Big-city districts like New York and Los Angeles are grabbing headlines for restricting the time students spend on tech tools.
But educators in suburban and rural areas are more likely to say parents believe students spend too much classroom time on digital devices than those working in urban districts.
More than half of urban educators—57%—report that parents believe the amount of technology in schools is “just right,” according to a survey of 596 teachers, school, and district leaders conducted by the EdWeek Research Center from Feb. 19 to March 13.
That’s compared to 40% of suburban educators and 38% of educators in rural areas or towns who report that parents think the level of tech in schools is “just right.” (Notably, the difference between educators who teach at high-poverty schools compared to those who work at wealthier schools wasn’t statistically significant, unlike the difference between urban, suburban, and rural locations).
Those findings jibe with Cory Montreuil’s experiences in urban schools.
Montreuil, now an instructional coach at low-performing schools in Denver, recalled a sense of jubilation when the urban, high-poverty school he used to work for received a grant for 1-to-1 student devices and hotspots.
“It was seen as this big equity triumph,” said Montreuil. “It was like, ‘now we’re getting something that they also have’” at wealthier schools.
Lila Byock, a Los Angeles parent and the founder of Schools Beyond Screens, a grassroots coalition of families concerned about the impact of technology on student learning and mental health, thinks that parents from a range of demographics worry about screen time.
But wealthier parents get the attention, she said, so their teachers and leaders may be more aware of “techlash.”
“Unfortunately our society is structured in such a way that white affluent parents tend to have the largest, loudest megaphones,” she said.
The picture may be more complicated than the data points make it seem, said Tyler Hunt, a middle school teacher who leads some computer science classes in suburban Chicago.
Parents in her school community don’t see all technology use in the same light.
Some parents take issue with time spent on adaptive learning platforms, which they see as harmful to their child’s mental health, she said.
But parents love the digital projects in Hunt’s class, where students may program robots or construct objects with 3D printers.
“If they’re creating something, then parents are all for it,” Hunt said.
Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.
