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With more parents pushing for limits on screen time in the classroom, Vermont state Rep. Rob Hunter, a Democrat, wants to make it easier for them to opt their children out of using laptops and iPads.
He co-sponsored legislation this year that would give parents an ed-tech “right of refusal.” A former English teacher, he was never a fan of the shift toward every student having their own laptop. Technology, he said, isn’t making students any smarter.
“In fact, we know it’s making them dumber,” he said, expressing a view shared by parents across the country, especially those with students in the elementary grades.
When his fellow lawmaker Rep. Leanne Harple read the bill, she imagined how tough it might be for teachers to accommodate such requests. An English teacher herself, she also speaks from experience. Her students do research online, where the information is more up to date than in books and academic journals. A 2024 American Federation of Teachers survey showed 83% of teachers use technology in the classroom daily.
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The bill “would create, in some cases, a lot more work,” she said. For every assignment, teachers would “have to create an alternative that’s completely analog.”
Their opposing views on the topic reflect a growing national debate. Parents who advocated for bell-to-bell cellphone bans are now targeting Chromebooks and other ed tech. Influenced by researchers like Jonathan Haidt and Jared Cooney Horvath, who argue that cellphones and classroom technology have harmed students’ development, they’ve mobilized in Facebook groups. They’re demanding pencil-and-paper assignments and asking teachers to excuse their kids from computer-based math and reading apps. Their pleas have sparked pushback from districts that for years have relied on technology for everything from curriculum to testing.
“In August, almost no one was talking about this, and now I’m having no other conversations,” said Kelly Clancy, a mom of three in South Brooklyn, New York, who also serves on her local community education council. “There’s a sea change in parents realizing that they don’t want their kids in front of screens.”
She’s among those challenging the New York City schools’ use of digital programs. She refused to let teachers enter her kids’ work into Writable, an AI tool from the curriculum company HMH that generates feedback on student writing. But when she tried to opt her children out of i-Ready, a widely used testing program from the company Curriculum Associates, she met resistance. The tests are a “baseline component” of the district’s assessment system, David Pretto, superintendent of District 20, wrote in an email. Her school’s principal, he said, “is not in the position to exclude your child from universal screening.”
Clancy didn’t take no for an answer.
“We will get legal advice if necessary, but my children will not complete these,” she wrote back.
In a statement, the district said any tool using student data “must undergo a rigorous … review process to meet strict privacy, security and compliance standards before it is approved for use.” Officials urged parents to contact local schools with their concerns.
When New York City parent Kelly Clancy said she wanted to opt her children out of i-Ready, a local superintendent said she couldn’t.
Across the country, the Seattle Public Schools has advised staff that “families may not opt out of district-adopted digital curriculum,” but a spokesperson for the district told The 74 that “this is an evolving landscape,” and “we will continue to review and update the guidance as needed.”
Parents in Pennsylvania’s Lower Merion School District are also determined to keep their students off Chromebooks at school.
“They’re saying we can’t, but we’ll find a way,” Yair Lev, a parent of two, said after a community meeting last month in which Superintendent Frank Ranelli said opting out wasn’t possible because the curriculum is computer-based.
Teachers, Lev said, are caught in the middle. He collected anonymous comments from five teachers, who said students often access gaming sites and YouTube during class, and even make video calls to students in other classrooms.
“There should be clear districtwide policies and parameters for when laptops should and should not be used, rather than leaving major decisions to classroom-by-classroom discretion,” one wrote.
Frank Ranelli, superintendent of the Lower Merion School District, outside of Philadelphia, spoke to parents in March about the district’s technology policies. (Ron Stanford)
Not ‘our best moment’
Lev, a cardiologist and professor at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, said he’s not opposed to technology. He consults for cardiology startups using AI and has taken the lead on AI use in his division at the hospital. But he and his wife realized that “kids are being exposed to a lot of screens, and we decided to try to reduce it at home.”
In some ways, he represents many of the parents pushing for tech opt outs. His children are young, and they’re starting school at a time when Haidt, a social psychologist, warns that cellphones and social media have harmed children’s mental health. Lev’s kids are also beginning their education after the pandemic, when parents are demanding more say over what’s taking place in the classroom and data breaches have compromised student privacy.
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“The image of technology in schools that’s seared into every parent’s mind is the lockdown version of technology. It wasn’t our best moment,” said Joseph South, chief innovation officer at the International Society for Technology in Education, which merged in 2023 with ASCD, a major curriculum organization.
Until the pandemic, Elyssa East, a New York City mom, was raising her son screen-free. That became impossible during school closures. Around the same time, she learned that he had some learning difficulties and would “really fall apart when it came to any instruction on the screen.”
