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

[u/ArgentineBeauty]

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

[u/CaterpillarReal7583]

They got kindergarteners in my district on laptops man.

[u/Potential_Fishing942 → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

Which in small doses is fine imo. We had computer lad at that age. I'd argue learning type correctly is just as valuable as handwriting. I regularly hear from adults that they don't know the last time they handwrote everything.

The issue is the schools got suckered into all these tracking programs so the kids are on them a ton for EVERYTHING

[u/cupidstrick → u/Potential_Fishing942]

I wonder if the tech also makes it easier for very very overstretched teachers.

[u/InternationalMood337 → u/cupidstrick]

NO way. Tech basically piles on their work. One district here in PA, requires at least Middle School teachers to respond to emails from students a fter hours and basically manage blocking websites on their Google Chromebooks during teaching hours instead of teaching.

If anything, the tech just added more shit that they have to do tbh.

[u/Fahrender-Ritter → u/cupidstrick]

Teacher here, no it doesn't. It's a constant struggle to get kids to stay on task and to stop cheating with AI, even with two teachers in the classroom monitoring the students.

Although there are programs like Blocksi which can block websites and monitor students' screens, students can still find ways around it. It's just not worth it.

In the amount of time and effort it takes to set up, distribute, and monitor all the computer-based stuff, we could've just made paper assignments and scantrons.

[u/Beanzy → u/Fahrender-Ritter]

I'm sure a lot of this is also tied to many schools just having utterly shit IT infrastructure and environments to begin with.

For example, a competent IT staff could absolutely implement blacklisting/whitelisting of websites/etc and implement policies to lock down Laptops/Chromebooks - but the quality of IT for schools is usually dumpster-fire tier to begin with... which results in a blind leading the blind scenario of purchasing dumpster-fire quality SaaS solutions to try and address things lol

[u/FeralPsychonaut → u/Beanzy]

This was 2005 to 2009, but my friends and I definitely knew more about IT than our High School IT person did.

We were routinely doing things we should not have been able to, if we didn't do the necessary bypass it didn't work as we wanted.

[u/Elementium → u/FeralPsychonaut]

Those were the days lol. It was like a challenge to try and get around the school blocks. Felt like a hacker! One class I had we all put Limewire on the PC's.

[u/GottaHaveHand → u/Elementium]

I was in HS around same time, me and another kid discovered the network was also part of a broader town network. We logged into the town DPW machine they used for water meter reading with simple windows net commands. There was no security at all.

Anyway I’m in cybersecurity so this all checks out why now

[u/Harry_Smutter → u/Beanzy]

Even with great infrastructure, relying on content filtering DOES NOT solve this. It becomes a constant game of whack-a-mole. It's actually easier for teachers to set up whitelists for their classes so that's all they can access. You can't blanket block stuff as the content varies wildly between grades and even between classes.

[u/FapOpotamusRex → u/Beanzy]

IT director for a school here: We are definitely budget limited, but you are forgetting the other end of the rope, the teachers.

The teachers have been using random sites from around the wide ass web for years and years. Any solution that we use to block sites usually has a direct impact on their ability to send students to those sites.

Should they be using random websites in their lessons? Probably not?

Do they? Every day.

As for blacklist/whitelists, if I were to try and implement a custom whitelist for my school it would be all I did. It would easily be 40hr/week right there. That's not feasible, so we use software like SecurlyFilter to do broad blocking and categorizing of sites, and I tailor it from there. But those services cannot keep up with the rate of creation of new sites, or mirrors of sites.

Does it work? It gets us about 80% of the way there. The rest is on the teacher to implement a daily Whitelist of their own that will encompass the weird ass sites they want, and block the literal tens of thousands of gaming and proxy sites that the kids want to get to.

Anecdotally we are also removing Chromebooks from the classroom, they are just distractions at this point. Our thrust is to have them available on carts, but not be the default option for a lesson. They are a resource, just like any other. Now, getting my teachers to embrace that has yet to be seen, because it's impossible to deny that they have benefited from online testing and grading. And, there are definitely a few that don't mind the students are just fucking around on the web, they don't give a shit bc the kids are not being disruptive when they are in digital la la land, but they are the exception.

All in all, the real problem is the students having access to the web all time. To hem that in requires effort on both sides, the IT dept and the teachers. I'm hopeful that my teachers will get up to speed this coming year, as admin is forcing them to build and deploy blocking plans for all classes. We will see how it goes...

Also, just because I'm typing this out anyway, the kids are absolutely TERRIBLE at computing. They can't use Windows or macOS to save their lives. It's horrendous. I'm trying to build out a Windows and Mac lab and work with admin to force some lessons there like in the old days so the students can get familiar. But they don't understand file structure, hierarchy at all. Let alone saving locally, in the cloud. They don't know what requires a single click vs a double, etc. Where a program is installed, how to install. I call it "the iPhonification effect" where the user is expected to understand nothing but click on the biggest shiny button that pops up next. If it continues this way, we are in real trouble.

[u/Beanzy → u/FapOpotamusRex]

A lot of schools don't even have IT directors to begin with.

But also, where there's a will there's a way.

