Jessica Baghian Kunjan Narechania
10.23.2026
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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.

It’s understandable why state education leaders don’t want to touch the edtech debate with a ten-foot pole.

After years of schools buying seemingly every new technology under the sun, the backlash is here. Parents are (rightfully) worried about how much time their children spend staring at screens. Teachers are exhausted by the sheer number of products they’re expected to use—and train students to use. Policymakers are responding with proposals to restrict technology in classrooms, and the edtech industry is watching nervously to see what comes next.

For a state chief, there’s very little political upside to wading into this conversation. Say something positive about technology, and you risk looking out of touch with parents and educators. Push back against sweeping bans, and you risk being labeled a defender of the very industry people are frustrated with.

Regardless of where you fall on the “tech is good” versus “tech is bad” continuum, decisions about technology in classrooms are being made every day, whether state leaders engage or not. If states don’t take an active role in shaping those decisions, someone else will.

Chiefs don’t have to be champions of technology. They have to be champions of excellent instruction. Right now, that means taking responsibility for the role technology plays in classrooms.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

1. Start with the academic vision, not the technology.

The biggest mistake we can make is treating edtech as its own strategy, separate from the work of improving teaching and learning.

We’ve ended up in the current edtech predicament in part because technology decisions have become disconnected from academic strategy. IT teams, multilingual learner leads, special education directors, and curriculum leaders are often making purchasing decisions independently, while vendors are eager to sell them the next solution. The result is a patchwork of tools that may each serve a purpose but don’t necessarily add up to better instruction.

Strong state leadership should start with a clear vision for what excellent instruction looks like in literacy, math, and other core subjects. The state’s chief academic officer should be in the driver’s seat, bringing teams across the agency together to make sure technology decisions support that vision.

Take literacy, for example. Say your vision is that every student reads authentic, grade-level texts and has opportunities to write and speak about the ideas in those texts.

To make that vision a reality for every kid, we have to get specific about the support students and teachers need. Maybe multilingual learners need help building the vocabulary to access those texts. Maybe students struggling to decode multisyllabic words need targeted practice to read them accurately and fluently.

These are specific instructional needs that technology might help address.

So when a vendor comes knocking with a product promising to revolutionize reading instruction, you know what you’re looking for. You’re interested in tools that address those needs, not a product that wants to replace your core curriculum with an entirely different approach to reading.

2. Don’t wait for perfect evidence. Build it.

Once you’ve identified where technology might add value, the next step is to test that hypothesis.

We worry that our response to the edtech backlash will be to swing too far in the other direction: demanding that every product come with years of peer-reviewed research before we even consider putting it in a classroom.

This is no knock on evidence; we should absolutely expect vendors to demonstrate that their products improve student learning. But many emerging technologies don’t yet have that evidence base. States have an opportunity to help build that evidence through small, carefully designed pilots in real classrooms.

Consider our literacy example. If a state sees potential for technology to help multilingual learners build vocabulary and access grade-level texts, here’s how it might test that idea:

  1. Start small. Recruit a handful of districts willing to test a few promising tools. Invite vendors to participate and be clear from the outset about what you’re trying to learn.
  2. Learn from what happens in classrooms. Give teachers time to use the products and provide feedback. Look at student learning, and pay attention to what teachers are experiencing, too.
  3. Make decisions based on what you learn. Stop using tools that aren’t improving student learning. Work with vendors to refine products that show early signs of effectiveness but still need improvement. For tools that are delivering results, figure out what it would take to bring them to more schools.

When we were working in Louisiana, we piloted everything from curriculum to professional development to high school pathways. We started with a handful of classrooms to understand what was working and what needed improvement, both in the materials themselves and in how teachers were using them. We took what we learned, made adjustments to the materials and implementation support, and then expanded to more schools.

We can take the same approach with edtech, identifying tools that could support a state’s academic vision and testing them in classrooms before making large-scale investments.

