This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2026 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “What rules should govern the uses of digital technology in schools—and who should set them?”
The whole world has stretched at the seams, changing its shape to fit innumerable new aspects of life brought by digital technology. Every high schooler today was born after the advent of the iPhone.
The well-worn debate about whether teachers should be the “sage on the stage” or the “guide on the side” is dead. The tech on the desk rules. Old-school policy concerns are still relevant (like high-quality instruction, teacher training, and chronic absenteeism), but they’re in a fundamentally new landscape.
So, how should we think about ed tech in our brave new world? Through the principle of subsidiarity: the idea that the most local competent authority should make decisions, with higher authorities only intervening when necessary.
Before fleshing out this solution, let’s put some shape on this cultural shift. Most students spend half to three-quarters of their day on a school-issued device, like a Chromebook. Those students aren’t on task; they’re easily navigating past school firewalls and accessing chats, games, and shops. Personal device restrictions (like cell phone bans) help, but aren’t a panacea. Of course, this off-task behavior includes rampant AI use by poor-performing and high-performing students alike.
Clear-eyed learning is often subverted by blue-light tech. A majority of students report that most students are using AI illicitly and routinely, using it to complete assignments quickly and get good grades. Homework, a majority of students say, “has become meaningless because nearly everyone uses AI.”
Let’s take a breather and assess: Our students, emboldened by school-issued devices and AI, are spending the majority of their day wasting a lot of time and learning very little. Propelled by a mad dash toward the future, many districts have invested heavily in expensive, ineffective tech. We’ve founded a digital classroom. Now, it’s time to create wise normative practices.
Under a framework of subsidiarity, national and state leaders should primarily lead through guidance—providing research-based recommendations about specific pieces of equipment, tech management practices, and screen time routines. Districts should lead through norm-setting—creating localized, granular ed-tech plans. Education agencies should share stories and tactics of healthy district norms, empowering other districts to follow suit.
Everyone should start with a healthy dose of cynicism: don’t trust Big Tech, and don’t trust students to remain on-task. Tech isn’t evil, and sometimes it’s brutally necessary. But it’s far past time to institute thoughtful limits and consistent administrative attention. Blanket bans of specific tech products are blunt political theater; nuance is key.
State agencies
State agencies exist for a reason, and they should give districts research-backed recommendations. The world of ed-tech sales and churning academic research is dizzying. Districts shouldn’t have to dedicate staff members to dive into that world, hoping they’ll emerge with an accurate perspective instead of becoming a starry-eyed sales pitch victim.
Recommendations should remain guidance, not mandate. Districts are the closest leaders to students and should hold control over their services. (Ignoring recommendations or blatantly misusing tech will leave districts wide open to parent criticism.)
The other essential task for state (and national) leaders will be systemic advocacy work. Some ed-tech issues are artificial. To be clear, if all students really needed were digital textbooks, Google would sell school Kindles, not school Chromebooks.
Integration with Google Classroom, YouTube, Google Search, and other AI products allows young students to be young consumers, forming digital habits that will last through adulthood. Current administrative tools are lax enough to allow many young children to see the whole internet through an endless algorithmic scroll. Are we seriously to believe that the most powerful companies on the planet aren’t profiting off the formation of young digital addicts?
Ed tech is a product, being sold at a low price in order to create a market for more products. Big Tech is not on our side in the fight against off-task behavior.
Outside pressure could force Big Tech to create tech with real limits, like intense administrative controls that allow digital tools like AI to toggle on and off by grade, class period, and task. If elected officials must do something, they should do it here.
Districts
With state and national agencies focusing on research, recommendation, and advocacy, districts can concentrate on local needs. Each district should make grade-by-grade plans, and the more granular the strategy, the better. What works for a sixth-grade remedial classroom won’t be what works for an eleventh-grade AP class, or, for that matter, a seventh-grade remedial classroom. Districts should further honor subsidiarity by allowing principals and teachers to chime in.
Within their plans, districts shouldn’t assume that students will stay on-task when they’re given the opportunity to be off-task. (This is a well-known part of childhood, of course!) Instead, they should assume that within any situation where 30 students are on a Chromebook with one teacher, there’s at least one distracting, enticing chat conversation going on. Teachers are the most important part of a child’s education. They should be teaching, not constantly overseeing a room of screens.
Guiding principles
Students often complain that their work isn’t engaging, and there’s no surprise there. Being asked to read a digital textbook, fill out (or use AI for) a digital quiz, and then sit quietly surfing the web until the rest of the class is finished is quite boring. If districts put laptops into bags and the sage back on the stage (at least for some of the time), students would respond.
Tech should be reframed by districts from the portal of all learning to a tool used when necessary. Districts can follow Los Angeles and heavily limit screen time in classes, or they can start with other, more nuanced policies that naturally curb digital use. Districts should consider using practical methods to add friction, like switching away from 1:1 computers toward a classroom Chromebook cart.
The most effective immediate balm for many ills is the institution of written, oral, or Blue Book assessments. Pen-and-paper assessments allow students to showcase what they actually know and remove any ability to digitally cheat. Plus, they’re graded by teachers, not AI.
School board members should ask their tech team to regularly present data that shows student ed-tech usage patterns. (This would inevitably interest parents.) Routine screen time publication should become a normative part of district transparency. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, after all.
Good practices will be hard-fought, but once strong patterns are set, they’ll be shared from district to district. As seen in many districts across the country, parents demand strong ed-tech plans for their students. Plans considered excessively granular today (like device permissions that increase grade-by-grade) could be seen as common-sense norms ten years from now.
The world has shifted, and education has to shift with it. State agencies should give districts the best research-backed guidance possible, then step back and allow local decision-makers to create thoughtful, bespoke ed-tech norms.
Like this essay? Vote for it! Voting for the 2026 Fordham Wonkathon opens the first week in November.