Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2026 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “What rules should govern the uses of digital technology in schools—and who should set them?” Learn more.
A well-designed playground invites children to explore, test their limits, and build skills. Children with different needs and abilities find meaningful challenges in its equipment; fences, regular inspections, and attentive adults help keep play safe.
Our classrooms deserve the same thoughtful design. Throughout my career, I have watched technology open doors when it is grounded in strong instruction and clear learning expectations. Personalized tools can scaffold student access to challenging learning experiences, offer just-right support and practice that builds on classroom learning, and give students different ways to show what they know. Timely, actionable feedback helps students and teachers recognize student strengths and identify where additional learning is needed. Just as on the playground, clear boundaries and intentional safety planning create the conditions for students to explore, take on new challenges, and achieve more.
I have walked through hundreds of classrooms and seen that purposeful limits on screen time, along with keeping personal phones away during the school day, help students focus, think deeply, and engage in face-to-face discussions.
In my coaching conversations with state and district leaders, I hear a growing tension. Schools are restricting personal phones, reconsidering screen time, and responding to safety concerns, even as AI enters classrooms faster than many can set expectations for its use. Families want to know what their children are doing with AI, how they are protected, and whether these tools improve learning. I believe classrooms can effectively use AI tools by proactively building structures and systems to manage the safety concerns.
Design the learning before choosing the tool
Before students log in, teachers should be able to answer three questions: What will students learn? Is this technology approved? How will the device enhance the learning experience? Playground equipment is not the goal; the skills children develop through challenge and practice are. Likewise, time spent on a device is not evidence of learning.
Screen expectations should reflect students’ ages and learning goals. Creating a presentation, practicing with immediate feedback, using a screen reader, and passively watching a video are different uses.
Students of every age need time with printed texts, civil discourse, physical manipulatives, and hands-on investigations. Effective teachers know their students and the outcomes of a lesson. Young children need room to learn away from screens, with brief, teacher-guided activities and shared devices woven into the day when they add something meaningful. Older students may need longer stretches for research, writing, coding, or simulations.
Yet regardless of a student’s age, I come back to one question: Is the screen in service of learning?
Proactively structure governance collaboratively
We would not wait for a child to get hurt before checking a playground fence or inspecting its equipment. Schools deserve the same kind of care with technology. When they wait for a privacy breach, unsafe use, or instructional failure to set expectations, students bear the risk and learning is disrupted. States and districts should build the safeguards before tools reach students and keep checking them as products rapidly evolve.
States should set clear baseline standards for instructional quality, accessibility, privacy, security, and age appropriateness while providing districts with guidance and evaluation resources. Districts should bring specialized expertise to product review and approval.
Before approving a tool, districts should examine evidence of learning impact, accessibility, privacy, security, age appropriateness, and bias. They should test realistic and unexpected uses, including how a tool handles incorrect information, inappropriate requests, or interactions that could expose students to harm. Teachers’ knowledge of instruction and students belongs in those conversations, but they should not have to investigate every product’s safety and effectiveness on their own. Contracts should limit data collection and retention and prohibit vendors from using identifiable student information to train commercial models. A product’s reputation should not substitute for evidence about what its current version does; significant new features, especially AI capabilities, should receive a fresh review.
Set boundaries that support exploration
A fence does not make a playground less inviting; it gives children room to explore safely. Personal phones should be off and stored during the school day, with appropriate medical and accessibility exceptions and a reliable emergency communication process through the school. School-managed devices should provide access to approved instructional resources while limiting distractions from notifications, entertainment platforms, and unrestricted browsing.
States can help by setting baseline expectations for learning, privacy, accessibility, and safety and giving districts guidance to apply these expectations within their own context. Districts can then pilot tools against learning goals, listen to students, families, and educators, and revisit decisions when products change or concerns arise. Like a playground, an approved tool still needs attention; if it no longer meets expectations, its use should pause until the problem is resolved.
Those safeguards should leave room for teachers to respond to individual students. A student with a disability may need assistive technology; an English learner may benefit from translation or audio support. Students can show what they know through an oral explanation, a handwritten response, or a digital presentation. Teachers know their students and the lesson and should choose the approach that best supports each child’s learning. To me, clear boundaries are the fences around the classroom playground: they make room for technology to strengthen learning without letting screen time become the point.
Every stakeholder has a role in getting this right
A playground stays safe because people care for it every day. At the school level, leaders make expectations clear, apply them consistently, surface concerns, and help staff respond. Teachers choose purposeful uses within those safeguards and share what they learn about each tool’s impact on students.
Families, too, should be able to see what is happening on the playground. Families need clear, accessible information about device rules, screen use, AI expectations, emergency procedures, and data protections. Before introducing an AI tool, schools can explain its purpose, describe what information it collects, and tell families how to raise concerns. Workshops and translated guides can help families discuss privacy, evaluate digital information, and understand how AI is used in schoolwork.
Children can choose a path, try something difficult, learn from one another, and return to play with greater confidence because the space has been thoughtfully designed and cared for. I want our classrooms to offer that same promise: technology that expands what students can do, with the care and judgment that keep student learning at the center.
