Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Years ago, I was a member of a panel held at Mission High School during San Francisco Design Week. Software developers and designers of ed-tech products attended this panel discussion. The moderator asked each of us to state in 7-8 minutes “what hard lessons have you learned about education that you’d like to share with the ed-tech design community?” My fellow panelists were two math teachers–one from Mission High School and the other a former teacher at Oakland High School, three product designers (one for the Chan/Zuckerberg Initiative, another for Desmos, and the lead designer for Khan Academy) who had been working in the ed-tech industry for years. In attendance were nearly 60 young (in their 20s and 30s) product designers, teachers, and ed-tech advocates .

When my turn came to speak, I looked around the room and saw that I was the oldest person in the room. Here is what I said.

Many designers and school reformers believe with aging, pessimism and cynicism grow. Not true.

As someone who has taught high school history for 14 years, served as a district superintendent for seven years, and researched the history of school reform including the use of new technologies in classrooms over the past half-century, I surely am an oldster. But I am neither a pessimist nor a cynic about improving public schools and teachers making changes in their classrooms. I am a tempered idealist who is cautiously optimistic about what U.S. public schools have done and still can do for children, the community, and the nation. Both my tempered idealism and cautious optimism have a lot to do with what I have learned over the decades about school reform as a teacher, superintendent, and researcher especially when it comes to technology. So here I offer a few lessons drawn from these experiences over decades.

LESSON 1

Teachers are central to all learning.

I have learned that no piece of software, portfolio of apps, or learning management system can replace teachers simply because teaching is a helping profession like medicine and psychotherapy. Helping professions are completely dependent upon interactions with patients, clients, and students for success. No improvement in physical or mental health or learning can occur without the active participation of the patient and client—and of course, the student.

Now, all of these helping professions have had new technologies applied to them. But if you believe, as I do, that teaching is anchored in a relationship between an adult and a student then relationships cannot be replaced by even the most well designed software, efficient device (including ChatbotGPT) or virtual reality.

There is something else that software designers often ignore or forget. That is that teachers make policy every time they enter their classroom and teach. Once she closes her classroom door, the teacher decides what the lesson is going to be, what parts of top-down policies she will put into practice in the next hour, and which devices and software programs she will use, if at all.

Designers are supposed to have empathy for users, that is, understand emotionally what it is like to teach a crowd of students five or more hours a day and they must know that teacher decisions determine what content and skills enter the classroom that day.

Astute ed-tech designers understand that for learning to occur, teachers must gain student trust and respect. Thus, teachers are not technicians who mechanically use devices and follow software directions. Teaching and learning occur because of the teacher’s expertise, smart use of high-tech tools, and the creation of a classroom culture for learning that students come to trust, respect, and admire.

Of course, there are a lot of things about teaching that can be automated. Administrative stuff—like attendance and grade books—can be replaced with apps. Reading and math skills and subject area content can be learned online but thinking, problem solving, and decision-making where it involves other people, collaboration, and interactions with teachers, software programs cannot replace teachers. Such a rosy scenario borders on fantasy.

LESSON 2

Access to digital tools is not the same as their use in daily classroom activities.

In 1984, there were 125 students for each computer; now the ratio is nearly 1:1. Because access to new technologies has spread across the nation’s school districts, too many pundits and promoters leap to the conclusion that all teachers integrate these digital tools into daily practice seamlessly. While surely the use of devices and software has gained entry into classrooms, anyone who regularly visits classrooms sees the huge variation among teachers using digital technologies.

Yes, most teachers have incorporated digital tools into daily practice but even those who have thoroughly integrated new technologies into their lessons reveal both change and stability in their teaching.

A few years ago for a research project,  I visited 41 elementary and secondary teachers in Silicon Valley who had a reputation for integrating technology into their daily lessons.

They were hard working, sharp teachers who used digital tools as easily as paper and pencil. Yet the devices and software were in the background, not foreground. The lessons they taught were expertly arranged with a variety of student activities. These teachers had, indeed, made changes in creating playlists for students, pursuing problem-based learning, and organizing the administrative tasks of teaching.

But I saw no fundamental or startling changes in the usual flow of a lesson. Teachers set lesson goals, designed varied activities, elicited student participation, varied their grouping of students, and assessed student understanding. None of that differed from earlier generations of experienced teachers.

The lessons I observed were teacher-directed and revealed continuity in how teachers have taught for decades. Again, both stability and change marked teaching with digital tools.

LESSON 3

Designers and entrepreneurs overestimate their product’s power to make change and underestimate the power of school organizations to keep things as they are.

Consider the age-graded school. That organization (e.g., K-5, K-8, 6-8, 9-12) solved the 20th century problem of how to provide an efficient schooling to move masses of children through public schools.  Today, it is the dominant form of school organization.

Most Americans have gone to kindergarten at age 5, studied Egyptian mummies in the 6th grade, took algebra in the 8th or 9th grade and then left 12th grade with a diploma around age 18.

The age-graded school was an organizational innovation designed to replace the one-room schoolhouse in the mid-19th century—yes, I said 19th century or almost 200 years ago. That design shaped (and continues to shape) how teachers teach and students learn.

As an organization, the age-graded school distributes children and youth by age to school “grades.” It sends teachers into separate classrooms and prescribes a curriculum carved up into 36-week chunks for each grade. Teachers and students cover each chunk assuming that all children will move uniformly through the 36-weeks, and, after passing tests would be promoted to the next grade.

Now, the age-graded school dominates how public (and private) schools are organized. Even charter schools, freed from district rules for how to organize, are age-graded as is the public high school on the Oracle campus in the San Francisco Bay Area, called Design Tech High School.

LESSON 4

Ed-Tech designers are trapped in a trilemma of their own making.

Among ed-tech designers and entrepreneurs, three highly prized values clash. One is the desire for profit—building a product that schools buy and use. Another is to help teachers, students, and schools become more efficient and effective. And the third value is that technology will solve educational problems.

Many venture capitalists, founders of start-ups, and cheerleaders for high-tech innovations cherish these values. But they conflict meaning that choices have to be made as to which are most important: making money, help teachers teach, and solve educational problems.

I’m not critical of these values. But when it comes to schools, product designers with these values in their search for profit and improvement underestimate both the complexity of daily teaching and the influence of age-graded schools on teaching and learning. Those who see devices and software transforming today’s schooling seldom fully understand schools as organizations or the complexities of teaching and learning.

I don’t believe that there are technical solutions to teaching, to running a school, or governing a district. Schooling is far too complex. These are the “hard” lessons I have learned.

