New York City, the United States and the United Kingdom turned emergency education technology into an ordinary part of the school day. Technology can support education, but it should not quietly replace handwriting, printed books, human attention or the right of families to understand how their children are being taught.

There is a television screen in my child’s New York City classroom. Music videos are playing. The children are looking at it, because that is what human attention does when light, movement and sound enter a room.

In older classrooms there is a tablet on every desk. Lessons arrive through it. Work is completed on it. Tests are taken on it. The same child whose screen time we are told to limit at home may spend much of the school day moving from one glowing rectangle to another.

Handwriting receives less, if some cases, no time. Cursive may not be taught at all. Printed worksheets and physical books become occasional resources rather than the ordinary tools of learning.

Each change can be explained. The screen helps settle the class. The video is educational. The tablet makes work easier to distribute. Online tests are quicker to mark. Typing is a necessary modern skill. Digital platforms help teachers differentiate work and give children rapid feedback.

Some of those explanations are reasonable. That is not the same as proving that the cumulative change is good for children.

The question is not whether technology belongs in schools. Of course it does. Children need digital literacy, and the right technology can remove barriers for disabled students, expand access to information and give teachers useful tools.

I am a British and American parent raising a child in New York City. That gives this question two national contexts for me, but only one immediate reality. My child is being educated here. I want to know why emergency technology introduced during COVID remained embedded in school after the emergency ended, what evidence supports its continued use and why parents were not asked before screens became the default surface on which so much of childhood education happens.

This is not only an NYC problem, and it is not only an American problem. The United States and United Kingdom both poured devices into education during COVID. Their policies now provide a useful comparison. England still protects handwriting more clearly within its national curriculum. New York is moving every grade 3 through 8 state assessment onto computers while leaving cursive to local discretion. NYC, meanwhile, is now imposing some of the strongest school AI and screen-time restrictions in the United States.

Those differences expose the real issue. Classroom technology is not inevitable. Governments choose it, schools implement it and children live inside the result. Families should have a meaningful voice in those choices.

COVID Did Not Invent Classroom Technology. It Removed the Brakes

Tablets were used in schools before 2020. Any honest critique has to begin there. A 2021 systematic review noted that a substantial proportion of UK primary schools were already using tablets before the pandemic. Schools had been moving toward interactive whiteboards, online homework, learning-management systems and one-device-per-student programs for years.

COVID changed the scale, speed and purpose of that adoption.

When classrooms closed, a connected device stopped being an optional teaching aid and became the only practical route into school for millions of children. Governments acted accordingly.

In England, the Department for Education delivered more than 1.3 million laptops and tablets through its pandemic program and announced another 500,000 devices for the 2021-22 academic year.

Across the United States, 96 percent of public schools reported by September 2021 that they were providing digital devices to students who needed them. An Education Week survey illustrates the speed of the shift toward one-device-per-student schooling. Before the pandemic, about two-thirds of respondents recalled having a school-issued device for every middle and high school student, while 42 percent said the same for elementary pupils. By March 2021, those figures had risen to 90 percent for middle and high school students and 84 percent for elementary students.

New York City shows what that transformation looked like at municipal scale. According to a 2021 audit by the NYC Comptroller, the Department of Education purchased 357,000 iPads for the 2019-20 school year, another 104,000 for 2020-21 and a further 50,000 in December 2020. That was 511,000 iPads at an estimated purchase cost of $287 million. The department was also paying approximately $4 million every month for data plans.

That spending was responding to a real emergency and a real digital divide. When remote learning began, an estimated 300,000 NYC students lacked an internet-connected device at home. For those children, an iPad was not an indulgence. It was their route to teachers, classmates and the curriculum.

The rollout also demonstrates what happens when a school system is forced to become a technology logistics operation almost overnight. The Comptroller found inconsistent distribution and recall procedures, duplicate devices sent to at least 3,045 students and 16,451 device requests from 2020 still under review or unresolved as of March 25, 2021. The lesson is not that NYC should have abandoned those children. It is that emergency deployment was necessarily driven by access and speed, not by a settled judgment that device-centered education was developmentally or educationally superior.

That intervention was necessary. Remote learning without a device would have deepened an already brutal inequality.

But emergency procurement is not the same thing as an evidence-led decision about ordinary classroom teaching. Schools built infrastructure, bought licenses, trained staff, converted materials and organized assessment around digital systems. Once children returned, those systems were already paid for and embedded. Reversing them would require another deliberate transition. Continuing them required almost nothing.