3. Use what you learn to curate the marketplace.

Once states have identified which tools work, they can make it easier for districts to buy those tools and harder for ineffective products to keep finding their way into classrooms.

If a state has piloted vocabulary tools with multilingual learners and identified which products improve student learning, it can use those findings to create a vetted list of tools that districts can easily purchase and implement. States can also use their purchasing power to push vendors to improve their products and better meet schools’ instructional needs.

As we often say at Watershed, the goal is to make the right choices, the easy choices: Give vendors a reason to build what schools actually need and help districts choose tools that improve student learning.

State leaders need to own this.

Technology will continue to evolve, and the debate over its place in classrooms isn’t going away. There will always be another product promising to transform education, another concern about screen time, and another round of calls for more or less technology in schools.

State leaders don’t need to have all the answers about where technology is headed. But the best leaders know what they’re trying to accomplish for students—and take responsibility for making sure technology helps get them there.

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Lindsay Dworkin
10.23.2026
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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.

The word of 2027 seems destined to be “techlash.”

Given my role at HMH, you might expect me to be a champion of education technology. There’s certainly a lot of promise in what it can do for students and teachers, but I’m not going to defend all of it.

We, as an industry, bear some responsibility for how we got here. For too long, we’ve allowed the promise of innovation to get ahead of the evidence that our products are truly helping more students read, write, and do math. Schools have accumulated a dizzying array of apps, platforms, and digital tools, some of which have thwarted student success by fragmenting instruction or serving as little more than digital babysitters. Guidance from policymakers has been slow to come, so teachers are having to make up the rules classroom by classroom without much help.

Almost everyone I talk to is in violent agreement on the need to place some limitations on technology in classrooms. There is also widespread concern that, in a rush to regulate, policymakers will resort to blanket bans and arbitrary (and impossible to implement) screen-time limits.

But in all of this conversation, we are overlooking another important risk. We’ve spent the last decade moving away from disconnected and poor instructional materials toward more coherent, high-quality curricula. Now, with new digital tools entering classrooms faster than ever, we need to make sure they support coherent, high-quality instruction too.

Keeping the bad technology out is the easy part.

Social media platforms designed to keep users scrolling have no place competing for students’ attention during instruction. Neither do addictive algorithms, digital games masquerading as educational activities, or AI chatbots that encourage students to outsource their thinking.

The far more pressing challenge, in my view, isn’t distinguishing TikTok from an AI-powered math tutor. It’s distinguishing between educational tools that both appear well-designed and effective.

Districts use hundreds, sometimes thousands, of digital products, many with legitimate instructional purposes and credible evidence behind them. Yet even a well-designed tool can undermine instruction if it doesn’t align with the core curriculum or the district’s instructional vision.

We’ve learned this lesson through the high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) movement, and now we need to apply it to technology.

We can’t afford to recreate the curriculum problem we just spent a decade fixing.

Not long ago, curriculum was something of a free-for-all in most places. Teachers were largely left to piece together their own lessons, spending hours searching sites like Teachers Pay Teachers and pulling resources from dozens of different places. What students learned often depended on what their teacher could find, with little assurance that those lessons built on one another, aligned with grade-level expectations, or prepared students for what came next.

Over the past decade, states and districts have worked hard to change that. The HQIM movement has helped establish clearer expectations for curriculum quality, supported independent reviews, and made it easier for schools to adopt coherent, evidence-based materials.

However, just as we’ve made great strides toward getting coherent, high-quality instruction into more classrooms, AI threatens to reintroduce the very fragmentation we’ve spent years trying to eliminate.

We can already see how this might play out. Teacher A uses an AI tool connected to the district’s curriculum to reinforce the concepts and strategies students are learning. Teacher B uses a standalone chatbot to generate lessons and activities that introduce different instructional approaches or content students aren’t yet ready for.

