We Blamed the Tests. Now We’re Blaming the Screens.

For years, parents and educators knew what they were fighting: high-stakes testing.

Families organized opt-out movements. Teachers explained how testing narrowed the curriculum, consumed instructional time, and replaced meaningful learning with test preparation. Students spent weeks taking assessments that produced scores too late to help their teachers.

Then the tests moved onto computers, and our attention moved with them. Instead of continuing to challenge the testing system, we started blaming the technology used to deliver it.

As education journalist Natasha Singer points out in a recent post about her forthcoming book, corporations were shaping what schools bought, taught, and measured long before today’s technology companies entered classrooms. Consumer-product companies supplied branded materials. Publishers sold textbooks and packaged curricula. Testing companies influenced what counted as learning and how students demonstrated it.

None of this required a screen.

Take the technology out of schools and many of those same corporations will return with paper. Testing companies will continue selling unnecessary high-stakes assessments, now with additional costs for printing, shipping, handling, and scoring. Publishers will continue selling dull, one-size-fits-all textbooks, workbooks, and scripted curricula.

We may get Big Tech out of classrooms while leaving Big Testing and Big Publishing firmly in control.

Technology Became the Convenient Target

Technology makes an easy villain because it is visible. We see the laptop on the desk and the student clicking through test-preparation programs. We do not see the contracts, purchasing decisions, accountability rules, and corporate interests determining what appears on the screen.

When students spend an hour answering low-level questions on a computer, blaming “screen time” allows the testing company, curriculum vendor, and decision-makers who purchased the program to escape scrutiny. Put those questions in a workbook and the learning does not improve.

I have made this point in Screen Time Is the Wrong Unit of Measurement and Reverting to Pen and Paper Won’t Improve Learning. Better Learning Design Will. The quality of learning depends on what students are doing, why they are doing it, and what they can do as a result. The delivery format tells us very little.

The Opt-Out Movement Had the Target Right

The opt-out movement did not argue that paper and pencils were harming children because students used them to take standardized tests. Parents challenged the tests. They questioned the instructional time lost, the misuse of scores, the pressure placed on children, and the corporations profiting from public education.

I was part of that conversation. In 12 Most Convincing Reasons to Opt Your Child Out of Standardized Tests, I helped parents understand why and how to resist excessive testing. In Common Core State Standards: The Precursor to Testing Disaster, I questioned why assessment had become synonymous with standardized testing when students could demonstrate learning through more meaningful work.

We need that same clarity now. Digital testing did not transform the underlying system. It gave the system a new delivery method. Yet the backlash has shifted from opting out of bad assessments to restricting the devices on which those assessments appear.

That shift benefits the testing and publishing industries. If the public focuses on screens, corporations can continue selling the same standardized learning model in whatever format is politically acceptable. As I argued in Laptops Did Not Take Away Their Brains. The School Model Did, blaming devices ignores what schools were asking students to do with them.

Follow the Money

If we want to identify what is shaping learning, follow the money. Technology companies are only part of the picture. Testing companies, publishers, curriculum providers, and consulting firms have profited from public education for decades. The product may change from a textbook to a platform or from a paper test to a digital one, but the business model remains.

Schools should scrutinize technology companies. Privacy, surveillance, addictive design, biased algorithms, poor-quality products, and aggressive marketing are legitimate concerns. Replacing corporate technology with corporate paper, however, does not return control to educators or students.

Too often, teachers are handed programs selected without their meaningful input and told to implement them with fidelity. Students move through the same content, at the same pace, and demonstrate learning in the same way. Whether that program arrives through a platform or in a box of workbooks is beside the point.

Models such as Schoolwide Enrichment and Big Picture Learning offer a better direction. As I described in 5 Innovative School Models You Might Not Know, powerful learning begins with student strengths, interests, projects, and real-world work. The learning goal determines whether students need technology, books, interviews, art supplies, hands-on materials, or some combination of them.

We once understood that high-stakes testing and the system surrounding it were the targets. We should not lose sight of that because the test now appears on a screen.

Technology is the messenger. To find the real problem, follow the money beyond the screen. Look at who profits from controlling what schools buy, what teachers teach, and what students are expected to produce. When educators and students regain that agency, corporations lose their grip and students win.

No, Tech Leaders Aren’t Keeping Their Kids From Learning With Technology

We often hear that leaders in the technology industry kept their own children away from technology. There is truth to that claim, but it leaves out the most important distinction. Many limited phones, social media, non-educational games and passive entertainment at home. They did not limit technology used to code, research, create, collaborate or access learning.

Rules about phones at dinner, devices in bedrooms and endless scrolling are not evidence against school laptops used for purposeful learning. We have confused limits on social and recreational technology with limits on instructional technology.

