For one thing, make sure that school is a place where they want to be.

That’s one takeaway from a new Fordham study of Bronx public school leaders trying to advance equity in their schools and ensure they’re welcoming and supportive for every student.

For these schools, that meant overcoming the effects of poverty, exclusion, and bias, or whatever else might be keeping students away. Schools in the study “thought about this really holistically” and reduced absenteeism as a result, said the study’s author, Elizabeth Stosich, Ed.D., associate professor in the Graduate School of Education and associate chair of the Division of Educational Leadership, Administration, and Policy.

Poverty and COVID Hurt Attendance

Her study was published in November in Frontiers in Education. From 2021 to 2022, she examined the efforts of four district leaders and eight school leaders in one of the 12 community school districts in the Bronx. It’s a district where absenteeism is an especially tough problem because of high rates of poverty and the death rate—one of the city’s highest—during the coronavirus pandemic, she said.

The schools she studied were trying to advance equity through continuous improvement, a management approach from the corporate and health care spheres that more and more schools are adopting. Among other things, it emphasizes a bottom-up approach to understanding an organization’s problems and making changes.

Getting Creative: Laundry, Fun Fridays, and Campfires

What did that look like in the schools? One of them set up a laundry because some families lacked access to one, hindering their kids’ attendance. Teachers identified the student groups in each school who felt the most ignored—in one case, English learners—and found ways to engage them. One school launched “Fun Fridays” full of meetings by clubs that reflected students’ interests—strategically scheduled on a day when students tend to be absent.

Teachers cooked with students or began art projects; one of them set up a faux campfire around which students could tell stories. “They really got creative, and it spurred new ideas,” she said.

Asking Students What They Truly Need = Success

Crucially, all of these initiatives came from talking to students themselves, Stosich said.

“By going to students and asking what they truly need, and then redesigning school in that image, that is how they engage in more really transformative work to support student success,” she said.

Also important was creating inclusive, supportive school environments for students from historically marginalized racial and ethnic backgrounds, she said: “They thought about, yes, getting students into school, but then creating the experiences that would pull them in and keep them through both a more engaging and culturally responsive curriculum and instruction.”

While absenteeism remained a stubborn challenge, the districts’ schools showed a lot of improvement compared with similar districts in the area, she said.

‘Start Small to Learn Fast’

Stosich noted the importance of a long-term focus on equity, in addition to short-term efforts. Continuous improvement has a “start small to learn fast” approach, involving a series of short-term inquiry cycles combined with empathy interviews and data gathering to get at the roots of an issue and find the best solutions, she said.

“Oftentimes in education and other fields, we start with a solution,” she said. “We’ll adopt some practice across the whole district or across the whole school before we even know if this would lead to improvements. It can lead to a lot of burnout and ‘initiative fatigue’ among educators who are not convinced that the next new thing is going to be any better than the last new thing.”

The reasons for absenteeism evolve and change, and vary from one school to another, she said, “so spending time to really understand the problem is essential.”

By the start of the next school year, students would be required to disconnect from their devices during school hours, “bell to bell,” the governor said, citing Pew research that found 72% of high school teachers report cell phones are a major problem in their classrooms. Implementation would be left up to the schools, which could use the allotted funding to purchase equipment, like pouches or cubbies, and to train personnel to enforce the ban. 

New York School Cellphone Ban

New York is the latest state to push for banning phones in schools, a movement that’s gaining ground in both red and blue states. Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, California, Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, and Louisiana have all put measures in place to restrict cellphone use during the school day. Proponents, including a major New York teacher’s union, say the bans not only remove a source of distraction, they also give students a much-needed break from addictive devices that can stunt their social skills, their attention spans, and their emotional well-being. 

“Our kids will finally be free of the endless distraction of social media and all the mental health pressures that come with it,” Hochul said Tuesday. 

Opposition from Parents

But not everyone is pleased. According to Elizabeth Stosich, associate professor and associate chair of the Division of Educational Leadership, Administration, and Policy at Fordham’s Graduate School of Education, some parents would prefer their kids to be a call or a text away, especially given concerns over gun violence. Teachers and administrators who create no-phone policies in a piecemeal fashion often find themselves in conflict with these parents. Stosich is in favor of the move from Albany to ban phones in schools statewide.

“Teachers don’t want to police cell phones. They want to teach kids. I think this can shift norms and expectations to be—We don’t use cellphones in schools. And it’s not just me as a teacher saying this.  It’s not just me as a principal who has to fight parents, or even as a superintendent with angry parents at my school board meetings. This is a statewide policy,” she said. 

Inside a Phone-Free Classroom

According to Xiaying “Summer” Li, a high school foreign language teacher in New York City and a Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Education, banning phones in school has benefits. She’s had a “no phones” rule for about three years now and says it has transformed the dynamics of her classroom for the better. 

“In the beginning, students gave me lots of push-back. After two weeks, the first thing students would do was turn in their phones to me,” said Li. Rather than seeing kids texting or scrolling TikTok in class, she now sees them watching, listening, and engaging with the material. 

“That is the reason I support this policy. I believe we will see a tremendous change in academic performance and discipline,” she said.