As new school year dawns, some parents urge schools to use technology less in classrooms

Have backpacks at the ready. Pack your lunch bag. And don’t forget to charge that laptop.

This checklist is part of a morning ritual for thousands of suburban students returning to classrooms that increasingly rely on technological devices over textbooks for learning.

The shift happened gradually over the past decade, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic made it necessary for districts to provide devices for all students.

Now as ubiquitous as pencils once were, laptops, iPads and Chromebooks are helping prepare new generations of students to navigate and operate successfully in a high-tech world, school leaders say.

Yet, as part of a growing national movement, more and more suburban parents want the use of tech scaled back. They fear a detrimental impact on their children’s cognitive abilities and social-emotional skills.

Students watching videos instead of engaging with teachers and peers, playing inappropriate online games, having unsupervised time on devices, and the increased screen time itself have raised red flags for parents. For some, the overwhelming reliance on technology now is jarring.

“Quite frankly, everybody got through the pandemic, and I feel like I checked out for two years,” said Erika Pace of Arlington Heights, who has two middle schoolers in Arlington Heights Elementary District 25 this fall. “When I finally started paying attention again, I realized that all these tools and online programs that were needed when we were doing this virtual learning were still there and even more were being added.”

Pace started a petition asking District 25 leaders to re-evaluate the use of educational technology and its impact on student learning, attention, privacy and well-being. It now has more than 850 signatures.

Parents in Palatine Township District 15, Prospect Heights District 23, Barrington Area Unit District 220 and elsewhere have launched similar efforts.

In District 25, students in kindergarten through second grade are assigned iPads, and in third through eighth grades, Chromebooks. Parents cannot opt-out their child from using a device, Pace said.

“My children have over three dozen EdTech apps installed on their school-issued devices, each with its own privacy policy and data practice,” Pace said. “For many families, it is difficult to fully grasp how much school has changed.”

Pace said reading assessments now are conducted by an AI chatbot, students read and listen to books on screens, and study guides and quizzes resemble gamelike apps. In middle school, grades, curriculum, agendas, assignments, lectures, writing and teacher feedback largely are managed through online platforms, she added.

“What we've asked for in the petition is that there just be a pause on adopting any new EdTech tools for the district,” Pace said. “And then, what we’d like to do is to have the district go back and evaluate the tools that it has. Let’s just make sure what we currently are using that it works and that it’s truly beneficial. We've asked that the screen use be tracked by grade.”

District 25 Superintendent Brian Kaye said officials have been talking with parents and community members about the role technology plays in education. He recently updated the school board on the district’s technology infrastructure and device ecosystem, digital safety and oversight, and acceptable and appropriate use.

“As with any aspect of our work, we continually evaluate our practices and consider how we can best support teaching and learning. Technology is no different,” he said. “We will continue to listen to our families and staff and consider their perspectives as part of that ongoing work.”

Many parents are calling for a back-to-basics approach to learning.

Kaitlin Finn of Palatine, who has three children attending Palatine Township District 15 schools and a fourth at Palatine-Schaumburg Township High School District 211, says her children have experienced distractions such as watching “SpongeBob SquarePants” and checking sports scores during lessons.

“We started just hearing disturbing conversations around our dinner table that were becoming very common with certain content that was being viewed during class time,” said Finn, a speech-language pathologist.

Finn is the Illinois co-lead for the Distraction Free Schools Policy Project, which aims to address cellphone, social media and educational technology use in schools. She said district leaders have promised some changes this year, such as delaying Chromebook take-home requirements to fifth grade and introducing screen-free time guidelines, though she’s unclear how that would be enforced.

“In our family, our value is that technology is a tool,” Finn said. “It should be used for specific times. It should not be something that is 24/7. It goes everywhere with you. It's at the forefront of your mind. That turns into an addiction.”

Dorothy Robak of Arlington Heights, who teaches high school and has two middle school-age children attending Prospect Heights District 23, noted a decline in test scores from 2015 to 2025 across various school districts, including in Arlington Heights and Prospect Heights.

“Younger children shouldn't be using screens at all, and they're handing out … iPads when kids walk into the school building,” Robak said.

“There's a lot of wasted time that looks engaging because the kids are looking at the screen. They're touching the screen, they're listening to someone read something, or they're … playing a game, and it looks like education, and it looks like they're learning. But engagement is not the same as rigorous learning,” she said.

District 23 Superintendent Don Angelaccio acknowledged educators share some of the same concerns as parents regarding abuse of technology.

“Certainly, from a social-emotional perspective, misuse of technology has been really harmful to kids, especially on the social media side,” he said adding, it’s not just wasteful use of technology but “I would say we shouldn't be wasting time on paper-pencil either.”

Angelaccio said that while the district monitors “purposeful and instructional use of technology,” officials don’t know exactly how much screen time students in the various grades are getting in school and at home doing assignments. That’s something officials hope to assess this school year through a survey of parents and students.

“We want there to be a balance. We don't want it to be all or nothing on either extreme. We don't think that's healthy for kids,” he said.

mkrishnamurthy@dailyherald.com