“Emily Oster is the founder and chief executive of ParentData and a professor of economics at Brown University.” This article appeared in The New York Times, May 10, 2026

In the past several years, about three dozen states have instituted phone bans in schools, and more are likely to follow. These bans have been trumpeted as game changers. Anecdotal reporting points to more books being checked out from school libraries and more students engaging with one another in the hallway. “How the Phone Ban Saved High School,” reads one headline. At the same time, respected academics have suggested that the arrival of phones in schools is linked to large test score declines in countries around the world.

It was, therefore, surprising to many people when a paper this week showed that phone bans had a very minimal impact on student behavior and academics in a nationwide sample of schools. Phone usage went down, and teachers liked the policy (all good), but test scores didn’t change much, disciplinary infractions increased in the short term and there was no demonstrable effect on bullying or student attention. Basically, not much changed.

This finding should not have been as surprising as it was. Based on what we know about phones and education, it is not realistic to expect phone bans to have enormous impacts on academic outcomes. But that doesn’t mean that they are a bad idea, or that they should be walked back. Instead, we need to approach this topic with more realistic expectations, a richer approach to what counts as a positive outcome and more help for families and schools.

The expectations for phone bans were poorly calibrated, largely because the data on which some of the more extreme claims about phones is based is subject to considerable biases. For example, a paper published last fall argued that increases in phone usage were tied to large reductions in test scores in many countries between 2012 and 2022. The study found bigger drops in test scores in countries with greater smartphone adoption. But it turns out that those were also the countries that had longer school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic. Phones may have played a role in driving test scores down, but since we know school closings mattered for academic progress, too, the emphasis on phones overstates their role.

There is also plenty of data showing that children who spend more time on social media do worse in school, but they tend to come from households with fewer resources. It may also be that problems in school are contributing to social media use, rather than the other way around. Finally, given that a lot of phone usage is outside of school, it’s unclear if these results would really apply to phone bans in school.

Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter  Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

The paper out this week takes a better approach, looking at how test scores and behavior varied over time as schools restricted phone use by introducing Yondr pouches that lock away phones during the day. An earlier paper, which looked at variation across school districts in Florida as some introduced phone bans earlier than others, found similarly small effects on test scores. These are the studies we should be focusing on.

Over the next several years, we will get more data exploring these questions. I expect a cottage industry of papers on school phone bans — and we’ll probably also start to see results from school districts that change technology in other ways (for example, taking computers out of early childhood classrooms). We should expect to see similar results.

It would be a mistake to interpret these findings as a sign that we should forget about phone bans altogether. There are no magic bullets in education. Improving student learning is a game of inches, not miles. There is no clear positive reason for students to have phones in the classroom. No phones should be the default, and to introduce phones, we’d want to see evidence that they meaningfully improve learning or help in another way. None of that appears in the data. On the flip side, I think the knee-jerk reaction to also remove all computers and tech is an overstatement and unrealistic.

Instead, we need to alter our expectations. Phone bans may be helpful in some ways, but they aren’t a cure-all, and that shouldn’t be the bar for success.

Second, we have to get better data. Test scores are easy to measure, but a lot of the discussion around phone bans focuses on the experiences of students, how they interact with one another and whether the classroom feels engaging to both students and teachers. We should be measuring those outcomes systematically. I do not allow my students to have phones or laptops in my classroom, because screens affect their participation and, quite honestly, it’s demoralizing to look out at a classroom of kids scrolling on their phones. I’m guessing other teachers feel similarly; we should figure out how to measure and evaluate this, too.

Finally, we need to find a more helpful approach for schools and parents to manage technology. We’ve sent parents and schools messages that are simultaneously fear-inducing (“phones are ruining your children”) and overly optimistic (“phone bans will make it better”). Neither of these is true, and it’s time to move to something that promises less, but delivers more.

For schools, that may mean keeping phone bans and making additional changes, like modifying laptop use in some classrooms, while recognizing that technology is part of modern life and not the enemy. It could also mean focusing on resources and instructional support that will actually move the needle on test scores.

On the parental side, we need fewer blanket warnings about the dangers of technology and more help drawing appropriate boundaries for our kids. Teenagers absolutely need rules and restrictions on their phone use, and they need their parents to set those — and parents need help doing that. Phone bans promised an easy fix, but they aren’t magic. The faster we realize that, the faster we can make realistic progress.

A friend and former faculty colleague, Henry Levin, once wrote about his experience in a 1940s classroom.

I started school in 1943, and by the time we were in third grade we were introduced to writing cursive using an ink pen.  Initially these were the pens with long tapered wooden handles with replaceable pen tips or nibs, but by sixth grade we were expected to use fountain pens because they were less messy.  I remember filling carefully my pen by maneuvering a lever on its side that compressed a rubber bladder inside to draw ink from the inkwell on its release.  

I was also given the responsibility of refilling the inkwells each day or every other day.  We used huge bottles of Quink (perhaps a liter), and they had to be manipulated in just the right way to fill (three quarters), but not overfill the inkwell.  My recollection is that this was a permanent ink that could not be removed from my clothing.  Once I dropped the entire bottle on the floor, leading to a large spill.  That required initially placing newsprint and paper tissues to soak up most of it, followed by a mopping and scrubbing with water and suds.  Still, a shadow of the ink remained, and the teacher reminded me periodically that I needed to be careful not to further damage her floor.  Towards the end of high school some very expensive ballpoint pens began to replace the ink pens, and we were no longer expected to use the ink paraphernalia.But, the old desks last for a long time.  Even in the late fifties (I was in college), I visited my old high school and found that all of the student desks still had inkwells.  Students wondered what they were for.

I also have a memory of a subsequent technology that, like the inkwell, became obsolescent.

In the late 1960s Stanford University administrators secured federal funds to build a multi-million dollar facility called the Stanford Center for Research, Development, and Teaching (SCRDT). A fully furnished television studio with “state-of-the-art” cameras, videotape recorders, and monitors occupied the main floor with the star-in-the-crown of the new building located in the Large-Group Instruction room (LGI).

The amphitheater-shaped room with half-circular rows looked down on a small stage with a lectern, a massive pull-down screen, and 2 large monitors suspended from the ceiling. At most of the individual seats was a small punch-button pad called the “student responder.” The responder contained the numbers 1-10 and letters T and F.

Beyond the top row of seats in the amphitheater was a glass-enclosed technician’s station where an aide could assist the professor with amplification of sound, simultaneous interpretation of various languages, show slides or films, and put on monitors in the room data that the professors wanted students to see.  Administrators had designed the room for professors to enhance the delivery of lectures.

