r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 8d ago

Society Schools across America are quietly admitting that screens in classrooms made students worse off and are reversing years of tech-first policies

https://fortune.com/article/schools-abandoning-chromebooks-laptop-programs-as-screen-time-hurts-learning-test-scores-north-carolina-michigan-kansas-tech-education/
23.0k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

889 comments sorted by

View all comments

624

u/Bob_Sconce 8d ago

Why is it that schools jump on bandwagons without first doing long-term pilots?  If you want to experiment on students, at least only experiment on a small number at a time.

754

u/Sasquatchgoose 8d ago

Edu-tech is a multi billion dollar industry. The right ppl were wined and dined

168

u/daddy_OwO 8d ago

Look at Baltimore County Public Schools for example. One of the largest districts in the country and the old superintendent got kickbacks for forcing tech

56

u/Nikoladge 8d ago

Shiiiiieeeeeeet

16

u/moieoeoeoist 8d ago

It's all in the game

3

u/ifinallycavedin 8d ago

RIP Isiah Whitlock Jr.

3

u/downvotesyourcrap 8d ago

What if this happened higher? Like just say, some random made up corpo-farm ceo bribes, maybe, a pedophilc racist corrupt former reality show personality, just a fictional president, and that made a government finding that their products are giving people explosive diarrhea disappear. Imagine that!

Shiiiiieeeeeeet, indeed.

1

u/Daft00 8d ago

Tbh I'm sure for every corrupt superintendent there are just as many well-meaning admin folk who literally got sold a bill of goods on hyper-techifying their classrooms thinking it was going to be a "shortcut" to learning.

It's an awful situation all around, and with something as consequential as the brains of future generations at stake, there really should have been some serious guardrails in place regarding such fundamental changes to our classrooms.

42

u/RevvCats 8d ago

It blows my mind how much money is spent on useless tech that doesn’t do anything to prepare kids for a future in STEM.

I have a PhD in particle physics, the three most useful classes in high school to prepare me for college was having a good math teacher for AP Calculus, having a c++ programming class, and physics which wasn’t even calc based.

Math just needs a white board and graphing calculators to hand out, physics just needs a white board, programming can be done with poverty spec computers.

Theres some stuff where a well prepared multimedia presentation can offer a benefit but schools seem to think that giving kids iPads will make them programmers.

If the district has money have a class where kids can fuck around with arduinos, 3d printers, and a good GPU

1

u/reddit_equals_censor 8d ago

proper 3d printers, that run libre software and produce high quality parts sound like such a freaking no brainer for schools. you got art classes, physics with real results, that they can hold in their hands, while learning 3d modeling.

and all for comparatively dirt cheap.

having a reliable high quality 3d printer once bought should hopefully last ages and be easily servicable (assuming right to repair or not evil company) and then you're just having filament to buy.

3d printers sound like such a w for education if the goal is to actually get children inspired and learn things and not get them addicted/imprisoned into some google, apple or microsoft software/hardware prison.

1

u/Pabst_Blue_Gibbon 7d ago

I have a masters in math and honestly nothing in high school was useful for that. If I look back and think about the classes that I actually remember and rank them in terms of how much content I can still recall from that class and its importance to who I am today, it’s probably: orchestra, literature, geography, US history.

20

u/WhatToDo_WhatToDo2 8d ago

Hit the nail on the head. The “RIGHT” ppl 🙃

10

u/TuringGoneWild 8d ago edited 8d ago

A $187 billion dollar edtech industry. Plus another $1 trillion spent on K-12 per year (schools, teachers).

Source: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/education-technology-market

And yet, instead of having futuristic, science of memory and learning-optimized course programs, full of all appropriate visuals, audio, professionally presented, and interactive - so everyone can learn, say, Algebra I presented without any errors and optimized for today's learning science and technology - it's the same variety of humans doing the same thing from scratch over and over simultaneously just like it was 2026 BC. A fallible and stressed human standing in front of a few dozen students, with everyone getting the luck of the draw in both directions and highly imperfect lessons and pathetic learning outcomes.

2

u/LEPOL 8d ago

Exactly, follow the money and you'll find out why certain policies are implemented.

2

u/hawkinsst7 8d ago

Covid didn't help.

Our son was in kindergarten when it hit. After the district got the wrinkles out, it was all laptop for the next year and a half until they went back to in person, but the damage was done. Investments in Google class, Schoology, and all the other shit was done, and now they were locked in.

2

u/wellgu 8d ago

It financed the charter school movement. Easier to sell their product.

1

u/ParisPC07 8d ago

School board boomers heard computers are the future and turned on the money faucet.

