Back-to-school shopping lists traditionally have included fresh pencils, new notebooks and colored folders. However, recently parents have noticed tech accessories such as headphones and chargers showing up on their school supply lists.
As a necessity during the pandemic, many schools moved away from textbooks, worksheets and workbooks and toward using “1:1” devices such as laptops and tablets. “One-to-one,” or 1:1, means a school or district provides every student with their own dedicated electronic device.
During the 2024-2025 school year, around 88 percent of public schools had a 1:1 computing program, according to the Institute of Education Sciences. Educational Technology, or EdTech for short, in schools is now a significant part of students’ educational experience, and that brings with it many issues for a community to consider.
Earlier this year, the Education Week Research Center surveyed 596 district and school leaders, and more than half — 61 percent — said that most parents and caregivers feel that there is too much technology in schools and that the addition of EdTech into classrooms has had negative effects on students’ social-emotional skills, overall mental health and classroom behavior.
According to surveyed teachers and school leaders, EdTech did increase student engagement and content mastery slightly. However, these improvements were minimal and came with increased concerns about impacts on students’ attention spans and their online privacy. Meaning, yes, children are probably more excited to learn math through a gamified app than via a worksheet (good teachers already know this and can create meaningful engagement without relying on tech), and sure, generative learning tools can quickly discern where a student’s understanding is lacking (again, a skill good teachers possess without turning to a tablet), but these apps and artificial intelligence tools also are decreasing students’ attention spans and collecting data that is in turn either sold or stored without a family’s knowledge — and that is a big business that schools and parents need to know about.
Locally, both educators and parents are taking steps to tackle this issue. Alicia Klug, the principal of Trinity Lutheran School, and Ashley Vincent, local parent and advocate with Wait Until 8th (an organization that encourages parents to wait until the end of eighth grade to give their children a smartphone), recently shared recommendations concerning EdTech and how families should approach going back to school with technology.
Klug said she seeks to integrate technology in the classrooms at Trinity so that it is enhancing learning and not undermining it. Klug and her colleagues noticed that with 1:1 devices, middle school students might be inclined to rush through an assignment in order to have time to use their tablet to play a game or message friends. In response, Trinity has decided to scale back on 1:1 devices in its middle school, opting instead for a cart of shared laptops that students can use as needed and then return to the teacher.
The goal is for students to do more thorough work on their assignments and then use any free time they might have to draw, engage with peers, or read physical books — all of which can be better options than a gaming app.
Vincent also is pushing back against the widespread use of school-issued technology. She said she noticed a change in her elementary-aged student within about a month of starting school. Suddenly, her child wanted to be on a school-issued device more and more, and while he was playing so-called “educational” apps, those apps were actually restrictive and disruptive to his routine, she said.
Vincent noticed the draw of this particular form of EdTech was too strong for her young children and that it was cutting into time playing outside with friends, as well as increasing some challenging behaviors.
When she spoke to other parents in her community, they also were troubled by the changes they saw in their children. Vincent is now among a group of local parents who believe any EdTech used by their children’s schools ought to be vetted to ensure it is actually supportive of students’ learning and has the potential to produce a unique outcome or develop a high-level skill.
Both Klug and Vincent agree that the roll out of EdTech has been quick and that it can seem like an overwhelming monolith, but it is not. Parents, schools and community members have the ability to champion meaningful changes.
On a micro level, Klug recommends concerned parents speak with their school leadership. She also recommends setting reasonable boundaries around tech in the home so that those skills translate to school. One idea Klug supports is sitting down with your child and collaboratively designing a schedule for free time at home, rather than leaving it up to guesswork (because a “bored” kid is more likely to ask for a screen than an engaged one).
“I think it is OK to have time for technology, but it shouldn’t be the first choice,” Klug said. Modeling the best use of tech in the home can have a profound effect on how students manage their own tech in the classroom and beyond, she said.
On a macro level, more and more parents are concerned with EdTech’s addictive qualities, and Vincent recommends that communities join together to petition for change. Whether it’s joining a local Wait Until 8th chapter, speaking to teachers, or putting themselves in front of school board members, parents are poised to have a say in the overall conversation about what types of technology children are exposed to in the local school systems. Fortunately, in central Illinois many communities seem to agree that collective action around the problematic aspects of EdTech is useful and worth considering.
“I am really optimistic because I am starting to see other school administrators, teachers and parents wanting to go back to more traditional forms of learning,” Klug said. “There are a lot of people putting their brains together to work on this issue and to help find more balance.” ο
Pamela Savage is a freelance writer and parent living in Springfield.
This article appears in Parent Fall 2026.