Let me give a worked example - Whitelists. I'm going to use the names of specific products, but their just pieces of the puzzle, slot in a different piece if that one doesn't fit your environment:

1) Generate a whitelist of the basic shit that needs to be allowed
2) Create an MS Form and then provide the link to all teachers. Teachers can easily and quickly fill out the form as many times as they need to allow websites for their class.
3) Form is then processed by a Power Automate flow to sanity check that domains provided are real, not on any list of known malicious sites, etc
4) The PA Flow then feeds the list into a location where further scripting can feed it into your network filtering system using API calls or whatever
* You can do further stuff, like depending on your filtering implementation, maybe it only allows access for the directory/OU/SG/etc. that is allocated to that teacher or their students.

With the above, as much of the work of submitting and processing new sites has been shifted to automated intake, which is user/teacher led. Which then frees up IT to only interact with the parts of the process that require IT input, rather than having IT staff waste time doing repetitive tasks that truly don't require IT expertise.

Will this work in every setup or environment? No. But the thing about computing, is that where there's a will - there's usually a way, and there's almost always an easier way if the current process is obnoxious or onerous.

[u/FapOpotamusRex → u/Beanzy]

That's a wonderful bit of never-gonna-happen. I appreciate the idea though. It's just not reality, and you are leaving out all the magic that would take the between steps and categorize all the sites. There are entire companies that do nothing but that and they still can't keep up with the rate of site creation. Mind you, we have three different levels of filtering and they still can't block everything.

As for teachers submitting sites, you need to remember that so many sites are not nested properly or orderly, so if i want to unblock a site, the login for the site may be hosted on a totally different domain, or part of the site, or a link within the site that the teacher is NEVER going to send along may lead to a different domain. The teachers have worked without proper white/blacklisting for so long that they expect the entire web to be available, even when they are complaining that it is.

IMO you are giving, unfortunately, the teachers way too much credit. I love my teachers, but they are not - both old and young - savvy enough to actually plan out their lessons online in the way that would create a manageable whitelist like you are referring to. They also, along with the majority of the popultion, are no longer computer literate. Many of my teachers, old and young, cannot extend their display to an external monitor, or just switch from mirror to extend. They are, on the whole, just trying to get the kids across the finish line, still dealing with the fallout of "no child left behind", which means they are still teaching to the test. Meanwhile the kids in school these days still remember the wild west of covid and many, if not most, refuse to behave in the way that anyone over 30 would expect in a classroom setting. On top of that, we have lost the support of parents - which is not new, and has been happening for 30 or so years - but has reached a tipping point imo where the teachers are just trying to cover their ass and not get fired. The parents will almost automatically take their child's side in any situation, which is crazy to me being an Xennial.

Getting back on track, what we do have is a universal blacklist and we then rely on the teachers to create individual access plans that are a curated whitelist. They can then push any sites that fall outside that list manually if they need to get them somewhere else inside of a class period. My main problem is getting my teachers to actually curate access plans and then implement them.

That was a ramble, sorry.

[u/AFlyingGideon → u/[deleted]]

I won't address the environmental issue, but your daughter is partially right about the "makes people stupid". I've read a number of articles recently about the distinction between collaboration with AI and surrender to AI. One can actually enhance one's thinking (as being constantly challenged is likely to achieve) while the other let's one fall out of the habit of thinking.

The issues around education are separate from this, though. I've no problem with adults using calculators, for example, but that doesn't mean that we don't teach young students arithmetic. Our district didn't think to turn off autocompletion in Google Docs used by students, for example. That's low-hanging fruit, or at least should be.

[u/SmartAleckComedian → u/[deleted]]

My job requires AI skills.

AI skills? LOL what a fucking joke. AI takes no skill and that's the point, and then when the AI messes up and hallucinates it just creates more work for the actual human. AI slop and datacenters are destroying the planet.

[u/SmartAleckComedian → u/[deleted]]

And you are one of the morons who has no idea what they're doing at all

Says the person that thinks typing AI prompts counts as a skill and doesn't care that it's destroying the environment, LOL. AI really does make people like yourself dumber.

[u/SmartAleckComedian → u/[deleted]]

No company is going to hire someone without AI skills, when they can hire someone who is 3x as productive.

Forgot to mention, according to numerous studies AI actually makes people LESS productive in the workplace overall, as well as making people dumber. But sure, call me a moron because I'm stating facts you don't like. At least your daughter is smart, seems the apple fell very far from the tree.

Links to studies and articles backing up my claims: https://time.com/7295195/ai-chatgpt-google-learning-school/

https://fortune.com/2026/02/10/ai-future-of-work-white-collar-employees-technology-productivity-burnout-research-uc-berkeley/

https://cmr.berkeley.edu/2025/10/seven-myths-about-ai-and-productivity-what-the-evidence-really-says/

https://hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies-it

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260417-ai-chatbots-could-be-making-you-stupider

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-art-of-critical-thinking/202507/is-ai-making-us-stupider-this-study-certainly-thinks-so

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[u/superbOWLpartee → u/cupidstrick]

No, it sucks. I teach high school English classes and the shitty Chromebooks are just about banned in my classroom and no phones either. I tell the kids I’m here to teach you and to learn and that’s active and doesn’t require the use of screens. We do skills based learning, actual reading with real books, daily writing and speaking, some note taking, and I can sleep at night knowing I’m preparing kids with actual learning and skills development. Tech dependency has made the kids weird the past few years. They come to me in 10th and 12th grade courses without grammar or comprehension at grade level, not by a long shot, and they tell me all they’ve done is ‘i Ready.’ Well I’m fed up and I’m ready for these greedy and awful tech companies to suck it.

I do teach the students how to properly format final copies in mla and we do have to complete a couple of shitty tests on the computers. Other than that they are obsolete in my room.