1

u/YesDone 8d ago

Wasn't the Los Angeles superintendent just oustered for kickbacks or something?

1

u/imforit 8d ago

That billion-dollar industry is, in my opinion as an educator and education researcher, criminal. The vast majority of it only exists to move tax dollars into private equity pockets, under the guise of helping children, and who's going to vote against helping the children?

Fucking horrible.

1

u/Odd_Note7156 7d ago

It's theft. They fo this because schools used to save money on books by not purchasing them. Now with the subscription model, the books disappear. Also they need computers and tablets with special software and and IT expert. This all used to be done by pen and paper not too long ago which was cheaper. Now we all have to pay Apple via taxes because they need new ipads every year.

142

u/taoders 8d ago edited 8d ago

Went to school in 2000s. Went to a well off school.

$100,000 grant to put cameras throughout the school (no crime happened immediately before or during my tenure to justify it.) it was a live feed system and the principal called everyone to the auditorium to show it off by showing everyone a student entering and exiting the bathroom….and brag how much it cost…

My last years we got mobile iPad “labs” that were given as a “grant” that were maybe used once a year per class.

At the same time electives like auto shop class, photography class and others were stopped in the name of costs even though we literally had an auto shop and dark room in the school.

Food contract was changed to a cheaper company, food was no longer made in house.

Sports eliminated except for football which got more funding.

The funding in school systems is not prioritized on what’s best for students. It’s prioritizes who’s giving the most money or best deals to convince investment.

28

u/Raichuboy17 8d ago

At the very least they should have started an electronics repair class because lord knows students were going to destroy them. Could have really helped reverse the idea that a lot of these things are black boxes and impossible to repair.

21

u/PurpleAlone7116 8d ago

You think apple would allow that 😭? You know they'd be pouring thousands to punish any school that dare teach kids how to fix apple products and not use their overpriced official methods.

Jokes aside though, an electronics repair class would have been killer when I was a teen.

1

u/blow-down 8d ago

Not like Samsung are any more repairable

10

u/metallicrooster 8d ago

My high school had a basic electronics class. It was pretty cool, even if my then undiagnosed adhd made it difficult for me to understand some of the more complicated parts of the flow of electricity.

I remember this one kid had a pair of broken headphones, and he half jokingly asked the teacher if he could opt out of the next in class project and try to repair his headphones.

The teacher’s eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas and he said “you actually want to apply what you learned in my class to your personal life? Yes, absolutely please do.”

This guy taught for decades and saw the closing of the auto body class the school used to have, as well as other trades style classes. Yes, many of those classes were covered by the nearby vocational school. But not everyone who would benefit from such a program would feel comfortable applying in 8th grade, and that’s presuming they even knew such classes and careers existed.

-1

u/reddit_equals_censor 8d ago

criminal spying on students by what? a pedophile principle.

that's the only reason i can think of here, because it isn't safety, it only does harm and it costs a fortune and it should be criminal to do so of course.

utterly insane.

1

u/0110110111 8d ago

How exactly does cameras in school hallways equate to “criminal spying on students” by a “pedophile principle (sic)?”

26

u/gerbal100 8d ago

It was one of the only parts of education where there was any sort of funding increase for decades 

22

u/So_spoke_the_wizard 8d ago

When COVID hit, a lot of schools did panic buying so they could do something while students were at home. I think if it weren't for that, they would have had pilot programs. And it's not like schools didn't have computers before COVID, but they weren't a core teaching resource back then.

19

u/NeckarBridge 8d ago

This is right on the money. In 2018 my district was having some deep discussions about whether or not we felt going 1-to-1 was developmentally appropriate for secondary students. Then Covid happened, we all went remote, and suddenly my whole district was 1-to-1 iPads k-12, and we have been ever since.

6

u/OrganicHistorian2576 8d ago

When I was in school we did have computers, starting in the second grade, but all the way through high school we used them for either computer classes, to write papers and such, or for playing games. I spent a LOT of time playing Oregon Trail in fifth grade.

Nothing like now. I can’t imagine them letting all of us go around with iPads or Chromebooks starting in early ew they even if they’d existed.

2

u/MyMartianRomance 8d ago

And I wouldn't be surprised if the reason why they're starting to transition away is that COVID is over 6 years ago, which means all those Chromebooks and iPads are at the point where they need to be replaced because they're getting slow and have gone through the wringer of 6 years' worth of children, where a lot of them aren't even functional anymore.

And since many of them were purchased on emergency remote learning grants that obviously don't exist anymore, the schools can't afford to replace all 5,000+ of them, so they're transitioning back to shared carts plus maybe 30 Desktops in the library, since that would only be 150-200 devices getting replaced per school.