You could end up with two teachers working right next door to each other delivering very different instruction, even though they’re technically using the same curriculum. Just like that, years of hard work and significant investments in high-quality materials and coherent instruction could go out the window.

I believe technology has an important place in classrooms. I also believe the same high standards we’ve established for curriculum should apply to digital tools.

It’s time to bring some coherence to edtech

The good news is that we don’t have to start from scratch; we’ve already learned a great deal about what it takes to bring quality and coherence to classroom instruction. Now we need to apply those lessons to this new era of digital tools.

Schools need to take a holistic look at the technology in their classrooms. School leaders should take stock of the tools they’re already using and ask whether they’re improving instruction, both individually and together. Are they reinforcing the core curriculum? Are they serving distinct instructional purposes, or are teachers juggling multiple platforms that do essentially the same thing? Just as importantly, are those tools being used as intended?

Districts need to establish a clear vision for quality and hold their technology investments accountable to it. District leaders should set high expectations for student outcomes, including what students learn, the pace and sequence of instruction, and how digital tools complement the core curriculum. Those expectations should guide which tools districts invest in and how they measure their impact on student learning. Procurement models like outcomes-based contracting can reinforce accountability by tying a portion of provider payment to measurable student learning goals.

States should use their policy levers to curate a higher-quality, more coherent marketplace. We’ve seen through the HQIM movement how states can influence what gets adopted in classrooms. They can do the same for edtech, using evidence standards, independent reviews, procurement guidance, and funding policies to help districts identify and adopt higher-quality tools. States don’t need to dictate which tools every district uses, but they can make it easier for districts to choose wisely.

Education companies need to build products that are grounded in learning science, coherent with high-quality instructional materials, and capable of delivering student progress. Providers should be clear about what their products are designed to do, how they support core instruction, and the conditions necessary for them to improve student learning. And we should expect—demand even—to be held accountable for results when the tools are used as designed.

The current backlash against classroom technology should be a wake-up call for our industry to do better on all these fronts. I can only speak for HMH, but we’re taking these concerns seriously. We’re working to be more transparent about our products, more intentional about when and how students use screens, and more accountable for ensuring that the time students spend with our technology serves a clear instructional purpose. We won’t always get everything right, but we’re committed to listening, learning, and improving.

Figuring out tech in schools is a team sport.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the push for high-quality instructional materials, it’s that meaningful improvements in classrooms don’t happen in isolation.

Whether you’re developing educational products, leading a school district, or setting state policy, we each have a role to play in making sure technology strengthens instruction instead of fragmenting it.

We’ve spent a decade moving away from disconnected lessons and piecemeal instruction; we shouldn’t let the next generation of technology take us right back where we started.

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Caitlin Lucas
10.23.2026
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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.

When Chromebooks first made their way into my kindergarten classroom, there’s no other word to describe how I felt other than relieved. Coming out of a Covid lockdown, I had just survived an entire school year educating kindergarteners fully online. Every student having consistent devices where I could give the same directions, troubleshoot identical programs, and deliver consistent instruction felt luxurious.

Somehow, that relief morphed into something entirely different. My kindergarteners were spending approximately 40 minutes a day on Chromebooks, and I was exchanging unreasonable amounts of instructional time teaching them how to access technology instead of actually teaching—blocking off two to three entire afternoons teaching login usernames filled with letters, numbers, and symbols that held absolutely no meaning to them. Once logged in, I was monitoring GoGuardian to ensure students weren’t attempting YouTube, clicking around aimlessly, or drawing on their screens instead of completing their assignments.

I had the technology, so I used the technology. But using technology and actually learning from technology were two different things. When I explained once what technology in education has morphed into, all I could compare it to is walking down the grocery store aisle. There are now an overwhelming amount of options. Overconsumption is incredibly easy when everything is available. However, just because it is available doesn’t mean it should all be in our cart. Educational technology has reached a similar point. Districts have invested millions in devices, subscriptions, and digital programs. But purchasing something shouldn’t become the justification for continuing to use it.