What Tech Leaders Actually Limited

The examples are mostly about home life: Bill Gates delayed phones and barred them at meals. Tim Cook opposed social media for his nephew. Steve Jobs limited technology at home. Susan Wojcicki restricted phones and unrestricted YouTube.

None of that demonstrates opposition to students using technology to learn. A Columbia Journalism Review analysis found that media coverage repeatedly stretched ordinary family boundaries in the home into claims that technology insiders wanted “the least tech” for their children. The parents featured in those stories were intentional about how tech was used and often encouraged technology use for learning even when the headlines suggested otherwise.

Ali Partovi, founder of iLike and cofounder of Code.org, made the distinction clearly in the original coverage. He separated time spent consuming from time spent creating and compared digital creation to painting, playing piano or writing. “I think it’s absurd to limit her time spent creating computer art, editing video, or computer programming,” he told The New York Times.

Affluent families also have more resources to replace recreational screen time with tutors, caregivers, travel, sports, music lessons and other enrichment. Removing technology from public schools does not create those opportunities. Without additional people, programs and experiences, it simply removes a resource.

Many Benefited From Early Access

In 1968, the Lakeside School Mothers Club paid for access to a computer terminal when few schools offered anything comparable. Bill Gates used it to play, experiment, program and solve real problems. Gates called the terminal his first opportunity to learn about computers. That access helped put them on the path to Microsoft.

Mark Zuckerberg began programming around sixth grade. His parents noticed his interest, hired a tutor and gave him the guidance and time to explore a talent.

They had time to experiment, make mistakes and persist. That rarely fits an arbitrary time block.

What Tech Leaders Encourage Their Own Children to Do

The reality is that these leaders encourage their own children to use technology with intention because it is often the best tool available for learning.

Peter Diamandis says he is teaching his twin teenage sons to be curious, find a purpose and use AI to go deeply into subjects they care about. He distinguishes between superficial AI use and genuine exploration.

Even the recent New York Times piece that renewed this narrative contains counterexamples. Mark Zuckerberg says his eight-year-old can code her ideas and produce videos, and that they use AI together while baking. Evan Spiegel limits phones and passive entertainment for his younger children but says his 15-year-old is “all-in on technology.” These are age- and activity-based limits, not a rejection of technology for learning.

Elon Musk created Ad Astra for his five children and a small group of SpaceX families. It rejected grade levels and standardized instruction, not technology, offering a Mac laptop to every student along with robotics, chemistry and hands-on problem solving. It was elite and experimental, but certainly not no-tech.

Even Waldorf Uses Technology Intentionally

The Waldorf School of the Peninsula is often presented as proof that tech families reject screens. It is one small, elite private school, not representative evidence. Its low-tech model also replaces textbook- and test-driven instruction with small classes, arts, gardening, field trips and hands-on learning. With tuition ranging from $34,900 to $47,500, most public schools cannot replicate it.

Even Waldorf does not reject technology. Students study computer science, algorithms, hardware and large language models, while its robotics team builds and programs robots. The school says students should use technology as creators rather than consumers. That is intentional technology use.

Stop Counting All Screen Time as Equal

This distinction matters when schools treat evidence for phone and social media restrictions as justification for limiting all technology. A student scrolling through videos and a student coding an app may spend the same time on a screen. That does not make the activities educationally equivalent.

I support phone-free classrooms, age-appropriate social media restrictions and limits on addictive platforms and passive consumption. I also support evaluating which technologies provide meaningful learning, protect privacy and give students and teachers agency to choose the features and settings that work best for them. Teachers and students should decide when technology is the right tool for effective, accessible learning. Those positions do not conflict.

We should stop asking only, “How much screen time?” and start asking the kinds of questions technology leaders like Ali Partovi are actually asking: “What are students doing, and is it worth doing?” 

Why Elementary Students Need Access to Screens

Just as schools are preparing to open, New York City is putting new limits on technology use. As reported in The New York Times and Chalkbeat, there will be no individual screens before third grade and recommended caps on screen time for grades 3 - 8.

I understand where this is coming from. Students need to talk, play, move, build, draw, read, write, collaborate, and interact with teachers and classmates. Students should not spend their days sitting at desks consuming information and doing rote work, but taking away individual screens is not the same thing as improving learning.

As I wrote recently in Screen Time Is the Wrong Unit of Measurement, the problem with screen-time rules is that they measure the device rather than what students are doing with it. That's particularly problematic with young children because sometimes the screen is the thing giving a child access to learning.

Sometimes the screen is an accessibility tool

Think about what an individual device can provide: text-to-speech, speech-to-text, enlarged text, captions, adjustable text, dictionaries, audio, translation, and access through a refreshable braille display. For some students, these aren't extras. They're how they access learning.

