Student Apathy Is a Big Classroom Challenge, Teachers Say. Cellphones Aren’t Helping

The stakes are high: Students have a lot of academic ground to make up following the pandemic. Yet they’re not fully engaged in the classroom, teachers report in a new national survey.

Nearly half of teachers—and 58 percent of high school teachers—say that their students showing little to no interest in learning is a major problem in their classroom. And 72 percent of high school teachers and a third of middle school teachers say that students being distracted by cellphones is a major problem.

Those results are from a new survey by the Pew Research Center of more than 2,500 public school teachers, which was conducted from Oct. 17 to Nov. 14. (The teachers surveyed are members of the RAND Corp.'s nationally representative American Teacher Panel.) The survey covers a wide breadth of topics, including teachers’ job satisfaction, workload, and challenges in the classroom. Read More