In 2024, I made the decision not to pull those login cards out in October. What did my students gain? Well, more targeted intervention time with a teacher who is explicitly trained to identify their individual needs, someone who can tell the difference between a child pushing the wrong button and a child who doesn’t understand the content. Regardless of what a program can tell you, it cannot replace a teacher’s professional judgment. My students had the time I just “couldn’t find” to focus on fine motor development, play skills, and most importantly, speaking and learning through interaction.

My decision to remove routine Chromebook use from my kindergarten classroom is often met with a silent eyeroll and the assumption that I’m anti-technology. I’m not. I use technology every day. It helps me organize instruction, communicate with families, and work more efficiently. For students with disabilities, advancements in communication and accessibility technology can be life changing. I’m grateful for those tools. As an adult, I have the experience to recognize when technology is beneficial and when it’s a distraction, a time eater, or unnecessary. Children don’t have that same ability, which is why intentionality is critical.

Some hard questions have to be asked and answered. Is this technology actually improving a child’s education? Is it teaching something more effectively? Or, to ask a more uncomfortable question, has it become one of the few times during a teacher’s day when they can breathe? I understand that temptation because I’m a teacher. But if technology is primarily solving a problem with staffing, behavior, or the demands placed on teachers, we need to address that problem rather than pretending we’re improving instruction.

Who makes these decisions? What should the policies be? Everyone—states, districts, school leaders, teachers, and even parents—needs to have a meaningful voice.

State leaders can initiate this by providing clear definitions around technology and screen time. Based on these definitions, districts can then set their own grade-level policies around usage. Personally, I would advocate for zero independent device use in kindergarten with opportunities increasing as students begin using it for writing, researching, coding, and other meaningful learning.

Expectations must remain for students with disabilities, English learners, and courses where technology is the subject learned. Teachers must be granted discretion to make instructional decisions within those exceptions.

Districts should provide families with a weekly screen time report. As a parent, I am updated on attendance, and even their school lunch balance. However, I have no idea how much time my child spends on their Chromebooks each day. Why shouldn’t parents know how much time their children spend on school-issued devices?

I would like districts to provide it in a simple report every Friday showing device time usage on which programs. This should not come through the teachers as an added responsibility and should be fairly simple to populate and likely at no extra cost considering most school districts already use device management software like GoGuardian or Lightspeed.

I think this information could potentially lead to necessary yet uncomfortable conversations about our own practices. Teachers are often quick to point fingers at parents regarding lax boundaries around YouTube and video games and blame students’ constant dopamine hits at home for their apathy in schools. But a lot of educators are just as culpable for the time children spend on education games at school. If we want parents to be intentional about their screen time, then we need to be just as transparent about our own.

My third policy suggestion is simple: Every program should be evaluated against one question. What does this provide that students couldn’t learn just as well through another method?

Sometimes the answer will strongly favor technology. Other times, the same learning could happen with a book, manipulatives, conversation, or pencil and paper. Even if those alternatives take longer, perhaps that additional time is part of the learning experience students actually need.

Districts should review instructional evidence, cost, accessibility, teacher feedback, and the time a program takes away from other activities. Those reviews should happen before purchasing and again before renewal. This also should happen annually. Schools should establish a process for teachers to recommend discontinuing programs that aren’t working or don’t promote transferable skills.

What do I mean by transferable skills? My sister, much younger than me, was in high school when the pandemic hit. Her educational world became one big Google Workspace. This was impressive until she hit college where professors were using Microsoft applications. Suddenly, she struggled with something as simple as saving a document as a PDF and emailing it.

Archaic? Maybe. But it made me question whether we’re teaching technological literacy or simply teaching students how to use whichever platform their district happens to purchase. Are we creating a generation of task completers or students who really know how to navigate technology meaningfully? And are we sometimes replacing intimate, raw, and yes maybe a little messy educational experiences that would be more valuable to students in the long run simply because a digital alternative is available?