For lectures, the student responder came into play. Designers created the pad for students to punch in their choices to communicate instantaneously to the lecturer their answers to the professor’s questions, such as “If you agree, press 1, disagree, press 2.” “If statement is true, press T.”  As students pressed the keypad, the data went directly to a mainframe computer where the students’ responses were immediately assembled and displayed for the professor at a console on the lectern. The lecturer was then able to adjust the pace and content of the lecture to this advanced interactive technology, circa 1970, that linked students to teacher.

By 1972 when I came to Stanford as a graduate student, the LGI was being used as a large lecture hall for classes from other departments. The now-disconnected keypads were toys that bored students played with during lectures. The pull-down screen was used to display overhead and occasional films. The fixed position cameras purchased in the late 1960s were already beyond repair and obsolete.

In 1981, when I returned to teach at Stanford, the SCRDT had been renamed the Center for Educational Research at Stanford (CERAS). In the LGI, none of the original equipment or technology (except the sound system and simultaneous translation) was used by either students or professors. The student responders, however, were still there but inoperable.

By 2012, over a half-century after the SCRDT installed the LGI, the amphitheater room was still in use but now as a regular lecture hall for Graduate School of Education students. The responders, however, had disappeared.

Just as my colleague, Henry Levin, had filled inkwells as an elementary school student many decades ago, and the LGI room had installed keypads for students to use with the latest technology of the 1960s, both technologies had now become obsolete. *

___________________________

*Thanks to Deborah Belanger for supplying the date of the LGI renovation.

“Natasha Singer is a reporter for the New York Times who writes about how tech companies, digital devices and apps are reshaping childhood, education and job opportunities.” This article appeared April 29, 2026.

Los Angeles parents are fed up with schools loading up students with laptops and tablets, and assigning schoolwork on a slew of apps.

Some families, who had decided against giving their children screens at home, told school board members that they were appalled to find young students using school-issued devices — even in kindergarten. Some parents complained that their children were able to play video games or watch social media videos during school. Others reported that an A.I. app, which fourth graders were assigned to use to create portraits of the fictional Swedish schoolgirl Pippi Longstocking, generated sexualized imagery.

Such concerns prompted parents last year to form a group called Schools Beyond Screens to push for increased technology oversight in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest public school system.

Last week, the Los Angeles school board passed a resolution requiring the district to restrict student access to YouTube, eliminate digital devices entirely through first grade and develop screen time limits for higher grades — becoming the first major U.S. school system to do so.

The parents’ successful campaign points to an escalating national reckoning for the powerful classroom technology industry. Encouraged by the fast spread of school cellphone bans, parents, teachers and legislators across the United States have banded together to ensure that technology use in schools is beneficial for learning.

In New York City, hundreds of parents have urged the mayor to postpone the introduction of artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT in schools. Last month, the governor of Utah signed a law that will allow parents to see how much time their child spent on a school device and review the websites their child visited.

In Oregon this month, parents successfully pressed the Bend-La Pine school board to pass a resolution requiring a district review of all school-issued devices and apps for educational effectiveness. The resolution also requires the district to remove apps that don’t prove effective.

In Los Angeles, parents urged school board members to back the new tech restrictions.

“For over a year, our members have been advocating for a safe and science-backed approach to classroom technology,” said Anya Meksin, the deputy director of Schools Beyond Screens. “Enough to Big Tech encroaching into our public schools.”

For years, tech giants like Google and Apple, along with companies that make school software, have marketed their technologies to schools. The tech industry promised that the devices and apps would customize learning, improve students’ academic results and widen job opportunities. Many districts rushed to adopt the tools, fueling a booming, multibillion-dollar school tech market.

But some researchers have found that digital devices failed to boost students’ test scores and graduation rates, and that they can significantly detract from learning.

Current and former school district officials say the fast-growing parents’ crusade reflects a longstanding reality: Many public schools lack the resources to adequately vet classroom tech.

“The burden on school districts to manage these systems is enormous,” said Hal Friedlander, a former chief information officer of New York City Public Schools who has also helped other school districts evaluate technology. “Unfortunately, most districts are small and they don’t have the resources or the expertise.”

Some children’s educational organizations have similar concerns. This year, two United Nations agencies, UNICEF and UNESCO, issued online learning guidelines warning that public schools had largely ceded digital education to private tech companies.

Online learning tools had introduced important innovations, the U.N. agencies said. But they also warned that digital learning platforms could treat schoolchildren “like consumers”; expose students to health, safety and privacy risks; and threaten school “autonomy.” Instead, “public needs and public purposes must steer” digital learning, UNESCO and UNICEF recommended.

Some tech companies and school tech organizations note that using school laptops and apps can teach students important digital skills. And they argue that parent groups are conflating children’s social media use — like students scrolling through streaming videos during class — with useful learning tools specifically designed for education. Some math and reading apps, for instance, can customize lessons to each child, allowing teachers to chart the student’s progress.

“Educational technology allows teachers to differentiate instruction and assess student understanding in real time,” said Keith Krueger, the chief executive of the Consortium for School Networking, a nonprofit organization for school technology leaders. (The school networking group’s corporate sponsors include Amazon, Google, Lenovo and Microsoft.)

In recent interviews and Zoom meetings, parents in more than a dozen states raised concerns about the safety, privacy and effectiveness of student devices, classroom software and learning apps. Some parents pointed to well-known school software companies that have recently faced complaints about poor data security and the collection of sensitive student data. Other parents said their districts struggled to limit student access to video games and video-streaming platforms on school-issued devices.

Over the last year, Los Angeles has become a center of parent-led efforts to rein in school tech.

In a recent Zoom presentation for Los Angeles parents, Alisha Mernick described how she had started a campaign at her son’s elementary school to help families opt their children out of i-Ready, a math and reading app with gamelike features.

Ms. Mernick, 40, and other parents said they were concerned that the app used video-gamelike techniques, including cute animation and reward points, to hook youngsters.

In some schools, students who accumulate reward points for completing lessons on i-Ready, a math and reading app, can use the points to play games.

“If I’m giving my 5-year-old a game-ified version of a worksheet, it will hijack the development of her intrinsic motivation and jeopardize her ability to learn,” said Ms. Mernick, who teaches art education at California State University, Northridge.

In a statement, Curriculum Associates, the company behind i-Ready, said its online learning assessments and lessons “help teachers act on student needs faster and more precisely.” The company added that i-Ready’s student-engagement techniques “mirror classroom reward systems.”

Parents say their concerns escalated after recent scandals related to student tech.

