Ed tech industry scrambles to fight a wave of bills to limit screen time in schools

At the Utah Capitol last month, a mother told lawmakers her children struggled to stay focused on homework because their school-issued laptops supplied an endless stream of notifications from online games, chats and videos.

A week later at the Tennessee statehouse, a pediatrician testified about children viewing pornographic images on school-issued devices and a 9-year-old patient who was cyberbullied over school email threads.

In Kansas last week, a mother described to a state Senate committee how her son’s ninth-grade class had to read a novel together out loud because the laptops they used at school had zapped their ability to focus.

Legislators in 16 states have introduced bills this year that would limit education technology, or ed tech, in public schools, spurred by a growing grassroots movement of parents concerned about the amount of time their children are spending on screens. Some of the bills seek to ban school-issued devices and email for preschoolers and elementary students and limit daily screen time for older students. Proposals in three states — Rhode Island, Utah and Vermont — would create a new vetting process for school software. Legislators in Utah and Tennessee proposed requiring internet filters that ban all websites until a school district approves them one by one.

“Enough damage has been done in the last 10 years,” said Dr. Nidhi Gupta, the pediatrician who spoke in favor of the legislation in Tennessee. “We need to put education back on track.”

The bills present the first widespread challenge to the booming $164 billion ed tech industry following a decade in which schools provided laptops to each student. The growth of technology in schools has collided with a rising tide of parents protesting devices they see as harming children’s well-being and ability to learn. These parents are thrilled with the bipartisan push to address their concerns, building off of momentum from bans on cellphones in schools.

But for a large slice of the education sector, the proposals are worrisome. The statehouse debates mark an abrupt shift that has caught ed tech proponents off guard and made them realize they need to make a stronger case for technology in schools.

“It does keep me up at night,” said Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, a trade organization for school technology directors, who opposes screen time bans. “I think some well-intentioned policymakers trying to do something are rushing so quickly that they haven’t thought through the implications.”

Ed tech proponents describe potential outcomes of the bills in dire terms, arguing that they would set education back decades, tie schools up in bureaucracy and leave high school graduates unprepared for the modern workforce.

“We haven’t seen such brute force legislation before,” said Sara Kloek, vice president of education policy at the Software & Information Industry Association, a trade group that is lobbying against many of the bills. “The ed tech industry needs to do a really good job communicating why their products work — not just with educators, but also with parents and the broader community on why they matter.”

The industry isn’t used to this sort of skepticism, because classroom technology has historically been seen as inherently good, said Adam Sparks, a former high school teacher and co-founder of Short Answer, a gamified writing platform. He worries that the more anti-technology fervor takes hold, the less room there will be for nuance on a healthy balance between analog and digital.

“What’s happening is we’re taking that anger and we’re sort of getting our pitchforks out and misdirecting it,” he said.

Many in the ed tech industry see the wave of legislation as a battle over whether technology belongs in schools at all — and one that may only be getting started.

Rising concerns about technology and test scores

Most states have rules that restrict cellphones in schools, based on concerns that phones and social media are disrupting education and exacerbating children’s mental health issues.

Similar concerns have led some parents to keep their children off of tablets and laptops at home. But they lose that control at school. Many districts require students to take tests on screens starting in kindergarten, provide them with email accounts, use digital textbooks instead of paper ones and let children play educational games.

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It’s not clear what impact all of this technology is having on students.

Sponsors of the bills restricting ed tech and the parent activists backing them cite a book released last year, “The Digital Delusion," by Jared Cooney Horvath, a cognitive neuroscientist who has testified in favor of some of the proposals. The book draws a connection between falling scores on national assessments since 2012 and the rise of public schools providing a device to every student. Ed tech proponents say this argument is too simplistic, and point to other analyses that find mixed or modest positive impacts from digital instruction.

A report from the American Academy of Pediatrics in January noted moderate use of well-designed educational software is associated with academic gains, but heavy use of flashy and distracting digital media can disrupt a child’s emotional regulation. And the response varies depending on the child, said Dr. Libby Milkovich, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician and co-author of the report, who did not take a position on the proposed legislation.

Autistic students sometimes thrive with educational software that provides rewards, like winning points or bright animations, Milkovich said, but those same graphics can cause other young children to become so accustomed to the stimulation that they struggle to concentrate on a paperback book. That’s why she hesitates to recommend a specific cap on device use.

“It’s really hard to make a blanket statement,” she said.

Some of the state legislation is seeking to do just that — introduce a corrective to what sponsors say is currently unchecked device time in classrooms. Groups of parents have recently demanded their districts revert to analog instruction, and while the bills don’t go that far, they could have a significant impact on how schools use technology.