That is how an emergency measure becomes a permanent norm without anyone clearly deciding that it should. Devices had been purchased. Accounts had been created. Teachers had learned the platforms. Lessons had been converted. Contracts, support systems and assessment processes now depended on the infrastructure. Returning to the classroom did not automatically return schools to the previous balance of books, paper, talk, practical work and selective technology.

The questions parents are entitled to ask are simple: Where was the post-emergency review? When did the school demonstrate that a device-heavy model was better than the mix of books, handwriting, discussion, physical materials and selective technology that came before it? What was retained because it improved learning, and what was retained because the institution had become dependent on it? How much does this infrastructure cost to renew, secure and support, and what educational spending does that displace?

What Technology in School Can Genuinely Do Well

A serious argument against excessive classroom technology must acknowledge where technology earns its place.

Digital tools can provide text-to-speech, speech-to-text, enlarged text, translation, alternative keyboards and other access features. For some disabled and neurodivergent children, these are not conveniences. They are the difference between participating and being excluded.

Technology can also give children access to simulations, primary sources, specialist teaching and updated information that a single textbook cannot provide. A well-designed literacy or mathematics intervention can offer structured practice and immediate feedback. Teachers can adapt work, monitor progress and share resources more efficiently. Children need to learn how to search, type, evaluate sources, protect their privacy and use digital systems responsibly.

The evidence is not that every use of a device damages learning. A systematic review of randomized studies involving mobile devices in primary classrooms found a positive overall effect on literacy and numeracy in the interventions studied. The authors also warned that differences between studies, risks of bias and uncertainty about what worked for whom limited the conclusions.

OECD data tells a similarly qualified story. In PISA 2022, students reporting up to one hour a day of school-based digital learning scored higher in mathematics than students reporting no use, even after socioeconomic differences were considered. Beyond one hour, the relationship became negative. This is observational data, so it does not prove that an hour of device use caused better results. It does show why “screens are bad” is too crude.

Purpose, design, duration, age and adult involvement matter.

That is precisely why “we use technology because children need technology” is not an adequate policy.

A Useful Tool Is Not a Suitable Default

A pencil has a narrow purpose. A printed book does not send notifications, collect behavioral data, offer a second activity behind the first or tempt its reader to switch tasks. A tablet is simultaneously a textbook, television, game console, messaging device, camera, assessment system and portal to the internet. Even when administrators restrict it, the child is working on an object designed around interaction, novelty and rapid response.

This difference matters.

Across OECD countries, about 30 percent of students in PISA 2022 said they became distracted by digital devices in most or every mathematics lesson. About 25 percent said they were distracted by other students using them. Students reporting frequent distraction scored 15 points lower in mathematics than those who said it almost never happened, after accounting for socioeconomic profiles. Again, association is not causation, but it is not a trivial signal.

Technology also makes task-switching frictionless. A child can appear to be looking at the assigned page while their attention has moved elsewhere. Teachers cannot continuously monitor thirty individual screens and teach at the same time. The OECD found that teacher preparedness with classroom devices had little relationship to whether students reported becoming distracted.

The issue is not that children lack character. Adults with fully developed executive function struggle to resist devices built to capture attention. Designing a classroom around constant access and then blaming children for distraction is backwards.

Handwriting Is Not Decorative Nostalgia

The case for handwriting is often muddled with the case for cursive. They overlap, but they are not identical.

Children first need fluent, legible handwriting of some kind. Letter formation combines vision, movement, spatial planning and memory. When handwriting becomes automatic, a child can devote more mental effort to ideas, vocabulary and sentence construction rather than to producing each letter.

Research comparing handwriting and typing suggests they are not cognitively interchangeable. A 2024 EEG study of university students found more widespread patterns of brain connectivity while participants wrote by hand than while they typed. That study does not prove that handwriting always produces better learning, and it involved adults rather than young children. It does support the plausible mechanism that forming varied letters by hand engages the brain differently from pressing uniform keys.

Studies and reviews involving children have linked handwriting practice with letter recognition, spelling, reading and written composition. The strongest educational case is therefore for explicit handwriting instruction and enough practice to develop fluency.

The narrower claim that every child must master cursive to gain those benefits is less settled. A 2026 Iowa Reading Research Center systematic review found only 26 experimental studies of cursive instruction across pre-K through grade 12, with a limited and uneven evidence base. Cursive may improve speed and give children access to historical documents, family records and a useful personal writing style. It deserves a place. But we should not inflate the science by pretending that cursive alone unlocks a special cognitive power.

The policy contrast between England and New York is revealing.

