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It’s September, and with it comes a huge envelope of forms from our elementary school to read and fill out. I was happy to see the technology agreement because I could make my non-consent official and documented. I left the school’s boxes unchecked — those that said I reviewed and accepted the expectations, responsibilities and safety documents. I penciled in my own statement, “We decline the student laptop,” made a box and checked it, and signed on the line.
It was a different story last fall, when I signed and consented to the personal device — an iPad — for my daughter. Throughout the school year, I kept reading about numerous problems with student device use at school, one of which put me over the top; I’ll delve into that in a bit. I got increasingly uncomfortable, and in spring quarter, I brought my concerns up with her teacher via email. I said I didn’t want my daughter to use the iPad at school anymore and asked if she could offer my daughter alternate assignments when the class pulled out the tech. I also offered to supply any additional materials that would help. She kindly agreed.
EdTech wasn’t the brainchild of education experts
It would be one thing if educational software (often referred to as EdTech) had been developed by the country’s best teachers, educational researchers and child development experts gathered together with a few software engineers to create ingenious advances in childhood learning. Instead, as is thoroughly outlined in UNESCO’s “An Ed-Tech Tragedy?”, it has been the goal of technology experts and tech corporations for decades to “disrupt” education with the miracles of technology.
It makes for an exciting plotline, but do laptops and software-based curriculum center on children’s actual needs? Do technology-based curriculum match or even outperform paper curriculum and hands-on materials, in terms of learning outcomes? The answer could be described as: Folks have not been particularly interested in finding out. The approach, coming from multiple corporations and vested interests is, according to UNESCO, one of almost fantasy-level optimism, rooted deeply in technology solutionism, a term coined by Eugene Morozov and introduced in his book, “To Save Everything, Click Here.”
The boring reality is that there is little research to back up heavy technology use as beneficial to children, nor to their education, and lots of research showing significant drawbacks, as elaborated on in UNESCO’s book. But that wasn’t going to stop anyone from selling their technology products to school districts. After countless hours studying this topic, it’s clear to me that wealthy tech executives have had their eye on schools for decades as their next massive revenue stream.
Mass issuance of laptops was an emergency measure
While there was a levy earmarked for technology in Seattle Public Schools, the rollout of student laptops started slow. Laptops only went into all students’ hands suddenly in 2020 as a result of the pandemic, when school had to take place at home. Had that 1-to-1 device rollout remained slow, I wonder if it would have become as widely adopted as it is today, particularly in elementary school. We will never know. My question is: Why are children using a machine designed for adults? Laptops were designed for adults to browse the web, check email, shop and be entertained. Kids learning at school deserve a device designed just for them, and if it’s going to be 1-to-1, it should be without internet connectivity. Because you can’t have both privacy and Wi-Fi.
The high price of learning software
Educational apps and platforms sound helpful, efficient, modern and useful for teachers. But how does the software business model work? Long gone are the days when you paid once for a set of CDs to load on your machine. These days, purchasing software works more like a lease agreement. In exchange for upgrades and access, schools — and by extension, taxpayers — pay for it regularly and indefinitely in the form of expensive multi-year contracts. These contracts are a dream for corporations; they offer a predictable revenue stream, a way to attract investors, and as we will see, these contracts guarantee them access to valuable user data, which they collect and sell to third parties. Using leased software requires a constant internet connection, and while we download, corporations upload.
Data collecting and selling is an extremely lucrative business — one made famous by Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. The Cambridge Analytics scandal made the public widely aware of such practices. Meta was fined $5 billion in 2019 by the FTC and $1 billion by the SEC for the unlawful selling of social media users’ data. This business is uniquely opaque: The victim doesn’t consent and rarely finds out that what belongs to them is sold. Data collecting and selling now goes far beyond social media. Internet Safety Labs, an independent research organization, reports that 96 percent of educational apps sell children’s data to third parties.
The data collected on students is highly personal
As reported in The Markup, one private equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, has bought up multiple large educational technology companies. The companies gather and store enormous amounts of data on children and use it to train their algorithms and make predictions about children’s futures.
The Markup reports: “... the companies, collectively, gather everything from basic demographic information — entered automatically when a student enrolls in school — to data about students’ citizenship status, religious affiliation, school disciplinary records, medical diagnoses, what speed they read and type at, the full text of answers they give on tests, the pictures they draw for assignments, whether they live in a two-parent household, whether they’ve used drugs, been the victim of a crime, or expressed interest in LGBTQ+ groups, among hundreds of other data points.”
They also document whether students receive reduced lunch and make predictions about their success based on this socioeconomic data point. There are two things companies do with this massive amount of data: train algorithms and package and sell to third parties.
Who buys specific and personal data on children? College admission staff to learn more about applicants, law enforcement to “predict” future criminals, advertisers and more.
Student data can also be stolen
Even if these companies didn’t intentionally sell student data, that data is incredibly vulnerable, because it is incredibly valuable. Databases are hacked because data is worth a lot of money. PowerSchool — the parent company of Schoology, Naviance and more — announced in January 2025 that it was hacked a month previously, and 62 million student records and 10 million teacher records were affected. This is the largest breach of children’s information in U.S. history. PowerSchool paid the hacker a ransom to delete the data, but there is no way to know whether the hackers created a backup.