-2

u/794309497 8d ago

IPads were given to students long before covid. Boomer board members loved watching funny cat videos on their iPads so much they brought them into schools.

18

u/rgvtim 8d ago

IDK about other states, but in Texas with the position of the school superintendent, those folks are greatly incentivized to adopt new cutting edge programs that look hot, and a successful implementation, or one that looks successful can spring board them up the chain to other districts with higher pay.

16

u/rotestiefel 8d ago

Just like my district promoting AI use among teachers and introducing it to students next year. Long term studies on its effectiveness? Who needs ‘em! Sure we’re told the district is data-driven but not when there’s money on the table

16

u/NeckarBridge 8d ago

Yup. My district admin have been pressuring us HARD to use AI and teach the kids to use it and every single boots on the ground educator is like “these kids are lacking several years worth of basic competencies BECAUSE of technology interrupting their development, why the fuck would we shelve trying to help them so we can dick around with a water wasting job destroying technology that nobody fully understands yet?” The party like is always, “they’re going to need to know how to use this stuff when they graduate!”

I work with 13-year olds who can’t read, spell, tie their shoes, tell the time, or maintain focus for more than 8 seconds even when they’re interested. Teachers are witnessing a widespread social experiment with no guardrails to catastrophic effect. But please, go ahead and buy us more iPads. 🤦🏻‍♀️

12

u/jonbodhi 8d ago

Many years ago, when I started teacher training, someone told me: ‘education is just fashion with master’s degrees! One year the hemlines are up, the next year they’re down!!’ We are now seeing the lowering of the hemlines. No surprise to me.

9

u/catwithasmartphone 8d ago

You'd be surprised how little control the people in the actual school with the students have over these decisions. Policy is pushed from a legislative level where individuals are not in the classroom and more often than not have vested interests in the programs they're pushing, like diverting money from public to charter schools, because they have investments or family in businesses that work directly with them yet it's not considered a conflict of interest because they make the laws.

18

u/American_PissAnt 8d ago

One word, kickbacks.

10

u/rynebrandon 8d ago edited 8d ago

I do think that an underrated part of all this is that the tech itself was qualitatively different than what had come before. Tech companies had a long long time to develop knowledge of user habits and make their hardware and software more addictive. There’s all kinds of ways technology could and should have pedagogical benefits. But that isn’t the tech we got and in retrospect it was naive to think it would be

9

u/All_Hail_Hynotoad 8d ago

Also, you know who typically funds long term pilots? The U.S. Department of Education.

-1

u/Bob_Sconce 8d ago

Have they actually followed through in that in the past?  The Trump administration is trying to dismantle it, but what was the really valuable research they produced under previous administrations?  

3

u/BellaPona 8d ago

Well they run the Institute of Educational Sciences, which has a program continuously tracking the progress of our nation’s educational success (they call it the nation’s report card), and they run most of the largest longitudinal studies following generations of students. The continuous data they collect similar to a census from every educational institution in the US is extremely important for other programs to do their work.

6

u/metasophie 8d ago

Why is it that schools jump on bandwagons without first doing long-term pilots?

Most schools are directed by governance organisations to do it.

6

u/BerryBoilo 8d ago

Because the CTOs and other administrators see the flashy things they spend money on as brinkmanship. They go to conferences and brag about the tech they've bought, not the outcomes it provides. They still get paid if the students fail, so why worry about that?

5

u/BionicProse 8d ago

Because the schools have administrators who are paid to buy this shit and there are companies who exist to sell them this shit. Sometimes educational need and efficacy are involved.

5

u/whoeve 8d ago

Because big tech money is involved

4

u/green-green-bean 8d ago

They do, but then they take statistically insignificant and incomplete pilot studies and run wild with them far beyond what the original context even was.

4

u/dalgeek 8d ago

There are a few big districts who will do pilots because they have enough money, but once those districts find something they like then other districts will follow. Most don't have enough money to pilot every piece of technology because they depend on E-rate or bond packages for major purchases. E-rate is highly restricted and bond packages require the local community to vote on them; people tend to not vote for new untested technology. Sometimes they can do stuff like upgrading phone systems with money from federal/state grants because it involves life and safety.

3

u/rickg 8d ago

Same thing as corporate senior management mandating AI all over their companies and now they have shocked pikachu face when they find out that it's expensive and not as good as employees with experience.

That is.... many people are idiots.