Accessibility also extends beyond students with an official disability designation. A child learning English may need translation. A struggling reader may benefit from hearing a word or passage while following along. Another child may need larger text. If a student needs one of those supports before third grade, an individual-screen restriction becomes more complicated.

Another concern is that students who need screens may become stigmatized. We may also end up testing and labeling students who were learning successfully with built-in accessibility features simply so they can regain access to those supports. Technology can meet many learning needs without requiring a disability classification. Remove the technology, and the analog environment may turn a learning difference into a labeled disability.

Technology can help children learn to read

There's also an assumption in some of these discussions that screens and literacy are in opposition. The research is much more nuanced. A large systematic review comparing children's reading on paper and digital devices found that no difference was the most common result. Print had advantages in some circumstances. Digital had advantages in others, including vocabulary, engagement, and support for diverse learners. Knowing which platform is best for the learning goal is key.

I've seen the potential firsthand with Footsteps2Brilliance, an early literacy program. Research I’ve shared about the program has found strong literacy outcomes when young children use it consistently. What is best for students is using what works for the child and the learning goal, not dictating the platform. 

Sometimes the screen is the library

A laptop or tablet isn't just a screen. It can be a child's personal library. Young children should have physical books and access to digital ones. However, a classroom has only so much shelf space and providing books at all reading levels and languages is not practical. Digital libraries can provide thousands of additional choices along with features that paper can't easily provide. Students can enlarge the text, hear or define an unfamiliar word, translate something, or listen to a book while following along.

Access to learning by providing more books in more formats is something we should be expanding, not restricting.

Individual screens also make individualization possible

Elementary classrooms don't contain children who all read at the same level, learn at the same pace, speak the same language, or need the same supports. Technology can help with that. Tools such as Newsela can provide content at different reading levels while students explore the same topic. The student sitting next to them doesn't need to know which version they're reading. That's not just differentiation. That's dignity.

Technology can also provide additional practice, immediate feedback, audio, translation, and other supports while the teacher works with individual students or small groups. A teacher can't simultaneously rewrite every text at five reading levels, translate it into several languages, read it aloud at different speeds, and provide individual feedback to every student. Technology can.

Who should decide?

There's another problem with blanket restrictions. They take decisions about learning away from the people closest to the learning: teachers and students.

Teachers know their students. They should have the expertise to know when a device is helping a child and when it's getting in the way. Students also know things about how they learn that policymakers sitting far from the classroom don't.

One student may benefit from listening to a book while another does better with the print version. A student may discover that enlarging text helps them concentrate or that hearing a word helps them understand it. Another may be better off putting the device away because pen and paper works best.

Those are learning decisions. There will be times when young students should put the screen away, and there will be times when that screen gives a child access, choice, independence, or a better way to learn. A blanket policy making those decisions in advance puts agency in the wrong hands.

We should give teachers and students guidance for making good choices about technology, then trust them to make those choices.

Stop Romanticizing School Before Screens

A recent Gothamist article reports on a bill introduced by Sen. Andrew Gounardes known as the Fostering Optimal Classroom Use of Screens (FOCUS) Act. It would push New York classrooms to become more analog and limit technology use in schools.

I understand the concern. Too much school tech has been poorly used. We have digital worksheets, screen-based test prep, low-quality apps, privacy issues, surveillance tools, and students clicking through tasks that were not meaningful in the first place.

But “make classrooms analog again” is the wrong answer.

The problem is not that school became too digital. Digital is a scapegoat for the real problem. Too often school was boring, passive, and disconnected long before students had smartphones, laptops, or AI. Technology gave students a place to turn when the classroom was not stimulating or relevant enough. 

I know because I was one of those students. I played the game of school, but I was checked out. Sometimes I was asleep. Usually I was just waiting for class to be over.

There is a myth that students paid attention before screens. Many of us who were in school then might disagree. Like me, students slept in class, daydreamed, stared out windows, doodled, passed notes, and whispered to friends. These actions may feel more human than digital distractions, but they served the same purpose: connection, humor, disengagement, or escape when class was not meaningful enough to hold attention.

This is not a new argument for me. Years ago, in Fix Boring Schools, Not Kids Who Are Bored, I wrote about students who were labeled distracted, hyperactive, or inattentive when the real issue was that school was not engaging them. I had lived that myself. I was labeled as incapable but after extensive testing at UCLA’s Fernald Child Study Center my diagnosis was boredom in school. The resolution having me skip a grade and placing me in a more challenging environment. 

We keep confusing compliance with learning. Sitting still is not engagement. A classroom without phones is not automatically a classroom where students are thinking. The nostalgia is also about achievement. There is a version of this story that suggests students were smarter, stronger readers, better writers, and more successful before they had access to screens. That does not hold up cleanly.