These questions should be part of every district’s evaluation process. Technology committees composed of teachers representing different grades could help review programs, gather teacher feedback, and determine whether the skills being taught extend beyond the screen for an additional stipend for their work. When something isn’t worth the time or money, districts need to be bold enough to stop using it.

This conversation and the policies we need will continue to evolve. I think back to how relieved I was when those Chromebooks first arrived. They solved a real problem during a time when our country was struggling. But is technology still solving a problem or creating one? We are no longer teaching through computer screens from our living rooms. It is okay to acknowledge that we needed something then that we may not need in the same way now. We can return to books, pencils, paper, and conversation, while keeping the technology that genuinely improves education.

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Jeff Murray
10.23.2026
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News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. You have been warned.

  1. We start today’s clips with some national attention paid to Ohio’s new math instruction policies, rolling out across the state now, particularly those aimed at getting more students ready for—and into—higher-level math courses sooner. My colleague Aaron Churchill has previously discussed his take on it, concluding by saying, “Ohio lawmakers have established an admirable advanced math framework. Now it’s time to start the work of implementing these policies well.” Sounds just right to me, and thus the two local math educators quoted in the K-12 piece (Hilliard City Schools math specialist and executive director of the Ohio Council of Teachers of Mathematics) expressing clearly-stated reticence for the very basics of that implementation fill me with unease…and déjà vu. (K-12 Dive, 10/21/26)

  2. This is a very long piece—more than 2,400 words—that in my mind boils down to just 7: Districts unable to live with their means. But since every district official interviewed—often aided by the reportage—points the finger for their predicted budget shortfalls in every direction other than at themselves, it’s probably easy for folks to miss that basic point. In fact the number one issue that all of these districts have in common, declining enrollment, is mentioned in passing exactly once. Gotta show your math, folks. (Signal Akron, 10/21/26)

  3. Interestingly, the one thing the districts in the previous clip did do to try and help their bottom lines was to limit or entirely stop interdistrict open enrollment. That is, curtailing school choice for kids already exercising in the one way they could. No surprise there, then. Speaking of school choice, here’s an interesting op ed on that other effort to curtail choice—the voucher groucher lawsuit. It comes to us from Rob Scott, the Kettering Clerk of Court, and seeks to picture what private school choice will look like in Ohio after the lawsuit is finally settled. “The Ohio Supreme Court will have the final say on the constitutional dispute,” he writes, but however it turns out, he says that “the Ohio General Assembly has an opportunity to prepare for the decision rather than wait for a ruling and scramble to respond.” Among his more interesting proposals is a “report card” of sorts for private schools, which would indeed be valuable for Ohioans. Valuable in the necessary work of choosing schools for their children, whether voucher programs continue or not. “Ohio’s education system,” Scott writes, “should be judged by whether students are learning, families have options and public dollars are being used responsibly.” I like it. (The Journal-News, 10/21/26)

  4. We end today’s clips with an excellent example of community support and community building around a school. And it comes to us from Elyria, where a wide array of dignitaries were on hand—including an elected member of the Elyria City School board—to celebrate the ground breaking of Open Door Christian Schools’ new gymnasium. This and other improvements to the school are necessary because of increasing enrollment, of course, but they also celebrate 50 years of education, faith, and widespread fellowship. And if I may just add, IMHO, it’s clear that private schools are building community better than any other schools in Ohio right now. It’s a good thing, it needs to be shouted from even more rooftops, and I ain’t sorry about it. (The Chronicle-Telegram, 10/23/26)

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Policy Priority:
School Funding
Topics:
Governance
The Education Gadfly
10.23.2026
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WHAT WE’RE READING

The Supreme Court will hear a case on magnet school admissions after declining to take up two K–12 cases in the aftermath of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. Erica Meltzer has the details on the challenge from parents who argue that Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools changed its magnet admissions process to reduce the share of Asian American students.

