep a way for parents to reach their kids through school staff, and include exceptions for students with health conditions, disabilities or special needs.

Senator Kelly didn’t mince words:

Phones in schools have been a disaster for learning.

Sen. Mark Kelly, October 1, 2026

Jonathan Haidt, quoted in the same release, went further, calling for every school in America to “go bell-to-bell phone free” and saying that phone-free schools “almost always report increased student engagement, decreased disciplinary problems.” Straight Arrow News reported that 42 states plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico have already enacted cell phone-related school legislation, citing the National Conference of State Legislatures. So this isn’t a new idea. It’s a national stamp on something most states have already done.

Now the other story. Education Week’s Arianna Prothero reported on September 30 on a survey from researchers at the University of Southern California that followed teens across the 2025–26 school year. At the start of the year, 28% of teens said they had used a phone in class. By the end of the year, it was 42%. Forty-four percent said their teachers grew more lenient about enforcement over time.

The researchers did find good news. Bell-to-bell bans held up better: phone use in those schools went from 25% to 35%, compared with 32% to 50% in schools with looser rules. And teen attitudes softened over the year. USC researcher Dan Silver told Education Week there is “light at the end of the tunnel” for school leaders. He also said something every teacher will recognize:

It’s much easier to be really intentional about enforcing this policy when it’s new, when it’s the beginning of the year.

Dan Silver, USC, in Education Week

Then there’s the bigger research picture. The Straight Arrow News coverage of the bill points to the large national study (released as a National Bureau of Economic Research paper) that found bans cut phone use but showed “no major impact on student test scores, attendance or attention” at first, with improvements in student well-being showing up later. Stanford’s Thomas Dee put it plainly: building phone-free schools “does not appear to be a simple or quick fix.”

I’ll admit it: the ban side has a point

Let me be fair here. Teachers are tired of competing with a buzzing pocket. A Democrat and a Republican co-wrote this bill, which tells you how broad the support is. The well-being gains in the national study are real and worth taking seriously, and the USC data says bright-line rules are easier to enforce than “use your judgment” rules. If your school went bell-to-bell and your hallways feel better, I’m not going to argue with you.

But look at what the bill actually funds. Lockers. Lock boxes. Pouches. Storage.

There is nothing in a pouch that teaches a 14-year-old when to pick up a phone and when to put it down. There is nothing in a locker that helps a student notice how an app is designed to pull them back in. The test score results are close to zero on average. Enforcement fades by spring. So what are we actually buying?

A ban is a policy. Teaching is the lesson.

I wrote about this in 2019 in Whack-A-Mole Is Not A Classroom Management Strategy That Works. Blocking and banning turns teachers into enforcers. Students find the workaround, teachers chase it, and by spring everybody is tired. The USC numbers read a lot like that post. Nobody is failing here. It’s what happens when the main tool is control instead of learning.

And here’s the part the headlines skip: the hours that matter most are outside the school day. School is seven hours. The phone is there the other seventeen. A ban can protect the classroom, but it can’t build the habit a student needs at 10 p.m. on a school night. Only teaching does that.

Back in 2016 I wrote We have a choice, They don’t. Adults get to decide how much technology is in our lives. Our students don’t. Their future jobs, their relationships and their civic life will run through devices. That’s why I keep coming back to the same line: we should be preparing students for their future, not our past. A future-ready student is not one who has never held a phone during school. It’s one who knows when to connect, when to disconnect, and can tell you why.

I’d also ask: why are we so sure the phone is the main story? If a ban moves scores by close to zero on average, what does that tell us about where the problem really lives? What role did the pandemic play? Chronic absenteeism? Teacher turnover? How we trained teachers to use the devices we handed out? Those are questions worth asking out loud before we spend federal money on hardware.

This is exactly the kind of leadership moment I write about in Human Still Required. The tools change. The leadership job stays the same: judgment, relationships, trust. Different tools. Same leadership work. A pouch can hold a phone. It can’t hold a conversation with a student about why they reach for it.

What schools can do this week

If your school already has a ban, keep it if it’s working. Then add the teaching the policy can’t do on its own:

• Teach the why, not just the rule. Spend one advisory or homeroom on how notifications and feeds are designed. Students follow rules they understand longer than rules they resent.
• Plan for spring, not just fall. The USC data shows enforcement drifts. Put a mid-year reset on the calendar now, with staff and students, instead of hoping September energy lasts.
• Separate personal phones from learning devices. Make sure a phone policy doesn’t quietly turn into a technology policy. Students still need to research, create and publish on school devices.
• Bring parents into the 17 hours. Host a family night on habits at home, including adult habits. Kids learn from what we model, and we’re on screens too.
• Ask students to measure their own use. Have them track a week of screen time and reflect on active vs. inactive use. Data they collect themselves lands differently than a lecture.

Frequently asked questions

Do cell phone bans in schools improve test scores?

Not much, based on current evidence. The largest national study, covered by Straight Arrow News, found bans reduced phone use but had no major early impact on test scores, attendance or attention. Well-being improvements showed up later, which suggests bans take sustained effort to pay off.

Are school phone bans working a year in?

Partly. The USC survey reported by Education Week found in-class phone use among teens rose from 28% to 42% over the year, and 44% said teachers grew more lenient. Bell-to-bell bans held up better than looser policies.

What would the federal UNPLUGGED Schools Grant Act do?

It would give grants to states that adopt policies keeping personal devices out of students’ hands during school hours. The money pays for storage like lockers and pouches, and states must include exceptions for health needs and disabilities.

Should schools teach phone habits instead of banning phones?

It doesn’t have to be either/or. A ban can protect learning time, but students also need explicit teaching on when to connect, when to disconnect and why. That’s the part that follows them home and into adulthood.

The question I’d leave you with

The UNPLUGGED Act may well pass. Most states are already there. Fine. Then let’s be honest that we’ve solved the storage problem, not the learning problem. The learning problem is ours, and it doesn’t come in a pouch.

If your school or district is working through phone policy, AI or the bigger question of what students actually need to learn, this is the work I do with leaders every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So I’ll ask: if your school has a ban, what are you teaching alongside it?

Sources

• Kelly, Cotton Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Get Phones Out of Schools — Office of Sen. Mark Kelly, October 1, 2026
• Are Teens Starting to Accept Cellphone Bans? A New Survey Has Answers — Education Week, Arianna Prothero, September 30, 2026
• Bipartisan bill would reward states for banning cellphones in schools — Straight Arrow News, Julia Marshall, October 1, 2026

The post Lock Boxes Aren’t a Lesson Plan: Rethinking Cell Phone Bans first appeared on The Thinking Stick.