In England, handwriting is explicit within the statutory national curriculum for maintained schools. Children are expected to learn letter formation, develop legibility and fluency and, as they progress, use joined handwriting where appropriate. The precise approach can vary, and academies have greater curriculum freedom, but handwriting is identified as something schools are expected to teach rather than a skill families must hope an individual teacher happens to value.

New York State does not currently require cursive instruction. State education officials have historically described cursive as a local school-district decision. Legislation introduced in Albany would require it as part of basic education, but an active bill is not the same as current law. As of 2026, the National Education Association reported that 27 states had enacted cursive requirements. New York was not among them.

That does not mean NYC children receive no handwriting instruction. Early literacy necessarily includes letter formation, and individual schools and teachers may teach cursive. It means a parent cannot assume there is a consistent citywide or statewide entitlement to it. The amount and quality of instruction may depend on the school, curriculum and time available after tested priorities are covered.

This is where technology and accountability systems interact. What schools are required to test receives time, training and resources. What is left to local discretion is easier to squeeze. When children are completing more work and all state tests digitally, handwriting can decline without any official announcement that the system has decided to abandon it.

The defensible position is stronger because it is accurate: schools should not abandon handwriting, including an age-appropriate introduction to cursive, simply because typing is administratively convenient.

Digital competence should be added to foundational literacy. It should not be purchased by removing it.

New York Is Making the Test a Technology Test Too

The move from paper to screen is not confined to daily lessons. New York State has been phasing in computer-based testing for its grades 3 through 8 English Language Arts, mathematics and science assessments. Grades 5 and 8 were required to use computer-based testing in spring 2024. Grades 4 and 6 followed for ELA and mathematics in 2025. Beginning in spring 2026, grades 3 through 8 are required to participate in computer-based testing.

The state says the transition supports 21st-century learners while improving test delivery, integrity, scoring validity and the speed with which results are returned. Those are institutional benefits. They do not answer every educational question.

When a child reads a long passage on a screen, scrolls between evidence and a question, types a response and navigates testing controls, the assessment measures more than reading or mathematics. It also measures familiarity with the device, interface navigation, typing, visual tracking and the ability to sustain attention on a screen.

That does not automatically make the result invalid. It does mean the medium is part of the test. A child who understands the material but works more effectively on paper may be disadvantaged for reasons unrelated to the intended academic construct. Students with qualifying disabilities can receive testing accommodations through an Individualized Education Program or Section 504 plan, but an ordinary preference for paper does not create a general parental right to choose the paper version of a mandatory computer-based state test.

This creates a pressure loop. Once the state test is digital, schools have a defensible reason to give children regular screen practice. Device use during lessons is then justified as test preparation. The test format helps make the instructional format feel unavoidable, even though both were policy choices.

Parents should ask the state to publish evidence that computer-based assessments measure children equitably across device familiarity, typing fluency, disability, language status and socioeconomic background. They should also ask for a paper route where the interface itself is not the skill being assessed.

Reading on Paper and Reading on a Screen Are Not Always Equivalent

Children can learn from digital books. Interactive features that directly support the story, such as useful definitions, can help. Adult guidance matters greatly. Yet digitizing the same book does not automatically preserve the same reading experience.

A meta-analysis of 39 studies involving 1,812 children aged one to eight found lower story-comprehension scores for digital books when the digital and paper versions differed only by the medium. Well-designed enhancements could help, while decorative or irrelevant interactive features could interfere.

Reviews involving older readers also frequently find a modest advantage for paper, particularly with informational text, longer material or reading under time pressure. The size and consistency of that advantage vary. It should not be translated into the claim that children cannot comprehend digital text.

It should lead to a more practical conclusion: when deep reading is the goal, schools need a positive reason to choose a screen rather than treating digital delivery as neutral.

A printed page gives a reader physical location, visible progress and a stable field of text. It invites annotation without opening another interface. A screen can reproduce some of this, but often adds scrolling, links, menus, alerts and the expectation of rapid movement. Medium shapes behavior even when the words are identical.

If every substantial text, timed assessment and piece of revision is delivered digitally, schools may be testing a child’s ability to manage an interface alongside the knowledge supposedly being assessed.

The Television in the Corner Is Not Harmless Atmosphere

Not every screen in school is being used for instruction. A television playing music videos, news, animations or ambient content changes the attentional environment even when no one calls it a lesson.

Movement and sound attract the eye. That is not a moral failure. It is an orienting response.

Research on background television is strongest in infants and young children, so it cannot simply be projected onto every school-aged child. But the findings are relevant to classrooms serving young children. A 2024 meta-analysis found background television exposure was associated with poorer cognitive outcomes in early childhood, and an experimental study included in the review found fewer episodes of focused attention when a television was on. Other work has found that background television can disrupt play and reduce the quantity and quality of adult speech directed toward children.