Online math programs like Zearn and IXL made him feel “defeated,” she said, because they were assigned for remediation.
“Here is this technology that’s supposed to help him, but it makes him feel even worse than a human teacher would,” East said.
She eventually switched him to a private school. She has opted him out of math apps and he writes on an old electric typewriter.
”He likes that a lot,” she said. Compared to a laptop, “it’s a totally different experience.”
Elyssa East’s son, now in sixth grade, uses a typewriter at home to do his homework rather than a laptop. (Courtesy of Elyssa East)
‘Caught in the crossfire’
Some teachers have no problem with less technology.
Dylan Kane, a seventh grade math teacher in Lake County, Colorado, near Aspen, went tech-free in January. Students, he wrote, are more focused, are completing more work and spend less time “fussing with logistics,” like connecting to the internet or forgetting their Chromebook at home.
Like many parents, he was influenced by Horvath’s The Digital Delusion. In his 2025 book, the cognitive neuroscientist argues that the widespread use of classroom technology has left students distracted and unable to retain information.
But prior to January, Kane never had a parent request to opt their child out of using computers or specific software. Even during parent-teacher conferences this spring, his decision to ditch Chromebooks in class never came up.
“I work in a small, rural town that’s relatively low-income, not a lot of college-educated parents. I think much of the tech backlash from parents is coming from the more-online, higher-educated folks,” he said. He thinks trying to accommodate individual parents’ objections would be tricky. “Teachers could be caught in the crossfire because they have to deal with district-mandated online programs and then potentially parent opt-outs.”
South at ISTE+ASCD said he’s heard plenty of “horror stories” about technology, like apps dominated by advertising and students spending class time “shooting aliens” on the screen. But those examples are often due to teachers using a program that was never vetted by their district or “some random kid who found a workaround,” he said.
He and Richard Culatta, the organization’s CEO, added that bills moving through state legislatures that limit screen time don’t necessarily address parents’ other concerns like cyberbullying, protecting student data or improving the overall quality of instruction.
Many of the bills require paper worksheets to be used instead of technology, said Culatta, who quipped that he often feels like he’s in a “time warp.”
“There’s no quality indicator,” he said. “You could literally take any garbage worksheet and it would be fine.”
‘Rapid innovation’
Opt-out requests have forced districts to be more thoughtful about how they use technology.
The Worcester Public Schools in central Massachusetts is like a lot of districts. It went through “a period of rapid innovation and tech acquisition” prior to the pandemic to make sure “teachers and students had the tools needed to be future-ready,” said Sarah Kyriazis, director of the district’s Office of Innovation.
Schools added even more ed tech tools during COVID lockdowns for remote and hybrid learning. Now some parents are questioning those decisions at a time of “national concern about data, privacy, security and screen time,” she said.
The district’s school committee has so far declined to allow parents to opt out of ed tech programs. But Kyriazis is collecting feedback from teachers on the apps they feel are most important for instruction. The goal, she said, is to whittle down the amount of data sent through online platforms to third-party vendors. Principals and teachers, she said, should be able to “speak with parents about each app and its purpose in the classroom.”
Further west, the Northampton, Massachusetts, district is accommodating opt-out requests from about 12 parents. To do so, teachers must come up with activities that allow students to learn from the same curriculum as their peers “without using the disputed programs,” said Superintendent Portia Bonner.
Laura Carney Erny, who has a second grader in the district, hasn’t tried to opt her son out of tech yet, but she’s thinking about it for third grade. Even learning which programs the school used took “months of back-and-forth emails” with teachers and administrators, she said.
Parents say they don’t want to further complicate the lives of teachers, especially those who lack classroom aides. Northampton lost several paraprofessionals in 2024 who were paid with temporary COVID relief funds.
“I don’t blame teachers for relying on tech because it’s an easy thing to do,” she said. “Some of these programs help keep the kids in their seats.”
In the Los Angeles Unified School District, former teacher Kate Brody is among those who have opted their children out of practice sessions on i-Ready, now the subject of a federal lawsuit over student privacy. She decided the program was a problem when her first grader couldn’t tear himself away from the screen to use the bathroom and started having accidents.
“I used to teach full time,” she said. “I definitely don’t want to create a world where we’re asking teachers to do multiple lesson plans and monitor half the class on the computer and do analog lessons for the other half.”
It’s unfair to teachers to field opt-out requests every year, she said. That’s why, as a board member for Schools Beyond Screens, a parent advocacy group, she backs a proposed resolution that calls for limits on the use of technology for all students, especially in the early grades. The board will vote on the plan April 21.
“Right now,” she said, “it’s the Wild West.”
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