Why These Parents Want Schools to Stop Issuing iPads to Their Children (nbcnews.com)
- Reference: 0180306979
- News link: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/12/06/0714222/why-these-parents-want-schools-to-stop-issuing-ipads-to-their-children
- Source link: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/rcna245624
His mother has now launched a coalition of parents called Schools Beyond Screens "organizing in WhatsApp groups, petition drives and actions at school board meetings and demanding meetings with district administrators, pressuring them to pull back on the school-mandated screen time."
> Los Angeles Unified is the first district of its size to face an organized — and growing — campaign by parents demanding that schools pull back on mandatory screen time. The discontent in Los Angeles Unified, the second-largest school district in the country, reflects a [2]growing unease nationally about the amount of time children spend learning through screens in classrooms. While a [3]majority of states prohibit children from using cellphones in class, 88% of schools provide students with personal devices, according to the [4]National Center for Education Statistics, often Chromebook laptops or iPads . The parents hope getting a district that has over 409,000 students across nearly 800 schools to change how it approaches screen time would send a signal across public school districts to pull back from a yearslong effort to digitize classrooms....
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> [In the Los Angeles school district] Students in grade levels as low as kindergarten are provided iPads, and some schools require them to take the tablets home. Some teachers have allowed students to opt out of the iPad-based assignments, but other parents say they've been told that they can't. Parents can also opt their children out of [5]having access to YouTube and [6]several other Google products ... The billion-dollar 2014 initiative to give tablet computers to everyone [7]became a scandal after the bidding process appeared to heavily favor Apple, and it faced criticism once it became clear that students could bypass security protocols and that [8]few teachers used the tablets. Currently, the district leaves it up to individual schools to decide whether they want students to take home iPads or Chromebooks every day and how much time they spend on them in class...
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> Around 300 parents attended listening sessions the district held last month about technology in the classroom. Nearly all who spoke criticized how much screen time schools gave their children in class, pointing to ways their behavior and grades suffered as students watched YouTube and played Minecraft... Several also asked district officials to explain why children as young as kindergartners were asked to [9]sign a form to use devices in which they promised they would honor intellectual property law and refrain from meeting people in person whom they met online. "Is it possible for children to meet people over the internet on school-issued devices?" one father asked. The district officials declined to answer, saying it was meant to be a listening session.
In 2022, Los Angeles Unified started requiring students to complete benchmark assessments on educaitonal software i-Ready, the article points out, which generates unique questions for each students. "But parents and teachers are unable to see what children are asked, in part because the company that makes the program considers them proprietary information..."
One teacher says his school's administartors are requiring him to use i-Ready even though it doesn't have any material for the science class he's actually teaching. He's also noticed some students will use answers from AI chatbots, bypassing the school's monitoring software by creating alternate user profiles. But the monitoring software company suggests the school misconfigured their software's settings, adding "More commonly, when students attempt to bypass filtering or monitoring, they do so by using proxies."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [10]schwit1 for sharing the article.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/rcna245624
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/opinion/laptop-classroom-test-scores.html
[3] https://www.edweek.org/technology/which-states-ban-or-restrict-cellphones-in-schools/2024/06
[4] https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/press_releases/2_19_2025.asp
[5] https://roosevelths.lausd.org/apps/news/article/2098714
[6] https://media.edlio.net/5dc61209/ee2d12f2/79e11aa3/7e709669de224b8da58789b647bebdf3?_=PaperForm_GoogleParentalConsent_English.pdf
[7] https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-tablets-los-angeles-ipad-apple-schools.html
[8] https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-a-me-edu-no-charges-ipad-probe-20170221-story.html
[9] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZDLi3uNi-oB8y8juTexnBzuQKCdEVGcg/view?usp=sharing
[10] https://slashdot.org/~schwit1
Tablets are a mistake obviously (Score:5, Funny)
Kids should be given REAL computers, like apple II's or commodore PET's to study on.
Re: (Score:3)
Username checks out. I have fond memories of programming TI graphing calculators in BASIC during downtime in class. A few other students did this as well.
My Dad showed me how HTML worked when I was in middle school, and later a classmate bugged me to pick up PHP. I learned it from the docs online, and that was really fun. Even set up a simple website and hosted it through our cable line.
Is native programming possible on tablets or smartphones? It'd be a shame if kids couldn't program these devices. Bu
Re: (Score:2)
Native is not, but in theory there are programs and such like scratch.
But the classes themselves probably don't teach it by standard, treating the devices more like a glorifed television rather than something to learn how to use properly.
Re: (Score:2)
> Kids should be given REAL computers, like apple II's or commodore PET's to study on.
They tried, but quarreling parent groups couldn't agree on whether to teach the kids that they were coding with 3 registers or 259 registers.
Re: (Score:2)
> Kids should be given REAL computers, like apple II's or commodore PET's to study on.
Ah, 8-bit 6502 Zero Page programming with no distracting usable video or any decent sound.
Re: (Score:2)
> Kids should be given REAL computers, like apple II's or commodore PET's to study on.
We managed to start there. And come out with a tad more than a I Learned to Code for a Day! t-shirt.
Tell the kids to learn how to navigate that turtle around the screen instead of having AI explain what type of species it was.
Damn right my lawn is mowed by Terrapin Logo.
Glad I graduated before this (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm really glad I graduated before smartphones and tablets were commonplace in schools. If memory serves, I had a feature phone starting junior year of high school but didn't use it much.