A music video shown intentionally for analysis, movement or a brief transition may have educational or social value. A screen left running because silence feels uncomfortable is different. It competes with conversation, imaginative play, independent focus and the teacher’s voice.

Schools should be able to say what a screen is doing in the room. “The children like it” is not enough.

What the Post-COVID Numbers Can and Cannot Tell Us

Academic performance fell sharply after the pandemic. PISA 2022 recorded an unprecedented OECD-average decline of nearly 15 points in mathematics and 10 points in reading compared with 2018. The OECD described the combined drop as roughly three-quarters of a year of learning.

In the United States, national and state assessments have also documented serious declines, particularly in mathematics and among lower-performing students. Chronic absenteeism rose dramatically. Children experienced bereavement, family stress, disrupted routines, reduced services, teacher shortages and months of inconsistent schooling.

The latest New York results make the picture more troubling, but not simpler. Preliminary 2025-26 state data placed grades 3 through 8 proficiency at 48 percent in ELA and 57 percent in mathematics. NYC’s elementary reading results moved unusually sharply. Third-grade ELA proficiency reportedly fell 14 percentage points after rising 13 points the previous year. Seventh- and eighth-grade reading results were broadly steady, while NYC mathematics was roughly flat.

Those swings demand investigation, not a convenient story. New York State said it would conduct a detailed analysis. Testing experts questioned the plausibility of the year-to-year movement, and an education advocacy organization called for an independent audit. Some educators and families asked whether the final transition to computer-based testing played a role. That is a legitimate question, but the available evidence does not establish it as the cause. Fifth graders had already been taking the tests digitally, and curriculum changes, scoring, test design and cohort differences also need examination.

The 2023-24 results had looked different again. NYCPS reported that grades 3 through 8 mathematics proficiency rose from 49.9 percent to 53.4 percent, while ELA proficiency fell by 2.6 points. These measures and years should not be collapsed into a single trend chosen to support a predetermined conclusion.

The honest position is not that NYC schools are failing because they use iPads. It is that learning results are mixed, the national post-pandemic picture remains deeply concerning and schools should be required to demonstrate which technologies improve outcomes rather than assuming digital delivery deserves credit for gains and bears no responsibility for problems.

It would be irresponsible to look at that complex damage and announce that tablets caused it.

It would be equally irresponsible to assume that the post-COVID digital classroom played no part in how recovery unfolded.

The OECD itself notes that scores in some subjects and countries were declining before COVID, that closure length does not neatly explain the pattern, and that the conversion to digital remote learning intensified longer-term questions about classroom technology. We have evidence of substantial learning loss and evidence that excessive or distracting device use is associated with poorer performance. We do not have a clean experiment proving that device adoption accounts for a specified share of the decline.

Parents deserve that honesty. The concern does not need an invented statistic to be valid.

New York Has Finally Asked the Question Schools Should Have Asked Earlier

In September 2026, New York City announced a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI from its 2-K program through eighth grade, affecting roughly 600,000 students. Companion and emotional-support chatbots are prohibited across all grades. High-school AI use is restricted to approved, supervised programs, with exceptions and accommodations available for disability, multilingual learning and defined career-readiness purposes.

The screen guidance is just as significant. NYCPS says there should be no individual, one-device-per-child screen time from 2-K through second grade. It recommends no more than 30 minutes a day for grades 3 through 5 and no more than 45 minutes for grades 6 through 8. High-school limits depend on the school and course. Teacher-led use of computers, tablets and interactive smartboards for whole-group or small-group instruction remains permitted. The individual limits also contain exceptions for assistive technology, assessments, remote-instruction days and centrally approved activities such as e-books, coding, robotics and simulations.

Those distinctions matter. A recommended limit is not the same as an enforceable cap. The guidance applies to individual screen use, so it does not fully address the television, projector or smartboard that may dominate a room. It also does not tell a parent how much total visual media a child experiences when individual devices, whole-class displays and homework are combined.

Still, this is a remarkable policy correction. A city that spent hundreds of millions of dollars putting connected tablets into children’s hands during COVID is now saying that its youngest students should not receive individual screen-based instruction during the school day at all.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani rejected the idea that AI-powered early education was inevitable. That word matters: inevitable.

Too much education technology has been sold as something schools must accept rather than something they must evaluate. The New York policy does not prove that every detail of a moratorium is right. It does restore the proper burden of proof. Those seeking to insert a new technology into children’s development should have to demonstrate its value, limits and safeguards before it becomes ordinary.