The data does not give us the neat story some want. NAEP long-term trend data shows a more complicated picture. Nine-year-olds in 2025 scored higher in reading and math than students did in the earliest assessments from the 1970s. Thirteen-year-olds in 2025 scored higher in math than in 1973, while reading was not significantly different from 1971. The status dropout rate was 15.0 percent in 1970 and 5.0 percent in 2022. The “students did better before screens” argument needs evidence, not vibes.

For decades, schools operated as if they had a monopoly on information and attention. The teacher had the lesson. The textbook had the content. The teacher’s guide had the correct answers. Students were expected to sit, receive, remember, and repeat.

That world is gone.

Students are no longer limited to the answer in the back of the book. They can access explanations, tutorials, experts, communities, and AI-supported help in seconds. The most valuable person in the room is no longer the one with the answer key. It is the one who helps students ask better questions, evaluate information, connect ideas, solve problems, and create something meaningful with what they learn.

A return to paper is the easy way out for adults, but it is not a serious learning strategy by itself. A worksheet does not become better because it is online. And it does not become better because it is back on paper. If the work is passive or meaningless, the format is not the fix. 

This is what I argued in Reverting to Pen & Paper Won’t Improve Learning. Better Learning Design Will and Laptops Did Not Take Away Their Brains. The School Model Did. The problem was never the device. The problem was the model built around it.

Yes, schools should stop buying every shiny platform a vendor sells. They should address privacy, surveillance, addictive design, and passive screen use. But a pencil is not automatically better than a keyboard. A printed book is not automatically more meaningful than an accessible digital text. A screen-free classroom is not automatically a better classroom.

This matters even more for accessibility. If learning is not digital, it is not fully accessible, translatable, or readable for a student who needs text enlarged, listened to, adjusted, organized, or supported. Exemptions are not the same as inclusion.

The better question is not how many minutes a student looked at a screen. The better question is what the student was doing. Were they doing low level activities such as completing digital worksheets, or were they doing more valuable learning activities such as interviewing someone, producing a podcast, analyzing data, translating materials, publishing writing, building a model, or collaborating beyond the classroom? Different activities have different learning value and that matters more than time on a screen. 

Strong learning models existed long before today’s devices. In 5 Innovative School Models You Might Not Know, I wrote about approaches that put students, interests, strengths, and authentic work at the center. Tools should support that kind of learning.

Bad edtech is a real problem. The answer is not to get rid of all tech. It’s to evaluate the tools. Privacy is a real problem. So improve privacy protections. AI misuse is a problem. So teach AI literacy and responsible use. But don’t pretend paper magically fixes school. 

Children need movement, conversation, play, collaboration, hands-on work, outdoor learning, art, music, reading, writing, and relationships. They also need to learn in a world where technology is real.

The answer is not to “make classrooms analog again.” The better response is to make classrooms meaningful again, with learning worth paying attention to.

Don’t Make This Mistake When Presenting

We've all seen it happen.

A speaker gets to the front of the room and suddenly everything stops. The screen is dark. The audio does not work. The laptop needs an update. No one knows the WiFi password. Someone is searching for the right adapter.

The audience waits. The speaker stalls. Someone calls for “the tech person.” Everyone acts like this is just part of presenting.

It should not be.

The bring-your-own-device model turns public speaking into a technical gamble. Each new presenter brings a different laptop, a different charger, a different adapter, different settings, and different problems.

That is not a presenter problem. It is a room design problem.

In my latest Tech & Learning article, The Presentation Station Should Belong to the Space, Not the Speaker, I make the case for a better model: the presentation station should belong to the room.

That means the host provides one dedicated room device that is already connected, tested, and ready before the speaker steps up. The internet works. The display works. The audio works. The agenda and materials are in the cloud. Access is simple.

This is not about being fancy or high-tech. It is about reducing failure points so presenters can focus on their message and participants can focus on learning.

The article also includes a simple checklist for schools, districts, conference organizers, and event hosts who want presentation spaces that are connected, tested, accessible, and ready to go.

Read the full piece in Tech & Learning:
The Presentation Station Should Belong to the Space, Not the Speaker

Devices Down is the Wrong Goal

The AFT’s new 10-point plan, “Devices Down, Eyes Up, Hands-On,” gets some things right. Students do need more active, human, hands-on learning. They need career-connected experiences, civic engagement, collaboration, movement, and opportunities to solve real problems.

But the “devices down” frame points schools in the wrong direction.

The problem is not the device. The problem is passive learning, poor infrastructure, weak support, and policies that confuse classroom management with meaningful instruction.

In my latest piece, Devices Down Is the Wrong Goal, I respond to each of the AFT’s 10 points and explain where the plan gets it right, where it falls short, and why preparing students for the future means teaching them when technology helps, when it gets in the way, and how to use appropriate tools well.

Sometimes devices should be down.

Other times, devices should be up.

The goal is not more technology or less technology. The goal is better learning.