In 2023, the Los Angeles Unified School District approved a $6.2 million deal with a little-known A.I. start-up to develop a chatbot for student use. The next year, federal prosecutors charged the founder of the start-up with defrauding investors.

The A.I. chatbot fiasco prompted Schools Beyond Screens this year to start a petition, called “Get Big Tech Off Kids’ Desks.” It urged the Los Angeles school system to audit recent tech contracts to make sure the digital tools for students were “safe, legal and effective.” More than 1,000 people have signed on.

Among the concerned parents is Sandra Martinez Roe, 50, a children’s book author whose son attends a Los Angeles elementary school. She said she had chosen not to buy him an iPad or a laptop for home use. At the start of second grade, however, her son came home with a school-issued Chromebook for his schoolwork.

She worried about the kinds of websites the school device might enable him to view. She was also concerned that some online learning software seemed to lack rigorous proof of educational effectiveness.

“They’re just selling it and pushing it through the school system,” said Ms. Roe, who is a member of the Schools Beyond Screens leadership team. “Our children are the guinea pigs.”

In a statement, the Los Angeles Unified School District said it had thorough processes for evaluating technology tools to ensure that “any platform used with students meets rigorous standards for privacy, cybersecurity and educational effectiveness.”

After the Pippi Longstocking incident, the district said, it reviewed how the A.I. tool was used in classrooms and worked with the software company on “strengthening content controls.” As for i-Ready, the district said the math and reading app helped inform teachers’ instructional decisions and improve student learning.

“We will continue to apply and strengthen our review processes to ensure that all approved tools meet the high standards our students and families deserve,” the district statement said.

Meta is accused of failing to keep children off Facebook and Instagram.

Now, Los Angeles school board members like Nick Melvoin are pushing for increased tech oversight in schools. In 2024, he championed a board resolution that barred student cellphone use during school. This year, after working with Schools Beyond Screens, Mr. Melvoin introduced the recent resolution curbing school technology.

In addition to new screen time limits for each grade, the policy will require elementary and middle schools to prohibit student device use during lunch and recess. The district must also compile a report on all current school technology contracts.

“I think of it as a recalibration, a policy that tries to strike the right balance for our kids,” Mr. Melvoin said in an interview. Additional oversight seems especially urgent, he added, now that some popular school tech products have enabled new A.I. tools for students.

“I do think parents should know: Your kids have access to these tools at school,” he added.

Harvey Pressman is President of the Central Coast Children’s Foundation. He has been Technology Editor of Exceptional Parent Magazine, a board member, of the Alliance for Technology Access, an Education and History Professor, and former Peace Corps official. He has written many books and articles about educational technology and the education and employment of people with disabilities and has directed demonstration programs in these areas.

Larry Cuban is Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University and has been a public high school social studies teacher and Superintendent of Arlington County (VA) public schools.

For more than a century, American public school leaders have promised that the next new technology—filmstrips, radio, television, desktop computers, laptops, tablets—would finally “transform” teaching and learning. One of us has shown, in painstaking historical detail, that these promises have been made during every technological wave since the early 20th century, and that they have almost always failed to materialize (Cuban, 1986; 2001; 2013)**. The pattern is so familiar that it has become a historical rhythm: hype, adoption, disappointment, and, often, abandonment.

Today’s version of that cycle is the belief that smartphones and laptops are essential for elementary‑age children. But the global evidence—far broader and more sobering than most policymakers acknowledge—suggests that these devices may can do more harm than good.

It is time to say clearly what many teachers and parents already know: elementary schools should ban not only cell phones from classroom lessons, but also laptops and tablets for young children in the primary grades. We conclude this from our reading of recent research on screen-based technologies.

The Global Evidence: Screens Are Harming Children

Mental health concerns are rising worldwide.

UNICEF’s global reviews warn that in high‑connectivity countries, heavy digital exposure is associated with increased anxiety, sleep disruption, and mental‑health challenges among children (UNICEF, 2017; UNICEF, 2021). These reports emphasize that the pace of technological adoption has far outstripped the pace of research, leaving children exposed to risks that we barely understand.

European pediatric bodies also sound alarms

The Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health in the UK concluded that excessive screen time is linked to sleep problems, sedentary behavior, and emotional disregulation (Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, 2019). France’s National Academy of Medicine issued an even stronger warning, calling screens a “danger for children and adolescents” (French Academy of Medicine, 2019). Sweden’s National Institute of Public Health similarly reports associations between early screen exposure and language delays, sleep disruption, and reduced physical activity (Swedish National Institute of Public Health, 2020).

Asian nations report serious developmental impacts

Japan’s neuroimaging studies show that heavy screen use correlates with reduced language development and weaker executive‑function performance (Takeuchi et al., 2018). South Korea—one of the world’s most digitally saturated societies—has documented strong links between smartphone overuse and behavioral and psychiatric symptoms in children (Park & Park, 2014; Korean Ministry of Science and ICT, 2019). Chinese studies report similar associations between screen time and aggression, hyperactivity, and sleep problems in preschoolers (Zhou & Wang, 2020).

Australia and New Zealand highlight early developmental risks

Australian researchers at Deakin University warn that mobile device use in early childhood is associated with poorer emotional regulation, sleep, and cognitive development, concluding that harms “likely outweigh any perceived benefits” (Deakin University, 2023). New Zealand’s longitudinal reviews show consistent links between early screen exposure and later behavioral and attention difficulties (Hinkley & McCann, 2018).

Canada’s pediatric guidelines are among the strictest

The Canadian Pediatric Society and Canada’s 24‑Hour Movement Guidelines emphasize that screen exposure displaces essential developmental activities—sleep, physical play, and face‑to‑face interaction—warning that early screen use is associated with poorer cognitive and social outcomes (Canadian Pediatric Society, 2017; Tremblay et al., 2017).

The U.S. Evidence: The Harms Are Not “Somewhere Else”

American pediatric and psychological organizations echo these global concerns.

The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that excessive screen exposure is linked to lower academic performance, sleep disturbances, attention problems, and emotional difficulties (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2016a, 2016b). The American Psychological Association’s 2023 review highlights rising concerns about depression, anxiety, and attention fragmentation associated with digital media use among children.

The CDC notes that screen‑based sedentary behavior is a major contributor to obesity, sleep problems, and reduced physical activity in U.S. children (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022). Common Sense Media’s national census shows that American children under eight now spend more time on screens than on reading, outdoor play, or hands‑on exploration (Common Sense Media, 2022).

And U.S.‑based researchers Twenge and Campbell (2018) found that higher screen time is associated with lower psychological well‑being, including reduced curiosity, lower self‑control, and increased distractibility.