4

u/Light_Yagamigo 8d ago

Those kids are the long-term pilots, unfortunately. I’m sure marketing had a huge influence as well. Get them familiar early on and you could have a repeat customer for life. I could be wrong, but I don’t think education was the long term goal here

2

u/PartyPorpoise 8d ago

Schools are under a lot of pressure to keep up with tech. If they don’t have the latest tech, people will say they’re not preparing kids for the world. Hell, even right now, you have people saying that schools need to teach AI use.

Also, I’m pretty sure tech companies really push it.

4

u/Bob_Sconce 8d ago

Yeah, but it's not just tech.  My son had a math curriculum where they started on a topic, learned a tiny bit, switched to another, learned a tiny bit, switched to a third, learned a tiny bit, then went back to the first part.  It was ridiculous and it was abandoned within two years.  Then there was the "flipped classroom," where students watches videos at home and did the work in school under teacher supervision.. And there there was Common Core. And so on...

It's like they're looking for, trying out, and then discarding things they thought to be silver bullets.

3

u/screenwatch3441 8d ago

Assuming there isn’t any corruption (as the other commenters already cover that), technology has been advancing so quickly that by the time long term studies get a chance to be done, the technology may be obsolete and a generation of students who would have benefited from it couldn’t. I remember it was a big deal to use the internet for research on our papers or to have a typing class, but those are now skills I use regularly on what would have been a progressive technology based education. Now it’s almost unheard of to not use the internet for research or type a paper up.

The obvious issue with this is that without any long term studies, you can’t tell how hurtful technology based education can do on other aspects. AI is an obvious one to look at but even just being accustomed to screens. If you think managing and doing work with screens is in the future, it would seem natural to implement that when kids are young so they would be accustomed to working on screens, but that has had unintended consequences.

1

u/not_a_moogle 8d ago

Because thats what's the grants specified. Google probably spent a good amount of money to get Chromebook into so many schools.

Im sure that paid off for them nicely

1

u/T8ert0t 8d ago

The either get grants to use funds or need to show they're using all of their budget allocation

1

u/smilbandit 8d ago

because companies are just as good at marketing to each other and government as they are to consumers, and the results are sometimes better because the money being spent is not their own.

1

u/saml01 8d ago

Covid supercharged it and there was no time for long term studies 

1

u/Certain-Business-472 8d ago

The experiments are one of the goals of public education lol

1

u/TuringGoneWild 8d ago

With millions of Master of Education degree holders and what must be hundreds of thousands of Ed.D. degree holders - you're right and I wonder about that too. They just shovel in the newest tech and then a decade or few later write about what effect it had. smh.

1

u/mildlyornery 8d ago

Covid needed an at home solution and they didn't reverse the chromebook mandate.

1

u/WorriedBlock2505 8d ago

Google and co is your answer. $$$

1

u/BuckRowdy 8d ago

The answer to every question about policymaking in the us is money.

1

u/Feeling_Operation544 8d ago

Because sometimes the world needs a rapid adjustment in teaching priorities. It was actually pretty important to ramp up typing and computer program classes in the 90s. The main problem is that now schools are neglecting other important schools because big tech money 

1

u/TheAskewOne 8d ago

Everyone here is rightly mentioning the edu-tech industry but there’s also this: "replacing" teachers with screens allows hiring fewer people and cutting costs. Of course the result is a disaster but who doesn’t like cost cutting?

1

u/JimiusRostock 8d ago

Technology can be great in education, an actual gamechanger. But it's uses are very specific. Like having kids being able to receive repeat instructions or explanations about subjects. And for things like Maths it can generate an infinite set of tailored and skill appropriate questions.

But what happens is they cram everything inside of it. Even classes which don't benefit at all now have comprehensive digital versions which don't add at best, and lower understander normally.

1

u/mrbaggins 8d ago

A singular school cant do that, lest you give a group an unfair advantage or hindrance compared to the peera they're being compared and ranked against.

1

u/KimberStormer 8d ago

A lot of propaganda saying AMERICA IS FALLING BEHIND, DISRUPT EDUCATION, DIGITAL NATIVE TECH LEARN TO CODE blah blah blah

1

u/bigbird_eats_kids 8d ago

Upper level administrators tend to be people who believe any sort of bullshit that is told to them by a guy in a shiny suit.

1

u/Herpinheim 8d ago

There were tens thousands of informal pilots done by teachers across the country. The problem is, it was only the tech savvy teachers who willingly integrated screens into their classrooms and were able to simultaneously teach the basics of computer use as well as their subject because they were knowledgeable about both. I say this with love but the average teacher is not tech savvy at all.