This seems contradictory, especially because it seems screen time is not carefully limited:
> While a majority of states prohibit children from using cellphones in class, 88% of schools provide students with personal devices... often Chromebook laptops or iPads.
Good on these parents for pushing back on the excessive amount of screen time during school.
All of that said, I did use the computer a lot, but that was after school. I was into programming but also browsed the web, played games, and chatted on instant messenger. Not sure how comparable that is. I always finished my homework.
Re: (Score:2)
I had all of my high school formulas programmed into my TI-85 25 years ago, which was probably considered cheating at the time but was super effective.
I can only imagine what I could get away with now if I had a Chromebook with ChatGPT to use in class.
Never got the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Of iPads in schools Books pens and paper are much less distracting. Also seeing What is set up on Student's Chromebooks and how Dystopian that felt (observed it while student teaching) i am turned of by the idea of tech in the classroom on every students desk. Than there's the Medical reality of paper being better for the eyes than screens, [1]https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/... [osu.edu] and the pedagogical truism that anything that is hand written is more likely to be remembered by a student as compared to typing [2]https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
[1] https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/our-stories/tablet-vs-book-reading
[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-writing-by-hand-is-better-for-memory-and-learning/
Hey, don't fuck with the system. (Score:2)
When the thinky works is handled by some necessary few and a whole lot of technology, we still need people to do the shitty, unskilled work. I don't want to do it, so I'm glad people fail out of the bottom. If your skillset is knowing how to ask an AI to do it, the clock is ticking.
* Ingredients: 65% sarcasm, 30% wary sincerity, 5% other
Re: Hey, don't fuck with the system. (Score:2)
Asking chatbots to do stuff is the revolutionary training that kids need!
The skillset which will bring you the most money, power and respect absolutely IS asking someone else to do the work. If you know how to build something, you will be stuck building things for minimum wage all your life, but if you know how to ask someone else to build something you can become the next steve jobs or pol pot.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, yes. That's some of the "necessary few" I refer to. :)
Re: Give them old Kindles instead (Score:1)
The Kindle will save trees required to make paper but the kids won't get the health benefit of lugging around a 40+ pound backpack full of textbooks and their iPad.
Re: Give them old Kindles instead (Score:1)
You could give the fat kids Osborne I computers instead of ipads.
So paper does seem to be (Score:2)
A better way to learn. The more tactile feel of it combined with the accumulation of physical notes seems to be an improvement.
What I am wondering is if you have a stylus and also probably one of those gloves to keep you from smudging the screen how does that compare.
One thing I do know is that if you are really going to learn things you have to use them in a effective way. Basically you need projects that use the data and the learning. But having students do that versus just testing them on problem
It's complicated (Score:2)
Youtube videos can be educational, far better than a single teacher could ever do. They can also be a total waste of time.
AI tutors have the potential to personalize instruction far better than a large class of students of varying talent and interest.
Curious, talented students can greatly improve their learning with tech.
Lazy, unmotivated, talentless students simply use it as another way to goof off.
It's not the tech, it's how the tech is used.
I guess... (Score:4, Interesting)
....the school's router needs some limitations then.
Cant disagree with the parents (Score:2)
There are scores of education games and learning tools, apps, etc that could be available to students on a system in a homeroom setting which could be monitored by a teacher but that apparently is harder than kids just being allowed to run around with a tablet. The crap content that is made available to kids on tablets, phones, or pcs via youtube, tiktok, facebook, insta etc is frieghtening because kids look up to these influencers and cant see the timewaster scam that it is ~dress and act like this, send u
Skills (Score:1)
I would have killed for a Chromebook decades ago so that I could write essays in class (not on paper) in way that allowed for useful editing and reflection.
Other than that, I strongly prefer books on paper and taking notes on paper.
As a parent, my ability to control and monitor my children when they are using school issued devices is diminished. It's also a big lift for tech savvy parents to limit what kids can do on computers or devices.
My kids don't know the passwords to their iPhone/Apple accounts. App
Correction needed in both directions (Score:2)
First,mandatory screen time needs to be limited. If they want text books in ebook form, great, but they'll need a way to restrict school issued pads to school work during the school day.
On the flip side, I have more than once heard a parent complaining that homework is being given that requires a computer to complete where a school doesn't allow chromebooks to be taken home. That's equally absurd. Not every family can afford to give each kid a computer, and sometimes computers break. It's not like parents c
Without Controls (Score:1)
Kids will do what you let them. Lock them down and limit what can be seen/installed, and it can help.
Re: (Score:3)
He's right, you know. We don't get the next generation of hackers without giving them parental controls to figure out to disable!
Although, there isn't much knowledge needed to factory reset an iPad. You can learn that from a TikTok video.
Re: (Score:2)
Then either the I.T. staff are garbage, or you got the next Mitnick.
If factory resetting doesn't get provisioned through your image servers to right back to the setup you had installed on it initially it's the I.T. departments fault. If the altered OS is allowed back on your network / VPN after a factory reset and not having your access software on it... again I.T's fault.
So go ahead kid, factory reset that ipad.
Whoops, caught immediately because you can't log in to your portal to do your homework / tests.
Re: (Score:2)
These will make excellent teaching devices for the kids learn, in short order, how to bypass said controls.
> Kids will do what you let them.
Kids will do what they can get away with.