The message is consistent: the harms are real, measurable, and widespread.

Why Schools Should Lead, Not Follow, Consumer Tech Trends

Much research suggests that schools adopt new technologies not because they improve learning, but because political, commercial, and cultural pressures push them into classrooms (Cuban, 1986; 2001). The pattern is predictable:

1. A new technology is hyped as revolutionary.
2. Schools rush to adopt it.
3. Teachers adapt it to existing practices—or quietly abandon it.
4. Years later, we discover the harms.

In Oversold and Underused, Cuban (2001) documented how computers in classrooms were rarely used as promised, often becoming expensive distractions rather than instructional tools. In Inside the Black Box of Classroom Practice (2013), he showed that teachers consistently reshape or resist technologies that do not align with children’s developmental needs.

Today’s devices—smartphones, laptops and other electronic devices—fit squarely into this historical pattern. But this time, the stakes are higher. Unlike earlier technologies, today’s devices are engineered to capture attention, collect data, and shape behavior. They are not neutral tools; they are commercial products designed for maximum engagement, not maximum learning.

The Classroom Reality: Devices Distract, Divide, and Displace Human Interaction

Elementary teachers consistently report that these devices have impact on classroom lessons. They:

• fragment attention,
• disrupt social interaction,
• increase classroom management burdens,
• reduce time spent on hands‑on, sensory, and outdoor learning, and
• widen inequities between children who

In elementary schools, children do not need more digital worksheets. They need conversation, play, movement, storytelling, drawing, building, and human connections.

Why Banning Cell Phones Is Not Enough

Some districts have banned smartphones but kept tablets and laptops, assuming these are “educational.” But the research does not support this distinction. The harms documented by pediatricians and developmental psychologists apply to all screen‑based devices, not just phones.

If we ban phones but keep tablets, we are treating symptoms, not causes.

A Better Vision for Elementary Schools

Elementary schools should be sanctuaries from the digital noise of the outside world. They should be places where children:

• Talk with peers
• Explore nature
• Read physical books
• Write with pencils and crayons
• Build with blocks
• Engage in imaginative play
• Learn through human relationships

These are the foundations of literacy, empathy, executive function, and well‑being. No app can replace them.

A Call to Action

The global evidence is clear. The harms are real. The benefits for young children are unproven. And the classroom realities confirm what teachers have been saying for years: screens are getting in the way of learning, not supporting it.

It is time for policymakers, school boards, and superintendents to act with courage:

• Ban smartphones in elementary schools.
• Remove tablets and laptops from K–5 classrooms.
• Invest in books, art supplies, outdoor spaces, and human relationships.

Children deserve environments designed for their development—not for the profit margins of technology companies.

We must never forget that schools exist to educate children, not to absorb the latest consumer technology.

____________________________________________

*Artificial intelligence generated a first draft of this post. The authors revised the draft multiple times before publishing it here.

**Sources:

American Academy of Pediatrics. (2016a). Media and young minds. Pediatrics, 138(5), e20162591.

American Academy of Pediatrics. (2016b). Media use in school‑aged children and adolescents. Pediatrics, 138(5), e20162592.

American Psychological Association. (2023). Digital media and children’s mental health: Evidence review.

Australian Department of Health. (2021). Australian 24‑Hour Movement Guidelines for Children (Birth to 5 years).

Canadian Paediatric Society. (2017). Screen time and young children: Promoting health and development in a digital world.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022). Screen time vs. lean time: Sedentary behavior and child health.

Common Sense Media. (2022). The Common Sense census: Media use by kids age zero to eight.

Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and machines: The classroom use of technology since 1920. Teachers College Press.

Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold and underused: Computers in the classroom. Harvard University Press.

Cuban, L. (2013). Inside the black box of classroom practice: Change without reform in American education. Harvard Education Press.

Deakin University. (2023). Mobile device use in early childhood: Developmental risks and recommendations.

Domingues‑Montanari, S. (2017). Clinical and psychological effects of excessive screen time on children. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 53(4), 333–338.

French Academy of Medicine. (2019). Les écrans: Un danger pour les enfants et les adolescents.

Hinkley, T., & McCann, J. R. (2018). Digital media use and young children: A systematic review of longitudinal studies. New Zealand Medical Journal, 131(1473), 15–29.

Korean Ministry of Science and ICT. (2019). Smartphone overdependence survey.

Park, S., & Park, Y. R. (2014). The association between smartphone addiction and psychiatric symptoms in children. Journal of Korean Medical Science, 29(6), 818–825.

Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. (2019). The health impacts of screen time: A systematic review.

Stiglic, N., & Viner, R. M. (2019). Effects of screen time on the health and well‑being of children and adolescents: A systematic review of reviews. BMJ Open, 9(1), e023191.

Straker, L., Zabatiero, J., Danby, S., Thorpe, K., & Edwards, S. (2018). Conflicting guidelines on young children’s screen time and use of digital technology create policy and practice dilemmas. Journal of Pediatrics and Child Health, 54(7), 710–715.

Swedish National Institute of Public Health. (2020). Children, screens, and health: A review of evidence.

Takeuchi, H., Taki, Y., & Kawashima, R. (2018). Association between screen time and children’s cognitive development in Japan. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 1–10.

Tisseron, S. (2015). 3–6–9–12: Apprivoiser les écrans et grandir.
Tremblay, M. S., et al. (2017). Canadian 24‑hour movement guidelines for the early years (0–4 years). BMC Public Health, 17(Suppl 5), 874.

Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2018). Associations between screen time and lower psychological well‑being among children and adolescents. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(1), 33–39.

UNICEF. (2017). The State of the World’s Children 2017: Children in a digital world.

UNICEF. (2021). Digital connectivity and child well‑being: A global review.

Wold, B., & Samdal, O. (2019). Screen time and child well‑being: Findings from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study.

Zhou, R., & Wang, X. (2020). Screen time and behavioral problems in Chinese preschoolers. Child: Care, Health and Development, 46(4), 441–447.

Too often, neither research findings nor evaluation data including test scores guide most major policy decisions. Political and practical reasons do.

Consider the case of classroom technology. Politically smart state and local policymakers have believed since the 1980s–-here is where ideology enters the picture–-that buying computers, laptops, and tablets loaded with software, deploying them to K-12 classrooms, and watching how the devices engage both teachers and students will produce desirable classroom outcomes; it is considered “best practice” because, well, “we believe in it.”

The theory is (and has been) that student engagement with electronic devices and their software will dramatically alter classroom instruction and lead to improved achievement. The problem, of course (you no doubt have guessed where I am going with this) — is that evidence of these devices transforming teaching practices and raising test scores is not only sparse but also unpersuasive even when some studies show a small “effect size.”

