Nonprofit awards Delaware low grade for school cell policy
Salisbury, Md. – As students head back to school in Delaware, an education advocacy nonprofit is flagging the state’s “D” grade on its Phone Free Schools State Report Card.
The Institute for Families and Technology, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., says Delaware’s score is the lowest in the Mid-Atlantic region. Emily Rapp, the institute’s policy director, says the low grade stems from legislation passed earlier this year that leaves regulation to school districts.
“You could have very inconsistent policies from district to district. For us, distraction-free learning shouldn’t be contingent on your zip code,” she said.
According to Rapp, the Phone-Free Schools State Report Card grades every state’s phone-free school law or executive order, ranging from an A grade to a zero grade.
“A grades mean that phones are completely banned during the school day and are inaccessible to students throughout the entire school day, all the way down to a zero grade, meaning that a state has not yet introduced a phone-free school law,” she said.
Delaware is currently at a “D” which Rapp says means that a law is in place that requires a district to “have a policy on the books, but does not specifically mandate what that policy should include.”
“There’s a lot of discretion that is left up to districts in terms of how they want to enforce that law. And I’ll note Delaware’s law specifically requests that districts limit usage versus prohibit usage,” Rapp said. Rapp also said the institute assigns states with those kinds of laws a D grade because of the variation from district to district across the state.
Rapp also said that Delaware’s law is the worst in the Mid-Atlantic compared to other states such as Maryland and New Jersey, which both have a B grade.
As for the benefits of a fun cell phone ban, Rapp said the National Association of School Resource Officers came out with a statement last fall in full support of a “bell-to-bell ban, noting that students are actually safer when they don’t have their phones on them.”
She also said the Delaware Department of Education released a report showing that an inaccessible prohibition on cell phone use in schools led to more focus and more in-school interaction. She cited a survey from a school cell phone pilot program launched in 2024 and throughout the 2025-2026 school year, which had students keep their phones in pouches during the school day and “noted 86% of teachers and staff supported the pouches, and 71% of teachers and staff observed a positive change in behavior, academic performance, and classroom management.”
Rapp encouraged parents to look up their school districts’ policies, which she says were released on Aug. 31.
