Has the techlash gone too far?

Don't throw out useful teaching tools with the bath water, writes Lina Eroh, senior director of communications at Overdeck Family Foundation and the mother of three, in Education Week

In the past decade "schools adopted lots of technology rapidly, often without clear evidence that it improved student outcomes," Eroh writes. "One study of tools built specifically for education purposes found only 1 in 5 showed any evidence of impact."

Hence the techlash. However, "when designed to address specific problems and implemented as intended," technology can be vaulable, she writes. "Curriculum-aligned instructional tools can at least modestly accelerate student learning. High-dosage tutoring delivered in a hybrid or virtual setting can provide students with individualized support even when human tutors are scarce. Translation and accessibility tools can expand access for multilingual learners or students with disabilities."

AI poses dangers, she writes, but "AI-supported assessment tools can help teachers provide more timely feedback while freeing up time for instruction and relationship-building."

Ban the phones, writes Robert Pondiscio. Don't ban the future. The anti–screen movement threatens to go too far, he argues. "Technologies should be judged by whether they deepen human teaching or displace it, whether they strengthen cognition or circumvent it."

AI-enabled tools can "help teachers teach," he writes.

I have seen AI systems give students detailed, actionable feedback on their writing—sometimes identifying weaknesses and patterns that I missed, even as a former teacher and professional writer. I have also seen early literacy tools use AI to guide beginning readers with real-time, individualized support, extending a teacher’s reach in ways that would otherwise be impractical or impossible.

Of course, AI can be used for "engagement" -- the student looks busy -- and babysitting, Pondiscio writes. "The same technology that can provide individualized tutoring, immediate feedback, and targeted practice at scale can also weaken attention, bypass effort, simulate competence, and further atomize schooling."

The problem is not the technology, but how it's used.

We need a debate on what screen limits make sense, writes Michael Petrilli. He links to Kate Sequeira's summary of Los Angeles Unified's new screen limits, which are very strict for younger students. Is it too much? "As Michael Horn argued recently, we can believe that kids are spending way too much time on screens, including at school, while also believing that there are at least a few tools and programs out there that actually add value to student learning (including for the youngest students)," Petrilli writes.

We have "not been doing a good job of filtering out lousy ideas," Dan Meyer, who developed the Desmos math program, tells Alexander Russo. “Kids are using tools that don’t work, that are cognitively de-skilling them. And then these parent communities have said, ‘Okay, this is not working.’”

It's time to focus on "what works and what doesn't," says Meyer.

That's where I am. I believe some education technology can support learning. But will schools be able to tell what's useful from what's a waste of time, money and attention?