That’s what I mean by “secret” in the title of this post..

So, if the research pantry is nearly empty and evidence for raising student test scores or transforming teaching practices are sparse, how do policymakers and administrators justify buying new devices and software?

Here are three reasons that I think explain why decision-makers allocate scarce budget dollars for new technologies.

First, keeping up with the rest of the changing world. Call it “modernization” or recasting schools as less like museums and more like fast-paced companies using technology in daily work. No more jokes about educators being technological slow-pokes. Use of new technologies is considered modern, being with-it, even an unadulterated “good” that all children and youth in age-graded schools should embrace.

Second, because new technologies are highly valued in the culture, school boards and their superintendents feel strong pressures to keep up with usage in other sectors–both public and private–undergoing technological changes. If those leaders do not act, they fear that taxpayers and voters will lose confidence in public schools. And public confidence is like money in the bank since tax-supported public schools are politically and fiscally dependent on taxpayers’ good will.

And there is a less obvious third reason for school leaders to purchase new technologies: increase efficiency in students taking tests and scoring the results. Schools have to have computers because most U.S. students take tests online. The Los Angeles Unified School District’s fiasco with iPads over a decade ago was triggered by demands to implement required standardized testing due to adoption of Common Core Standards. Just as the move from quill pens to pencils to testing-by-computer required no research studies but were done on grounds of cost-saving efficiency, so it was when the LAUSD School Board and Superintendent authorized buying iPads.

Note that the three reasons I offer are both practical and political–not in any negative sense–but ones that are realistic in the world that policymakers and practitioners inhabit. Research findings and student outcome data to support promises that school leaders make for the outcomes that high-tech purchases will produce, are simply not there. And that pattern of pursuing policies and innovations without much evidence to support school board and superintendent decisions is plain to see.

It is an open secret.

The impact of AI and its uncertain consequences for the economy, education, and daily life unfold daily. All of that uncertainty, and even fears, shows up in both doomsday predictions and rosy forecasts.

I am struck by how AI and robots have so quickly merged in popular beliefs and imagination. After all, ChatGPT only became available less than four years ago. Moreover, equating AI with robots has added the shadow of fear to this marriage.

Here are a few cartoons that poke at this omnipresence of AI, robots, and yes, even fear.

Enjoy!

Richard Culatta, CEO of ISTE+ASCD, is former director of educational technology at the U.S. Department of Education. He believes that U.S. school boards banning devices, as journalist Natasha Singer described in previous post, is a policy error.

His article appeared April 20, 2026 in 74.

When it comes to tech and kids, America has made serious mistakes. For years, children have been allowed unsupervised access to social media apps in school and at home that were not designed with their safety in mind. This has contributed to an unprecedented rise in adolescent anxiety, depression, cyberbullying and suicide. Americans have every reason to be concerned — and every reason to act.  

Responsible legislation could limit the dangers by requiring age verification before kids can sign up for social media accounts, making learning content easier to access and demanding that cellphone providers provide safety tools for families. Instead, a huge wave of poorly constructed bills is working its way through state legislatures that could cause unintended consequences and set young people back even further. 

For example, in Missouri, a bill recently passed the statehouse that will require 70% of elementary school assignments to be completed with pencil and paper and prohibit schools from assigning any homework that uses technology. In Tennessee, legislators passed a bill to ban all technology in grades K-5 for students and teachers. A proposed Kansas measure would mandate that all K-5 instructional materials be “print-based.” Virginia’s Senate has passed legislation directing the state to cap instructional screen time by grade level. And in Utah, a package of bills signed by the governor will sharply curtail the use of technology to support learning.

There are two consistent problems in the current wave of bills. First, they treat distracting entertainment media and research-based educational technology as if they are the same. But not all screen time is created equal, and these bills completely ignore that distinction. Lumping TikTok together with a math tutoring app, or Instagram with a text-to-speech tool for a student with dyslexia, is a practice that has been repeatedly called out by educators. 

Second, they assume that the best way to limit tech use is with a timer. But the issue is quality, not quantity. Many of these bills set a daily time limit (e.g., one hour of digital instruction), though any amount of time would be too much for a student who is not using the technology effectively. On the flip side, technology used thoughtfully to increase student engagement and creativity should not be constrained by an arbitrary time limit, especially when supporting evidence-based pedagogical practices. What’s worse, not one of the bills requiring paper-based worksheets to be used in place of technology imposes any quality standards on the types of activities assigned. According to these bills, a teacher could replace a highly effective math app with a dot-to-dot worksheet, and it would be totally fine. That’s an “out of the frying pan into the fire” situation.

As a parent and former educator, I understand the desire for distraction-free schools. Personal devices and non-learning apps that don’t support educational goals can hijack students’ attention and try any teacher’s patience. But when learning is not engaging, literally anything will become a distraction. Limiting instruction to filling out paper-based worksheets would be mind-numbing for any student.

In contrast, the key to get kids to love learning is to make it meaningful, and this is where ed tech can be a game-changer. Recently, I visited a school in Los Angeles that was transforming math instruction by having students play a research-based math game, which informed the teacher exactly who needed extra help with specific concepts. Other technologies adapt learning activities based on students’ interests or skill levels, let teachers know which kids need help before they fall behind and enable educators to meet each student’s needs in ways that would otherwise be impossible. The effectiveness of these tools is backed by decades of research. A bill like Missouri’s would make this kind of data-informed teaching nearly impossible.

For children with disabilities, assistive technology — screen readers, text-to-speech software, adaptive learning systems and language translation tools — is not just a nice-to-have; it supports millions of students whose needs might otherwise go unmet. Today, nearly 8 million children in the U.S. receive special education services, many of which include technology as part of their individualized education plans. For students with dyslexia using a text-to-speech app, for example, technology isn’t a distraction — it’s how they access learning. Tennessee’s original proposal would have barred teachers from even using digital devices for instruction, meaning the very tools these students depend on could have been eliminated.

In today’s economy, there is no college or career path that doesn’t require the effective use of technology. Students who develop digital literacy skills early find greater academic and professional success than those who don’t. Essentially all jobs — 92% — now require applicants to have digital proficiency. Preventing K-12 students from learning to use technology for writing, research and collaboration would undermine their future employability and the nation’s economic competitiveness.

This is even more striking in a global context. While America’s state legislatures debate whether to let elementary students touch a keyboard, other countries are doubling down on teaching students how to use technology — including artificial intelligence —to solve complex problems. They recognize that technology can enhance curiosity, critical thinking and other essential skills, ensuring their graduates can thrive in the workplace and beyond. 

