New Publication: Phone-Free Schools in New Jersey

Agard Research Associates is pleased to share a new policy report by Alyssa I. Agard, titled Phone-Free Schools in New Jersey K-12 Public Education: A Policy Analysis of New Jersey P.L.2025, c.195, Its Implementation Framework, the Federal Legal Context, the Unfunded Mandate Question, and the Evidence on Student Device Restrictions. The full report is paired with a simplified Report in Brief, available in English and Spanish, along with presentations that show at a glance what the law requires of schools, which students may still use a device, and what the law does and does not establish.

What the report asks

The report is organized around the questions New Jersey families, educators, and school boards are most likely to bring to the subject: (1) what P.L.2025, chapter 195 requires beginning in the 2026-2027 school year, whom it covers, and which exceptions it preserves, (2) how the law was enacted, including the December 2025 floor amendments that gave it its bell-to-bell scope, and whether federal law requires or constrains it, (3) what implementation costs, who pays, and whether that arrangement raises a question under New Jersey's State Mandate, State Pay provision, and (4) what the research record shows about achievement, mental health, bullying, staff workload, and safety, rather than what either side predicts. The analysis rests on the enacted statute and its reprints read in the original, on the Department of Education's own guidance and grant records, on the enacted appropriations acts, on the decisions of the Council on Local Mandates, and on peer-reviewed studies for every empirical claim, each labeled Documented, Contested, or Projected.

A mandate on local boards, not a statewide ban

The central finding concerns the law's shape. Chapter 195 does not itself remove a single phone. It requires every board of education, including charter school and renaissance school project boards, to adopt a local policy aligned to guidelines from the Commissioner of Education. Those guidelines must prohibit non-academic use of internet-enabled devices on school grounds for the entire school day, lunch and passing time included, while preserving nine exception pathways, among them IEP, Section 504, and health plan accommodations, emergencies, translation, and case-by-case approval for students who care for a family member. Storage and discipline remain local decisions, and boards may go further. Two points correct common misunderstandings. First, this is not federal law: no federal statute requires phone-free schools, and the pending Focus on Learning Act would fund only a study and a voluntary pilot. Second, the all-day scope was not in the bill the Senate first passed, which reached only classroom instruction; it was added by Assembly floor amendments on December 8, 2025. The final bill passed 35-0, 63-3, and 37-0 on concurrence, with sponsors from both parties and the support of the New Jersey Education Association.

The money and the mandate

The State funded the program for a single fiscal year. The FY2026 budget appropriated $3.0 million for Phone-Free Schools Grants, and a first round awarded about $980,000 to 86 local education agencies, limited to grades 6-12. No legislative fiscal estimate was ever prepared for the bill. The FY2027 Appropriations Act carries no line for the program, and the roughly $2.1 million left unspent was not carried forward, although the Legislature restored ten other Department of Education grants the Governor had proposed to cut, eight of them below their prior-year levels. The mandate therefore took effect this September with no State appropriation behind it, in a system serving 1.27 million students. The largest cost the report identifies is not equipment: the only study to measure it found English secondary schools spending about 100 staff hours per week managing student phones under restrictive and permissive policies alike, labor that no state's fiscal note has counted.

What the evidence shows

No statewide bell-to-bell ban in the United States has yet been evaluated. In England, test score gains after bans were concentrated among the lowest-achieving students. In Norway, girls gained in grades and mental health, most of all girls from low-income backgrounds, bullying fell for girls and boys alike, and no effect was detected for boys. The most direct comparison of restrictive and permissive schools, from the United Kingdom, found no difference in wellbeing, sleep, or attainment.

Both sides, on equal terms

Consistent with ARA's nonpartisan mandate, the report presents each dispute on equal footing. Supporters, including the sponsors, the state commission on adolescent social media use, and the National Association of School Resource Officers, hold that phones distract from learning, fuel bullying, and can compromise safety during a lockdown. Critics, including national disability advocates and many parents, warn that poorly administered exceptions can override a child's legal accommodations and that families lose the ability to reach a child in a crisis, the reason 78 percent of parents whose children carry phones gave in one national poll. On the unfunded mandate question, the report sets out the strongest argument for each side: a mandate with no State appropriation in its first year cannot be defended as partially funded, but speculative costs do not condemn a mandate, and the State's guidance permits near-zero-cost compliance. The report takes no position, because the answer will turn on a cost record the current school year has only begun to produce.

Why this matters

This research reflects Agard Research Associates' commitment to rigorous, accessible, and strictly nonpartisan scholarship on the institutions that shape American public life. By separating what the statute commands from what rests on revisable guidance, and by setting the law's stated purposes beside the measured record of what device restrictions have done elsewhere, the publication gives New Jersey's students, families, educators, and school boards a clear account they can rely on and act on, whether they are drafting a policy, requesting an exception, or deciding what to watch in the year ahead.

Read report