Data breaches such as these can have long-term and complicated consequences. Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) reported on a data hack of the Minneapolis School District in February 2023. OPB reports that the stolen data from children can be even more valuable than that of adults: “Parents don’t necessarily monitor their children’s credit and bad actors can easily open up bank accounts, rack up debt and apply for loans in a child’s name.” Because of this, the full impact of a breach can go undetected for years.
OPB also points out that this can cause childhood behavior to unfairly haunt a person into adulthood: “Say a student has a history of drug use that's been successfully overcome, or they have disciplinary records that should have been expunged, but are now publicly available. That information could resurface in college applications, job interviews or in court hearings.” Their data can be repackaged (making it difficult to track leaks) and sold to anyone willing to pay. And with AI in play, hacking is only becoming easier and more efficient.
Big tech exploits schools’ vulnerabilities
EdTech companies tell school districts that their products will save them time, money, and help them stay current and therefore desirable. Schools are under pressure from parents, as we naturally want their kids prepared for the jobs of the future, and some believe that the more technology a school uses, the better.
Instead, these companies have exaggerated the benefits; independent research shows little to no improvement in education outcomes with computer-based curriculum. They have also hidden the true costs of their products: illegal and unethical sale of personal, private information about our kids.
The good news is it’s illegal
Unlike many other ethical breaches conducted by Big Tech, we already have laws in place that address children’s privacy (COPPA) and student privacy (FERPA). We don’t have to hope someone will write and pass one (though we desperately need the Kids Online Safety Act — KOSA — to pass, as an upgrade to COPPA).
PowerSchool was hit with a class action lawsuit in May of 2024, alleging it generates, collects, uses and shares information without proper consent; that suit is still underway. An amicus brief was also just issued by the FTC which explicitly states that schools cannot consent on behalf of parents to share student data, as is currently happening. However, neither of these actions has as yet halted school districts’ use of educational software and internet-connected laptops.
The only inevitability is starting over
It’s hard to think of a bigger or better fantasy for tech companies and educational software owners than millions of kids who are required by law to go to school, use personal laptops and enter personal information into them! To follow the law, children must sign in to a designated device which recognizes them, gathers and stores their personal information, and surveilles them while they learn.
Contrary to Big Tech’s constant refrain of tech inevitability, I believe exactly the opposite. Contrary to tech being “the future,” I believe technology in schools is in its infancy and is off to a poor start. It’s also almost certainly going to be abandoned (in its current state) in the near future. The UK is currently discussing no-technology homework, and Sweden and Finland have already reduced laptop use and have invested back in textbooks.
Parents are questioning the wisdom of student iPads and laptops starting in kindergarten in a country that is in the middle of a media addiction crisis, from video games to porn to social media — even kids gambling on their smartphones. We know computers are more than just tools: They frequently become health hazards.
These corporations’ constant refrains about tech-inevitability are laughable — tech done their way, with their business model, their secrets and their contracts, of course. They would have us believe that their vision of the future, in which they make billions of dollars, is humanity’s pre-determined destiny. No. We’re not talking about the law of gravity here.
Parents, this is your decision
I have been fortunate in that our school has so far been extremely understanding and supportive of my desire to keep my kid offline. Her second- and third-grade teachers have been accommodating, and her principal completely grasps my concerns. I could not be more grateful. I don’t know for how many grade levels this will continue, however, as tech use is higher in upper grades. I have offered to both her teachers to provide any supplies or labor necessary to help her to have alternate assignments, as I don’t want to add any burden if I can help it.
And to underscore just how challenging this moment is for parents, I’ll disclose that I allow my eighth grader to use the student laptop. I permit this for two reasons: He changed schools this year, and I felt too guilty making him the “weird” kid in addition to the new kid. Secondly, it would require much more accommodating at his age than it does at my daughter’s, and as a new parent at the school without relationships there yet, I have shied away from asking. It still bothers me daily, and my current decision is subject to change at any time, as my son knows!
For anyone that is uncertain or uncomfortable about their child using an internet-connected device controlled by companies with exploitative practices, do not feel bad for hesitating. Giving a child a computer with internet access is a huge decision, and it is one that need not be made hastily. Parents have every right to ask questions about it.
Families put huge trust in schools — which are genuinely trying to do the right thing — so we are naturally going to believe that what they do is largely OK. Corporations have gotten to co-opt that trust, entirely unfairly.
Computers in school is not a terrible idea altogether. I envision a computer lab with a technology class in which kids learn coding, graphic design, typing, online research, how to spot misinformation online, digital safety and identifying and treating media addiction. Starting in, say, fifth grade? Sign us up!
What we have right now is vastly different from this vision. Many students learn their entire curriculum on apps instead of textbooks and hands-on activities: literacy, science, history and math. This teaches little in the way of computer skills, which is the part about computers I actually want in school. EdTech companies claim that learning apps offer personalized learning. With pre-determined pathways built in, I call it glorified flash cards. Only a person can personalize learning.
We can do way better than this. Children have the right to an education in protected spaces, with total privacy on their journey to learning and growth. They have the right to learn without being exploited in the process.
School can go back to being an un-commercialized environment again at any time. In fact, I am certain that it will, because it is plain to see we owe our children that much — an environment to simply grow, learn, exercise, play, make mistakes, foster relationships with caring adults and make friends for life. The way school is meant to be.
Editor’s note: ParentMap publishes articles, op-eds and essays by people from all walks of life. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own and are not endorsed by ParentMap.
