Public schools are engaged in a large-scale experiment: Traditional “analog” instruction, schoolwork, and student-teacher interaction involving physical books, paper, and pencils is being replaced by “EdTech” computer-based learning. Both in class and when doing homework, students now spend much of their time staring at a screen. As parents of sixth-grade students at JFK Middle School in Northampton, we write to express our concerns about how the proliferation of EdTech is shaping our own kids’ school experience, and to begin a conversation in our community about a more thoughtful and intentional path forward.
We now have a large body of research demonstrating that reliance on screens in school negatively affects children’s attention span, motivation, and emotional and social development, as well as concrete learning outcomes. Recent books including Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath’s “The Digital Delusion,” highlight this research. One notable study from 2014 found that when students use screens, they are typically off task for 38 out of every 60 minutes. Since then, the EdTech industry has continued to embed itself more deeply into all aspects of school life. The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress are catastrophic, for both elementary students and high school students. Student achievement is declining, not increasing, and the gaps between the highest- and lowest-achieving students are getting larger, not smaller.
The burden currently rests on families like ours, who through many emails, school committee public comments, and meetings with administration are voicing our concerns about the widespread adoption of EdTech tools and apps throughout every grade and subject. We believe the burden should instead be on the school system to prove that each EdTech tool being used in the classroom benefits learning. The Massachusetts House recently joined the Senate in passing legislation advocating for all schools in the state to be cell phone-free, and Northampton Public Schools are planning to implement a bell-to-bell cell phone-free policy this fall. This is a crucial step forward, but is being undermined by the school system itself, which provides every student with a Chromebook for home and school use at the start of sixth grade. These devices facilitate distraction and access to inappropriate content almost as well as a phone would, and severely limit families’ ability to control screen use in their own home. We are raising this issue in the Gazette in order to bring wider attention and urgency to this issue, which is particularly timely as Northampton’s current budget proposal includes almost $200,000 per year for the next five years to purchase new Chromebooks.
From a recent survey of NPS parents, we’ve heard a broad range of concerns about how Chromebooks are currently used in school. Many families worry about the Chromebook’s constant access to content that is at best unrelated to education, and at worst quite harmful. The inappropriate activities conducted on school Chromebooks include students messaging each other during class, accessing sexually explicit and violent content, and playing lots and lots of video games. Even kids who aren’t accessing this inappropriate content are often seeing it on other students’ computers during the school day. When confronted with examples of this type of Chromebook misuse, the current response of the administration seems to be a “whack-a-mole” approach, trying to disable access to certain apps and games as kids continue to find new ways to access inappropriate content. This is not a sustainable strategy.
In addition to the concern over in-school misuse, many parents are equally concerned about the negative habits being facilitated by the Chromebook that carry over into the home, including distractedly multi-tasking during homework with multiple tabs open, defaulting to playing pointless online games rather than engaging with friends or family members, and using AI tools like Google Gemini and ChatGPT to avoid serious effort. As sixth grade parent Dixon Williams powerfully argues, “the most consequential risk is subtler than any single platform: the normalization of outsourcing cognition itself.”
All too often, we hear as a defense of Ed Tech: “students need to have 21st century tech skills.” We agree with Dr. Cooney Horvath’s assessment: “teach someone how to use a tool, and they’ll be able to use that tool. Teach someone how to think, and they’ll be able to use any tool.” We are not opposed to students learning tech skills, but we don’t believe that tethering students to 1:1 devices actually teaches these skills; instead, it teaches distraction and dependence. We are advocating for a different path forward for NPS, a path where kids are able to engage in deep critical thinking, keep their focus on their teacher and their peers, and not have their attention constantly fractured by the pull of the screen. As we approach another year of tight school budgets and hear the excuse that with reduced staffing, there’s no other choice than to put kids on screens, we would like to offer a different framing. With a more intentional EdTech approach that reduces the number of apps and digital tools our district is paying for, there would be more money to go towards teachers’ salaries and more room for creativity in the classroom. We invite parents and educators to join us — before our city spends another $1 million on the current path.
Sarah Marcus, Adrian Staub and Ben Baumer live in Northampton. This guest column is additionally supported by Bernadine Mellis, Caryn Brady, Cory Mescon, Andrea Lawlor, Jude Hayward-Jansen, Jeremy Gantz, Katie Ray-Mendoza and Dixon Williams. For more information about how to get involved in this local movement and join “The Digital Delusion” book club: https://www.reconnectwma.org/.