The great education technology experiment is being reversed.
According to the Associated Press, schools across America are pulling digital devices out of classrooms, and parents are largely supportive. After years of iPads for every student, Google Classroom assignments, and "personalized learning" platforms, districts are rediscovering that sometimes a book and a pencil work better.
The edtech boom promised transformation. Students would learn at their own pace. Teachers would have real-time data on progress. Technology would close achievement gaps and prepare kids for a digital future.
What actually happened was screen addiction, distraction, and very little evidence that the technology improved outcomes.
I'm not anti-technology. I built a startup. I believe in digital tools when they solve real problems. But the education sector got sold a bill of goods. Vendors promised that software could replace human attention, that algorithms could personalize learning better than teachers, and that giving every kid a device would somehow make them smarter.
Instead, teachers spent half their time troubleshooting software issues. Students spent class time on YouTube and games. And the "personalized learning" mostly meant kids clicking through adaptive quizzes that felt like gamified standardized tests.
The research was never as strong as the marketing. Study after study found minimal or mixed results for digital learning tools. Some kids benefited. Many didn't. And the ones who struggled most were often the students the technology was supposed to help.
Now schools are backtracking. Not completely—computers still have a role in education. But the screen-first approach is being replaced with something more balanced. Textbooks are coming back. Handwriting is being emphasized again. Teachers are being allowed to actually teach instead of facilitating software.
And parents are relieved. Many have been watching their kids' screen time explode and worrying about attention spans, social skills, and mental health. Getting devices out of schools won't solve all those problems, but it's a start.
The edtech industry will push back, of course. They'll argue that the problem wasn't the technology, it was the implementation. They'll point to successful pilots and cherry-picked studies. They'll warn that removing devices will leave kids unprepared for the future.
But here's the thing: kids are already drowning in screens at home. School might be one of the few places left where they can learn to focus without notifications, where they can engage with ideas without algorithmic recommendations, where they can interact with peers and teachers without a layer of software in between.
The technology is impressive. The question is whether we actually needed it in every classroom, for every lesson, for every student. The answer increasingly seems to be no.
