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Los Angeles, home to the country’s second largest school system, has been at the center of the growth of ed-tech — and its backlash.
Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who is on leave following an FBI raid of his home, was an enthusiastic promoter of AI in education and i-Ready, a digital assessment and tutoring program. (Carvalho has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing.)
But parents in the city have grown wary about the proliferation of tech. They organized a group called Schools Beyond Screens to push the district to scale back tech use. Their message resonated with school board members, many of whom are parents themselves.
Last month, the board directed district leaders to create new policies designed to limit screens, starting next year. Students below second grade will generally not be given Chromebooks or tablets. Screen time limits will be set in other grades. The school system will soon “encourage the use of paper and pen assignments and physical textbooks.”
It’s not clear yet how much this will change classroom practices. But the move comes at a moment when many schools and teachers are rethinking how they use technology, and researchers are questioning whether it’s helped learning.
To understand how the Los Angeles shift happened and what it will mean, I spoke with school board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin. We discussed why board members were convinced to cut back on ed-tech, whether they plan to go further, and if these changes are likely to improve academic performance.
Tanya Ortiz Franklin, Los Angeles Unified School District school board member (Kara Colleen / Courtesy photo for Chalkbeat)
Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why did you vote to scale back and reassess tech use in Los Angeles schools?
I actually helped to draft the language. Part of it was my own personal experience. I have a 3-and-a-half year old who goes to LAUSD preschool, and I have a 17-month old. So as a mom of young children, I could see on a daily basis how interested they are in TVs and phones and computers. I instinctively have a reaction to keep them away from it.
Professionally, I could see the use of devices being distracting when the teacher thinks students are working on an assignment. I do lots of classroom observations, and I just felt like kids were less engaged in the material and less verbal about their learning.
Plus [fellow board member] Nick Melvoin and I read “The Anxious Generation,” and we're thinking, ‘What can we do?’
Kudos to Schools Beyond Screens. They started coming last December, and I met with them. They were relentless. What was powerful about their advocacy was it struck a chord with those of us who were parents. It was a parent-to-parent connection.
I don't want to stereotype, but typically when I've encountered tech-skeptical parents, they've been more middle- and upper-class families. Have you heard a lot of parental discontent from your lower-income schools?
I don't think it's a stereotype. I think it is a function of having free time, access, and the ability to come downtown. You're not wrong in terms of who I was hearing it from, but just because we're not hearing it [from others] doesn't mean it's not important.
Do you have a sense of how prevalent screen use is in L.A. schools?
Preliminary numbers indicated that daily screen time for elementary students was between 30 and 50 minutes a day, and then for middle and high school, somewhere around like 90 to 120 minutes a day. That might be a low estimate.
Do you think scaling back the use of screens in LAUSD will improve academic outcomes?
I hope that it will, but that for me wasn't the first goal. My initial interest was for the student interaction around how you process learning, and building on the social-emotional emphasis that we've had with reducing the use of cellphones and screens generally. [The Los Angeles board implemented a ban on students’ personal phone use during the school day last year.]
This is intended as a limit, not just a friendly suggestion, right?
Our first draft said, consider eliminating the use of one-to-one devices in early years. Parents pushed us and said: Don't consider it. Just do it. Those of us who had small kids were like, okay of course.
The rule is no one-to-one devices until second grade. There will be some exceptions for assessments that we're still figuring out. Third grade is the first year of testing, and we wouldn't want that to be the first time kids are getting exposed to devices.
Do you worry that the state testing requirements are driving pedagogical decisions about when to introduce technology?
That is a good question. Tradeoffs really matter. We would rather have accurate, timely information, so online testing makes sense in a lot of ways. It is probably something that we should look at.
Do you see this as a first step? Do you eventually want to go further?
I don’t know that this is a first step toward limiting tech use so much as the right step for today. My hope is that as we continue to learn about what students need and don’t need, we will continue to adjust our policies and resources to support that.
In retrospect, do you wish you and the board had acted sooner?
I don't know that we have all of the data on some of the qualitative concerns that came to the board around things like YouTube, or if kids are able to access some of the games that cause concerns. To the extent we made it easier to do those things or get hooked on those things, yes, I would have some regrets. I also think we are acting earlier than most districts across the country. You know better, you do better.
Reach me at [email protected].
Thumbnail image by Alexandria Castellanos / Courtesy photo for Chalkbeat