Kindergarteners with Chromebooks

Nearly all schools provide Chromebooks or tablets for students to use in class, report Claire Cain Miller and Sarah Mervosh in the New York Times. Students start using devices in kindergarten or earlier in the 20 largest U.S. school districts.

"Even as schools have moved rapidly to ban cellphones, screens are nearly universal," they write.

In a Times survey, "nearly three-fourths of teachers who use devices in their classrooms said they distract from student learning and engagement in class, and a majority said children in their classrooms had used them to play games or watch videos unrelated to school."

Elementary students use school devices for an hour or less per day, teachers estimated. Older students spend more time on screens. "In middle and high schools, four in 10 teachers said students spend three hours or more a day on devices," Miller and Mervosh write.

Devices let students work at their own level, and provide translations for students learning English, teachers said. Few want to ban them entirely.

Teachers also said "devices had made grading easier, allowed them to give real-time feedback to students and supported their ability to work with small groups, while others worked independently online," the survey found.

However, "many teachers worry that computers at school simply add to this generation’s total screen time," write Miller and Mervosh. "Teachers described students with weakened spelling and handwriting skills, diminished imaginations and less stamina to focus on arduous tasks that are not as engaging as apps that make lessons into video games."

Most schools use content blockers. Teachers say students easily get around them.

Distraction is a huge problem, writes Henry Seton, who teaches world history in a private school.

Schools may ban smartphones, while giving students laptops, Chromebooks, and tablets that "connect to the same social media platforms, as well as potent, addictive games, all on a bigger, brighter screen," he writes.

Even when students are on task, reading on screens is "less effective than paper for deep reading and long-term retention," he writes.

As a new teacher, he looked for schools with high growth rates from year to year, Seton writes. "Again and again, I found the same thing: engaged students but minimal tech."

Seton uses some technology in teaching, such as posting lessons and resources online. Students may use laptops in class to research and prepare slides for current-events presentations. But most lessons are "device free for students."

"We need to insist that schools tighten access to all electronics, not just cellphones," Seton concludes.

"If we want to prepare our young people for a future that demands focus, knowledge, and critical thinking, the first steps are simple: Ban the phones, close the laptops, put away the tablets, and let the learning begin."