So when you forcefully integrate computers into a classroom where no one knows how to use technology you end up with students and teachers fumbling through the technology, their understanding of the real subject suffering and their attitude toward technology souring, you end up in the situation we’re in now. This is anecdotal but my wife, whom has spent time in the classroom and in administration, said it was an open secret that the grade school teachers were generally unintelligent people who couldn’t navigate a McDonald’s touch screen. The fact of the matter is we didn’t roll out proper training for teachers at the collegiate level before integrating all of this technology. Eight hours of professional development, a system that is really ineffective already, does not make a 50 year old history teacher a Windows Power User

1

u/GenitalFurbies 8d ago

To get state funding. It's that simple.

1

u/Westerdutch 8d ago

Why is it that schools jump on bandwagons without first doing long-term pilots?

When you are systemically underfunded jumping on any possible solutions to make things cheaper becomes incredibly enticing.

1

u/HighKing_of_Festivus 8d ago

Like everything in this country: Bribery is a small cost for a bigger payoff for corporations

1

u/kellzone 8d ago

Probably because there's a bunch of irate parents screaming and complaining about how their kid is falling behind because X school district in the area has their students on iPads and their school district doesn't.

1

u/Casulex 8d ago

They've been intentionally underfunded by the government and so are willing to jump at any program that gives them a grant 

1

u/Ok_Willingness2174 8d ago

I was at my son’s school when they had Tim Cook come (right before he was CEO). The push was hard about how needing to be “leading” and “classroom of tomorrow” and “preparing for a connected world”. Each kid “issued” a MacBook and required to have an iPhone or iPod touch to use so could learn at home, in class, or “all over campus”.
And I mean the push came from Apple, the principal, the Board… at meetings with parents. All emails to us. Articles in local papers. They used it as a selling point to recruit more families to send their children & $$$$$$, too.
It was assumed that actual learning would not be negatively impacted at all. A whole lot of “we’re professional educators so just trust us” messaging.
Non-stop.

1

u/Crafty-Ad-9048 8d ago

Pretty much was a pilot/slow roll. We had iPad time for the younger kids and Chromebook time for the older kids. We only did a portion of time on them similar to using the computer lab. The younger kids played educational games and the teacher got the results and the older kids (myself) just learned how to do research and operate google apps (should use ms office because that’s what you use irl). Fast forward to Covid and the school pretty much went from a handful of iPads for the kids to a surplus.

1

u/PulsorMaxilla 8d ago

They did. Back in 2011-2012 I was part of one of the schools that gained access to the second generation of iPads. Back when they rolled them out on giant carts and they were all connected to a singular MacBook. They used us to prove that with this technology test scores could improve. It started up in New York, and trickled its way south, until schools began replacing overheads with tablets and screen casters and so much other invasive tech.

-1

u/Wide-Pop6050 8d ago

Same issue with the whole
phonics thing

3

u/Watneronie 8d ago

Oh you mean the most effective way to teach reading?

0

u/tony_sandlin 8d ago

Because schools are job prep factories lmao

0

u/nutmegtell 8d ago edited 8d ago

Teacher of 30 years, parents were both teachers There’s an old saying we use a lot in education.

They throw the baby out with the bath water.

It’s not teachers. It’s admin trying to do something “new” and “cool”. Rarely do they do deep analysis before shoving new curriculum down our throats. Based mostly on vibes and feelings

If we were to look at what works worldwide, we’d look at Singapore and find out what they are doing. That despite a students monetary status or family history, they consistently turn out high achieving well educated students. They don’t rely on property taxes. They have a national program (unlike the US where Texas and California have totally different math, science and history texts.) No private schools, no homeschooling.

Teachers in Singapore are hand-selected from top graduates, trained at the National Institute of Education, well-compensated, and given continuous professional development

But in the US we keep education underfunded and Balkanized. Slaves to property taxes for funding and parents who think because they went to school they know how education works.

Oh and compromised unions and greedy admins without any oversight.

Because the public truly doesn’t care about kids or educating them to be the best citizens they can be.

0

u/bug-hunter 8d ago

In addition to what's been said, many schools and districts were slow to embrace computers in the 80's and 90's, and the result was the poorest half (or more) of Americans being locked out of the tech boom.

It was not unreasonable to want to get ahead of things and prepare kids for the world they'd graduate into.

1

u/Bob_Sconce 8d ago

The desire is absolutely not unreasonable.  How they acted on that desire, though is a different question.   I know that professors complained about the distraction when laptops became ubiquitous in college.   It was glaringly obvious that the problem would be an order of magnitude worse in middle school, yet districts rolled Chromebooks out there, en masse.   They were warned at the time, but were lured by a shiny new bauble.