Educational Tech Comes Under Fire as NTIA Launches Screen-Time Probe

Neuroscientist and author Jared Horvath said banning phones in schools accomplishes little because the vast majority of districts furnish students with their own computers. Generation Z has "worse memories, worse attention, lower general IQ, worse creative thinking and worse critical thinking" than their parents, all due to digital educational tech, he said. Remove the tech and go back to analog methods, and "surprise, surprise: Learning, reading, comprehension, creativity, mathematics -- all those things start to go back up."

“Ed tech is Big Tech,” and both are “fundamentally at odds with child development,” said Washington-state-based educational consultant Emily Cherkin, who's named as a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against ed tech company PowerSchool. She said children are handed tablets in school when they lack the cognitive ability to safely navigate the internet or regulate their screen use.

Lisa Cline, a Maryland parent and safe technology advocate, said ed tech "is a huge business" that fabricates proof to show that its products work. Numerous online safety groups are bankrolled by Big Ed Tech, and the industry made up narratives to justify E-rate subsidization of Wi-Fi on school buses, she said.

Roth said parents' monitoring and limiting screen use are challenged by the fact that screens are inescapable at schools and so much homework is screen-based. Banning phones "only scratches the surface," as students are on school-issued laptops and tablets for long portions of the day.

NTIA broke the comments down into three buckets: federal rules and policies that feed into excessive screen use, schools' processes for making procurement decisions, and privacy concerns about students' personal data. The agency said it would have more such listening sessions.

“NTIA isn't setting education policy" but has a responsibility to look at whether federally connectivity programs and policies are supporting healthy outcomes, Roth said.

There were calls for NTIA to work with the legislative and executive branches on limiting what student data tech companies can collect and aggregate. Multiple speakers also raised concerns about AI use in education.

AI's negative effects on kids range from hurting critical thinking to "helping bullies create deepfake porn of peers," said Jared Hayden, an analyst at the Institute for Family Studies' Family First Tech Initiative. "Simply pumping more of this into classrooms without ... safety standards will lead to more problems and harm." He called for any funding of AI in classrooms to be done in ways that allow parental input.

Jonathan Butcher, acting director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Education Policy, said AI holds promise in helping create lesson plans and sniffing out cheating, but there are too many unknowns to recommend using it as an instructional tool. Limiting cellphone use in schools is a bipartisan issue that generates widespread agreement, he added.

Defense

Ed tech did see some support at the NTIA session.

Danny Bounds, manager of education technology policy at the Software & Information Industry Association, warned that overly restrictive limits on educational tools could undermine student achievement. Rather than time-based limits on digital media, the quality of interactions should be the priority, he said. When tech is safely and actively integrated, “it transforms a potential distraction … into a powerful learning resource." Bounds added that NTIA should give guidance that's safe and effective for kids in classrooms.

Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, said families "are rightly concerned about distraction, overexposure, and misuse of devices," but investing in broadband and classroom tech "is investing in opportunity." Employers expect employees to have data literacy and digital skills, and schools can't prepare students without broadband and connected devices, he said, arguing that there's too often a conflation of educational screen time and unsupervised online activity.

E-rate

Boston College law professor Daniel Lyons said the E-rate program was launched to bring connectivity to schools and libraries, and it largely accomplished its mission by 2006. Now it persists largely to reimburse local governments without credible evidence that E-rate is increasing student performance, he said. E-rate influences market behavior and procurement, with eligibility driving demand, he noted: School districts are incentivized to ask what E-rate will pay for, rather than what makes sense to buy. For example, few districts likely would have funded broadband connectivity for school buses without E-rate subsidization. The FCC should look at whether the subsidy enhances educational outcomes, Lyons added.

Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow Clare Morell said it was "maddening for parents" who filtered the internet at home, only for their children to access whatever they want via E-rate-funded Wi-Fi hot spots or on connected school buses.

Annie Chestnut Tutor, a policy analyst at Heritage's Center for Technology and the Human Person, said the FCC has spent "a shocking amount" of taxpayer money connecting preschools to the internet via E-rate, raising questions about the program's susceptibility to waste and fraud. The primary E-rate beneficiaries aren't children but telecom companies and consultants, she said. “Federal funds must not be a giveaway to the tech industry.”

E-rate has “nothing to do with screen time” but is a connectivity program, countered Jon Bernstein, co-chairman of the Education and Libraries Networks Coalition, an E-rate advocacy group. It doesn't pay for content or devices, he noted, arguing that E-rate can't be measured by educational outcomes, as its role is only to ensure schools and libraries receive connectivity.