EXTRA CREDIT:

Chad Aldeman, “Are American Schools Resegregating?” and “Where Does School Segregation Come From?”

John Arnold, “Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: Why Rising Graduation Rates May Not Be Good News”

John Bailey, “Anthropic and OpenAI should use their IPOs to invest directly in America’s kids”

Daniel Buck, “Can School Choice Make Special Education Work?”

Ellie Cash, “Democrats: Reject Vouchers, Embrace Family Agency in Public Education”

Shawn Phillip Cooper, “Students Need the Exceptional Teachers That Flexible Schools Can Hire”

Josh Cowen, “Scholarships for Public Schools”

Linda Diamond, “The Visionary We Were Taught to Reject: Why Siegfried Engelmann Still Matters”

Sharif El-Mekki and Jeanie Lee, “Male Teachers Say Mentors Got Them There. For Black Men, the Need’s Even Greater”

Michelle Goldberg, “Applying to High School in New York City Is a Soul-Destroying Nightmare”

Nat Malkus, “New Hope on Student Absenteeism”

Bruno V. Manno, “Career and Technical Ed Is Booming. Now Comes the Hard Part”

Cindy Marten and Steve Dackin, “Want to Build Better Pathways after High School? Look to the States.”

Neal McCluskey, “Beware the Return of Education Central Planning”

Harry A. Patrinos, “College Is Still the Best Investment Most People Will Ever Make”

Greg Richmond (interview with Education Next), “Leadership Is What Matters Most in a School”

Megan Schopp, “Why They Come Back”

McKenzie Snow and Angélica Infante-Green, “Improving U.S. History and Civics Education for Students Begins with the States”

Robert VerBruggen, “Why Does Education Reform (Almost) Always Fail?”

Jennifer Weber, “New York Schools Need to Stop Fixating on ‘Segregation’”

Editor's note: This was first published on Mike Petrilli's Substack, SCHOOLED, a free Substack and email newsletter restarting the education-reform conversation. Click here to subscribe for sharp analysis of the week’s biggest K–12 debates, curated commentary from across the ed-policy world, and lively discussion—including reader reactions and pushback.

The Education Gadfly
10.23.2026
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CHEERS

Teacher vacancies in Maryland are down 73 percent since the 2022–23 school year. State Superintendent Carey Wright credits “targeted investments and partnerships.” Those include the state’s Grow-Your-Own Educators grant, which helps non-licensed school staff become teachers and now prioritizes the recruitment and retention of male educators. It also seems possible that the end of federal ESSER dollars, plus declining enrollment, has shrunk the number of teachers needed. Plus, perhaps AI’s effect on early-career jobs is driving new college grads to the profession. That would be welcome!

JEERS

A team from NBC News set out to understand how students use YouTube at school. Tyler Kingkade reports on what they learned after analyzing the site histories of eleven children in grades two through 12:

In a first-of-its-kind analysis, reporters examined more than 17,000 videos through a mix of AI and manual review. More than 95 percent of the videos, which include ads, were not educational.

Five of the students viewed between 1,200 and 5,800 YouTube videos during school hours last academic year, and two others viewed more than 500 videos within just two months. (The actual figures are higher, but NBC News limited the analysis to videos that were still available to view on YouTube recently.) Hundreds of the videos contained profanity, sexually suggestive scenes or references to drugs and alcohol.

Editor's note: This was first published on Mike Petrilli's Substack, SCHOOLED, a free Substack and email newsletter restarting the education-reform conversation. Click here to subscribe for sharp analysis of the week’s biggest K–12 debates, curated commentary from across the ed-policy world, and lively discussion—including reader reactions and pushback.

Alice Mueller
10.22.2026
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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.