With the emergence of artificial intelligence, the world is at the dawn of a new era for learning and life. If the nation’s goal is to prepare kids to thrive in a complex and modern economy, it cannot retreat to the tools of the last century.

There is no disputing the need for guidelines and guardrails for children using consumer technology. But by treating math software the same as Netflix, and assistive technology the same as TikTok, the ed tech bans gaining momentum in statehouses around the country guarantee that the students who can least afford to fall behind will be the ones hurt most. If these bills become law, America won’t have protected its children — it will have forced them to learn for a paper-based world that no longer exists.

Banning technology for learning doesn’t make us principled — it makes us negligent.

Journalist Natasha Singer reported this story from McPherson, Kansas. The article appeared in The New York Times, March 29, 2026

Inge Esping, the principal of McPherson Middle School, has spent years battling digital devices for children’s attention.

Four years ago, her school in McPherson, Kan., banned student cellphones during the school day. But digital distractions continued. Many children watched YouTube videos or played video games on their school-issued Chromebook laptops. Some used school Gmail accounts to bully fellow students.

In December, the middle school asked all 480 students to return the Chromebooks they had freely used in class and at home. Now the school keeps the laptops, which run on Google’s Chrome operating system, in carts parked in classrooms. Children take notes mostly by hand, and laptops are used sparingly, for specific activities assigned by teachers.

“We just felt we couldn’t have Chromebooks be that huge distraction,” said Ms. Esping, 43, Kansas’ 2025 middle school principal of the year. “This technology can be a tool. It is not the answer to education.”

McPherson Middle School no longer gives students their own Chromebooks to use in school and take home. The laptops are now kept in classroom carts and used only for specific activities assigned by teachers.

McPherson Middle School, about an hour’s drive from Wichita, is at the forefront of a new tech backlash spreading in education: Chromebook remorse.

For years, giants like Apple, Google and Microsoft have fiercely competed to capture the classroom and train schoolchildren on their tech products in the hopes of hooking students as lifelong customers. For more than a decade, tech companies have urged schools to buy one laptop per child, arguing that the devices would democratize education and bolster learning. Now Google and Microsoft, along with newcomers like OpenAI, are vying to spread their artificial intelligence chatbots in schools.

But after tens of billions of dollars of school spending on Chromebooks, iPads and learning apps, studies have found that digital tools have generally not improved students’ academic results or graduation rates. Some researchers and organizations like UNESCO even warn that overreliance on technology can distract students and impede learnin

Schools in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Michigan that once bought devices for each student are now re-evaluating heavy classroom technology use. And Chromebooks, the laptops most popular with U.S. schools, have emerged as a focal point. School leaders, educators and parents described the laptop curbs as an effort to refocus schooling on skills like student collaboration and conversation.

“We’re not going back to stone tablets,” said Shiloh Vincent, the superintendent of McPherson Public Schools. “This is intentional tech use.”

The classroom device pullback is the latest sign of a growing global reckoning over how tech giants and their products have upended childhood, adolescence and education.

In a landmark verdict last week, a jury found the social media company Meta and the Google-owned YouTube liable for hooking and harming a minor. More than 30 states have limited or banned student cellphone use at school. Last year, Australia began requiring social media companies to disable the accounts of children under 16, a move that other countries are considering.

Now children’s groups and educators concerned about screen time are turning their attention to school-issued laptops and learning apps. Parents are flocking to support efforts, like Schools Beyond Screens and the Distraction-Free Schools Policy Project, to vet and limit school tech.

At least 10 states, including Kansas, Vermont and Virginia, have recently introduced bills to restrict students’ screen time, require proof of safety and efficacy for school tech tools or allow parents to opt their child out of using digital devices for learning. And Utah recently passed a law that would require schools to provide monitoring systems for parents to see which websites their children had visited — and how much time they spent — on school devices.

Some parents are particularly concerned about YouTube, saying the platform has steered children to inappropriate videos on school devices. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat, recently expressed concern that one of his school-age sons had watched YouTube videos of manosphere podcasters on his school laptop.

“It was his school device,” Mr. Newsom said during a podcast interview this month. “It was YouTube. It was the Chromebook and all these algorithms.

Google said it provided tools for schools to lock students’ Chromebook screens, restrict the content they saw, manage their YouTube access and disable Chromebooks after school hours. The company said it also turned off YouTube by default for K-12 students with school-issued Google accounts.

In a small town surrounded by wheat fields, McPherson Middle School serves sixth through eighth graders in a red brick schoolhouse built in 1938. In science class, eighth graders sit at vintage lab tables next to cabinets brimming with old microscopes. The school auditorium still has its original wooden seating.

“We already have a little bit of an old-school vibe for sure,” said Ms. Esping, now in her fourth year as principal.

She is also revisiting years-old school tech decisions.

In 2016, as part of the national trend, administrators at McPherson decided to buy a $225 Chromebook for every middle schooler. Google had introduced the low-cost laptops five years earlier, with a pitch that the tech would help equalize learning opportunities and equip students with vital career skills.

“The individual use of Chromebooks is a way to empower students to maximize their full potential,” the middle school’s device policy explained in 2016.

School leaders were enthusiastic.

“The general idea was: Students are going to be more engaged because it’s online — and how exciting for them!” Ms. Esping recalled.

To capitalize on the Chromebooks, the middle school invested in online textbooks and learning apps. But administrators, parents and students found that some of the platforms seemed too gamelike or did not work as advertised.

The coronavirus pandemic only increased school reliance on tech tools. In 2021, Chromebook shipments to schools more than doubled to nearly 16.8 million, compared with shipments in 2016, according to Futuresource Consulting, a market research firm.

When Ms. Esping took over as principal in 2022, she worried that rampant tech use was hindering learning. So the school banned student cellphones.

Online bullying and disciplinary incidents quickly decreased, she said. But online distractions continued.

Some students became so hooked on playing video games on their Chromebooks that teachers had difficulty getting them to concentrate on their schoolwork, administrators and teachers said.

Students also sent mean Gmail messages or set up shared Google Docs to bully classmates with comments. Hundreds of children logged on to Zoom meetings where they made fun of their peers, teachers and students said.

The school blocked Spotify and YouTube on school laptops. Then administrators stopped students from messaging one another on school Gmail.

Even then, some educators said they were spending so much time policing student Chromebook use that it was detracting from teaching. Some parents complained their children were spending hours playing video games on their school-issued devices.

