This story originally appeared in the February 2025 issue of Texas Monthly as part of our public-education feature, “What Our Schools Actually Need.” Are smartphones making our kids dumber? Researchers have found that the more students check their phones during the school day, the worse they perform academically. (Go figure.) Meanwhile “brain rot” was crowned the 2024 word of the year by the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary.Students’ phones are a giant headache for teachers and administrators, yet many parents want their children to be able to contact them easily during the day—and, it seems, to be spared the indignity of a flip phone. Last fall, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath urged the state legislature to ban phones: “If it were in my power, I would…