The rules around digital technology in schools should consist of universal simple guardrails that can then be tailored by local communities to fit their needs. We live in a world with rapidly advancing digital technology and polarized views on its moral and functional uses. However, our country is also diverse. Students and communities have different needs. Digital technology policy should reflect these needs and be built on three simple pillars—no screens in pre-K through 6th, difficult to change policy, and difficult to buy ed tech—on which local communities can add on to meet their individual needs.

My view on technology policy in schools has been shaped by experiencing two of these vastly different communities with vastly different needs. In the last year, I have gone from working at a small, alternative charter school in a low-income neighborhood of one state to a traditional comprehensive high school in an affluent neighborhood of another. When I moved, I had anticipated similar struggles around digital technology as the messaging about these in-school conflicts was so monolithic and suffusing. My reality was vastly different.

At the charter school in a low-income neighborhood, my colleagues and I were frustrated and concerned with phones—we just have to lock them up and all our concerns with motivation and social-emotional health will be cured!—and students using AI to cheat (poorly) on assignments. The school had found a solution to phones—we did lock them up—but were still floundering on the AI front. Regarding computer screen-time concerns, each classroom had a computer cart that was locked unless students needed the computers for the in-class activity.

At the traditional high school in an affluent neighborhood, students put their phones in pouches at the beginning of class and have individual computers in their backpacks. For the most part, this system works. I rarely have students sneak their phones to use in class, and students mostly use their computers for in-class work, or the occasional daily Wordle.

The technology needs of these two environments are vastly different. Before the charter school locked up phones, I could have danced on a table and students would have been too fixated on their phones to even film it. At the same time, students struggled with some basic computer navigation skills such as how to create a slideshow and may have benefited from more time to practice digital literacy skills. At the traditional high school, students are more prepared to live without their phones for a class, and have decent digital literacy skills, so the focus has been far less on technology and screens in the classroom. The same technology policy would not serve both student populations.

The differences in these two schools reflect the broader socioeconomic achievement gap in education. This gap needs to be addressed, but it will not be fixed by treating everyone the same. Rather, communities themselves should decide the needs of their students. Instead, three pillars should exist in education technology policy such that everyone is starting from the same place.

First, screens as replacements for teachers or ways to placate pre-K–6 students should not be allowed. So much social and brain development occurs during these ages that is short-cut by the presence of screens. Therefore, a universal technology policy should exist that students pre-K–6 do not have individual screens. This means that districts should not buy individual iPads or laptops for pre-K–6 students and instead focus on building the foundational skills of a learner. 

Second, technology policy should not be easy to change, modify, or shift. Too much of educational policy changes with the breeze or the current prevailing ideology. Some may argue that rapid response to change means that schools can better respond to the times and is necessary to producing citizens of the future. I think this is incorrect for two reasons. First, rapidly changing policies, especially in large institutions like schools, are usually ill-thought out and difficult to implement properly. Teaching is a craft, and everyone benefits when the policies and curriculum are evidence based, and then teachers are given the opportunity to hone their craft. Secondly, no one can predict the future. While the individual skills students need in the job market may shift, no one can exactly predict what those will be. However, the foundational skills of how to learn, how to critically think, and how to work with others will surely be necessary in the future, and those should be what schools focus on developing in their learners. We don’t need technology to teach those skills. Everything else is fluff that does not need to be changed on the latest whim.

Lastly, it should be difficult for schools and school districts to buy ed tech. Ed tech can be useful but, at the end of the day, comprises products sold by corporations trying to make money from the tax dollars funding schools. Very few are properly experimentally tested for educational gains, and even fewer are implemented with purpose and fidelity. Any teacher can describe a software their district is rolling out that they will never use. Instead, much of this technology aids putting more screens in front of students for ill-defined benefits. Therefore, it should be difficult to purchase ed tech.

The national conversation about digital technology in schools often assumes that every school is fighting the same battle. Mine weren’t. Upon these three pillars, local communities can build the digital technology policy that fits their needs and lasts through the ever-evolving technology and education landscapes.

Policy Priority:
High Expectations