Although the idea of taking back students’ Chromebooks seemed unorthodox, given U.S. schools’ deep reliance on Google’s sprawling education platform, the middle school went ahead. The changes took effect in January.

On one recent morning, school formally began with the Pledge of Allegiance, broadcast over school loudspeakers. Homeroom teachers then led group sessions on organizational and interpersonal skills to help children navigate life without their own laptops.

Homeroom topics have included tips for students on using paper planners for school assignments and doing homework during school hours. (Students who want to practice things like extra math problems online can borrow Chromebooks from the school library to take home.)

Teachers have also taught students how to play board and card games like Scattergories and Uno.

The new laptop minimalism has also changed core courses.

During a recent English class on writing thesis statements, Jenny Vernon, the teacher, gave seventh graders a choice. They could answer questions by hand on bright salmon-colored paper or use a class Chromebook. Most students chose the paper.

In a sixth-grade lesson on fractions, a teacher asked the class to convert three-twentieths into a percentage. Students each worked on the problem on small dry-erase boards. They balanced the boards on their heads to indicate they were ready to be called on.

Computer science classes promote purposeful tech use. In one recent lesson, students used Chromebooks to program sensors and LED lights.

“It’s coding the physical world,” said Courtney Klassen, the computing teacher. “It’s not just staring at the screen.”

Some students have welcomed the changes.

Jade LeGron, 13, said curtailing Chromebooks had been “super beneficial” because students had stopped fighting with teachers over video games and had less opportunity “to be mean to each other.”

Sarah Garcia, also 13, said spending less time online had prompted students to talk more. “Since we don’t have our Chromebooks in front of our face,” she said, “most people now interact with their, like, peers and stuff.”

The school is part of a trend. In Wichita, Marshall Middle School is trying “tech-free” Fridays. In January, the Kansas Senate introduced a school device bill that would prohibit laptops and tablets in kindergarten through fifth grade — while restricting device use for middle schoolers to just one hour during the school day.

Schools like McPherson say they are not just curbing Chromebooks to reduce children’s screen time. They are also aiming to refocus learning on child development, student-teacher interactions and old-fashioned fun.

“They’ve learned how to make darts again!” Ms. Esping exclaimed, pointing up at a student-made dart jutting out from a school hallway ceiling. “They are going back to the old ways of being ornery.”

Historians of technology often point out that it took a half-century after the introduction of turbine-generated electric power in the U.S to eventually light streets, power trolleys, create industrial assembly lines, and upgrade homes with incandescent lights, refrigerators, telephones, and automatic washers. It took over five decades in fits and starts for these changes to emerge as American leaders electrified factories, transportation, street lighting, and home appliances.

I believe that the introduction of computer hardware and software into schools in the early 1980s follows a similar fits-and-starts pattern of teachers choosing to integrate new technologies into their lessons. As in electrifying industry and home, the trend of greater access to devices and software and greater use in school is clear, at least from teacher self-reports and classroom observations. See here and here. But a graph would show ups-and-downs with a trend line becoming evident over time.

Direct observation of classrooms confirms that more and more teachers are using new devices and software in lessons. For example, I studied Las Montanas High School (pseudonym for a school in the San Francisco Bay area) in 1998-1999 and 2008-2010. Where computer labs dominated teachers’ and students’ use in 1999, classroom  laptops and interactive white boards were pervasive across all academic subjects in 2010. Yet even with far more teacher use, I noted that some chose not to use the devices and software. I wrote about these changes in Las Montanas in those two periods of time here and here.

While some gaps in access to new technologies still exist across the U.S.,  putting devices in nearly all students’ hands has occurred. So, too, have most teachers, to some degree, begun integrating new technologies into lessons. What remains unclear, however, is whether that integration of computers has altered how teachers teach.

Many advocates for integrating high-tech devices into classroom lessons want to transform teacher-directed lessons into student-centered ones. Using new technologies from desktop computers to laptops to interactive whiteboards to iPads to online instruction, they have claimed, would shift traditional whole-group, teacher-centered, textbook-bound, homework-driven lessons to ones where teachers worked with individual students and small groups on customized assignments with students using multiple sources and exploring new skills and knowledge. In short, there is a clear preference for student-centered instruction among these advocates.

For those policymakers, academics, and practitioners who enjoyed Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms (1980) or to those who have read Clayton Christensen‘s Disrupting Class (2010), creating student-centered learning through new technologies has fueled their reform-driven efforts. They believed that these new technologies would transform, nay, revolutionize–common verbs in reformers’ lexicon–teaching and learning. That belief is the bedrock of the ideology deeply embedded in past and current efforts to integrate technology into daily lessons. It is, then, an unforgiving bias toward one form of teaching or what Judi Harris, an education professor at William and Mary, calls “pedagogical dogmatism.”

Such “dogmatism” leads to judgments that some forms of technology integration are better than others. When teachers use laptops, interactive whiteboards, and software–Keynote and PowerPoint–to extend and reinforce direct instruction or teacher-centered lessons, these “pedagogical” dogmatists cringe. It is not how these champions of tablets and laptops, of online lessons in math and reading believe students should learn.

These reformers believe that technology-integrated lessons should put students at the center–such as in blended instruction (e.g., School of One, Carpe Diem, Rocketship)– online instruction, or in project-based learning (e.g., High Tech High). That is the right-minded use of technology. Champions of student-centered learning believe that those teachers who use hardware and software will improve their teacher-centered lessons.

This unacknowledged bias, of course leads to wrong-headed judgments about what constitutes “good” teaching. The fact is that there is no one best way of teaching and learning. So much depends upon the teacher, school leadership, parental expectations, timing, and context. No evidence that I know confirms that student-centered–however defined–is superior to teacher-centered instruction.

What might make “pedagogical” dogmatists wince, however, is evidence that teacher-centered lessons in the form of “direct instruction”does increase standardized test scores (see here and here). Moreover, practitioner wisdom–something researchers too often ignore–is rich in stories of those teachers who hug the middle using hybrids of teacher- and student-centered instruction to increase their chances of engaging more students and increased learning.

Reform-driven educators need to recognize that since the 1980s, most teachers, in fits and starts, have integrated new technologies into their lessons. In practice, most teachers blend different ways of teaching to fit the students they face daily.

Finally, these reform-minded advocates need to understand the complex array of organizational, sociological, and structural reasons that explain why most teachers have bent these powerful devices and software to improve teacher-centered, not student-centered, instruction. Once they do understand, then, these policymakers and practitioners might admit publicly that they are biased toward student-centered instruction and, perhaps acknowledge that it is one among many ways to teach and learn effectively.

My guess is that it ain’t going to happen.