Families and Teachers are Questioning Ed Tech. Are Schools and Districts Starting to Listen? | KQED
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When Los Angeles parent Lila Byock’s son started middle school, his grades suddenly collapsed.
It didn’t make sense. “He’d always been a bright, curious, engaged kid who did really well in school,” Byock said. She and her husband were confused and concerned.
Teachers assured the family that their son understood the material and the problem wasn’t academics. “They said, ‘He just can’t stay on task on his iPad,’” she continued.
That answer surprised Byock. Like many parents, she assumed that after pandemic remote learning ended, classrooms had largely returned to face-to-face instruction. Instead, she learned her son was spending much of his school day on a district-issued device.
“He was scrolling YouTube Shorts during math class. He was playing Fortnite battles with classmates during class,” Byock said. Other students watched streaming shows during lunch on school-issued iPads, and one student even showed pornography on a school device, according to Byock.
After talking with her son, Byock realized he wasn’t trying to break rules, but rather, he felt trapped by distractions he couldn’t seem to resist. “It was eroding his self-esteem,” she said. “He told us, ‘I want to stop, and I don’t think I can.’”
When Byock asked school administrators how devices were being used and what safeguards existed, the school’s answers didn’t satisfy her.
