iPads in kindergarten? No wonder our kids are falling behind. | Opinion

Last week, I picked up two of my kids from school and asked about their day, like I always do.

“We spent almost an entire class period trying to log into Canvas!” one of them bemoaned.

Ah yes, Canvas – that technological wonder used by some 9,000 schools and 275 million people – helps parents, students and teachers facilitate learning both in class and at home.

Canvas was recently hacked, temporarily crippling the portal. The hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach and threatened to leak users’ data unless schools paid a ransom by a specified date. Instructure, Canvas’s parent company, said in an online post that it reached a deal with ShinyHunters, which agreed to delete the stolen data.

The disruption locked out students and teachers alike, stalling education while kids just learning algebra and English spent hours resetting passwords and accounts simply to access classwork. Apparently, Aristotle and Albert Einstein knew nothing, and education can only happen with a device and Wi-Fi.

Godspeed to the folks resolving the Canvas hacking issue, but the episode perfectly captures a broader trend: a world growing increasingly dependent on technology, especially in schools. It’s hurting our kids and making educational progress far more complicated than it needs to be.

Schools over-rely on technology. It's not helping kids.

Some technology use in schools makes sense, but increasingly, schools seem overly dependent on it to teach subjects that can easily be taught – and learned – without a tablet or smartphone.

According to a new national report from researchers at Harvard University, Stanford University and Dartmouth College, eighth-grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have fallen to their lowest levels since 1990. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in education to explain the decline: Why would kids want to read books when they’re surrounded by tablets full of games – I mean books – for eight hours a day at school?

That wasn’t even the worst finding in the new report. Educational decline began around 2013, well before the COVID-19 pandemic disastrously shuttered schools for months.

Not coincidentally, that’s roughly when iPads began making their way into classrooms. Apple released the iPad in 2010, and by 2011, schools were already experimenting with classroom sets and pilot programs. The Los Angeles Unified School District’s early iPad rollout didn’t go well, yet districts across the country continued embracing the technology.

By September 2021, thanks in part to the pandemic, 96% of public schools reported providing digital devices to students who needed them.

Overusing technology isn’t the only reason students are falling behind, but it’s clearly playing a major role.

Yet a 2014 Frontiers in Psychology article acknowledged the prevailing enthusiasm about iPads for young children, noting that “tablets have been heralded for their potential to revolutionize education, including that of young children” and that iPads have "novel features which have the potential to make a positive difference to early education."

More than a decade later, education insiders still brag about how much technology K-12 students now have access to, often seeming oblivious that kids’ academic decline has coincided with its widespread adoption.

Smartphones in public schools, whether for personal or educational use, aren’t helping either. Texas finally banned smartphones in schools for the 2025-2026 school year. But before that, some of my own kids’ teachers required students to use smartphones during class, while also complaining that those same phones were too distracting.

We should limit technology in schools

Some parents are pushing back on the push for so much technology in schools.

In one Pennsylvania school district, more than 600 parents signed a petition seeking the right to opt their children out of classroom devices. The district resisted, arguing that the technology – including iPads in kindergarten, Chromebooks in second grade and MacBooks in eighth grade – is essential to the curriculum.

Meanwhile, schools that have banned smartphones are already seeing encouraging results. In Texas, educators told a recent Committee on Public Education meeting that the cellphone ban has had “mostly positive impacts for students and teachers,” with implementation challenges stemming more from adults than kids.

Dallas Independent School District officials recently said library book checkouts have tripled – a promising sign they largely attribute to students no longer having constant access to their phones during the school day.

I’m not opposed to technology in schools when it genuinely improves learning. But increasingly, schools seem overly dependent on it even as academic outcomes continue to decline. Technology should be a tool that supports education, not the foundation education depends on to function.

I reject the idea that K-12 education requires constant screen exposure to be effective.

For generations, students learned reading, writing, math and more using simple tools: books, paper, pencils, teachers and classroom discussion.

Now, schools spend millions of taxpayer dollars on devices and IT infrastructure, even as academic performance continues to decline.

At some point, we need to seriously ask whether all this technology is truly improving educational outcomes – or simply driving up costs while creating more distractions.

Unfortunately, I think we already know the answer.

Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids. Sign up for her newsletter, The Right Track, and get it delivered to your inbox.