The US Department of Education’s August 2026 guidance now asks five basic questions of every education-technology product:

• What learning problem does it solve?
• When should it be used?
• For whom should it be used?
• For how long should it be used?
• What evidence shows that it improves learning?

Those questions should have governed tablets, platforms and classroom displays from the beginning. They should govern them now.

NYCPS also says families should have a voice through School Leadership Teams, Community and Citywide Education Councils and the Panel for Educational Policy. It is creating a Technology in Schools Coalition to study the future of classroom technology. Those promises provide parents with an opening. They must become more than a consultation after the important decisions have already been made.

The US and UK Made Similar Emergency Investments, but Their Baselines Differ

The pandemic pushed both countries toward devices, but comparing the systems prevents us from treating either model as natural or inevitable.

The United States has no single national curriculum. States and districts control most instructional choices, producing substantial variation in handwriting, cursive, devices and testing. That flexibility can allow innovation, but it can also mean a foundational skill disappears without a clear national decision. The Common Core standards did not include cursive, and many states later passed their own restoration laws. By 2026, 27 states required it, while New York continued to leave the decision locally controlled.

England has a national curriculum that explicitly includes handwriting and joined writing. It also has a national computing curriculum. Children are therefore expected to develop both physical writing and digital competence. In principle, these are complementary skills rather than rivals.

That does not make England a low-screen ideal. UK primary schools were using tablets well before COVID, and the pandemic placed another 1.3 million government-funded laptops and tablets into the education system. Academies do not have to follow every part of the national curriculum in the same way maintained schools do. Daily practice can diverge sharply from written policy, and British parents can face the same lack of transparency about classroom screen exposure, platform use and data.

The comparison produces two useful conclusions.

First, the American retreat from cursive was a policy choice, not the unavoidable price of preparing children for modern work. England teaches computing while retaining statutory handwriting expectations. Schools can do both.

Second, putting handwriting into a curriculum document does not by itself protect children from excessive technology. Parents in both countries need information about what actually happens during the school day.

Is This Really About Parental Consent?

Schools cannot seek individual permission from every parent for every worksheet, book, teaching technique or seating arrangement. Education is a collective institution, teachers need professional autonomy and a universal opt-out from ordinary instruction would be unworkable.

So no, parents do not generally possess a legal veto over every pedagogical choice. Consent in education cannot work exactly like consent to medical treatment or sexual contact.

But that does not release schools from consent culture.

Consent culture is also about power, transparency, meaningful choices and the refusal to treat silence as agreement. A material change from occasional computer instruction to screen-mediated education across lessons and assessments is not a minor classroom detail. It affects attention, skill development, accessibility, privacy, family screen-time decisions and what happens to a child’s data.

In the United States, privacy laws such as FERPA and COPPA provide protections, but they do not guarantee that a parent personally approves every platform. Under defined conditions, a school may authorize an education-technology provider to act in an institutional role. Legal compliance is not the same as informed family agreement, and a privacy notice is not the same as a meaningful choice about pedagogy.

New York gives families additional data rights through Education Law 2-d and related regulations. NYCPS’s Parents’ Bill of Rights says student information may not be sold or used for commercial, marketing or advertising purposes. Parents have the right to inspect education records held by NYCPS and relevant outside organizations within 45 days, to receive notice of certain breaches or unauthorized disclosures and to file privacy complaints.

These are valuable rights, but they are mostly rights over information after a technology system has been selected. They do not automatically give parents a veto over the platform, a right to demand paper instruction or an accounting of the cumulative screen exposure created by dozens of separate choices.

In the UK, schools must also comply with data-protection law, including UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. Depending on the purpose and legal basis, a school may process children’s data without relying on parental consent. Again, a lawful basis for processing data is not proof that the teaching method is educationally sound or that families were meaningfully consulted.

Schools should therefore stop treating enrollment as blanket consent to any future technological environment.

At minimum, parents should receive clear, accessible information about:

• how much of a normal day children are expected to spend using screens;
• which subjects, assignments and assessments are device-based;
• which handwriting, cursive, printed-reading and practical skills are explicitly taught;
• why each major platform is used and what independent evidence supports it;
• what information the platform collects, where it is stored, how long it is retained and who can access it;
• whether advertising, profiling, generative AI or automated decisions are involved;
• what accommodations exist for disability, sensory needs, headaches, vision problems or difficulties sustaining attention;
• what non-digital route exists when a child can meet the same educational objective without the device; and
• when the policy will be reviewed, by whom and against which outcomes.

For major changes, schools should consult families before implementation, publish the results, explain their final decision and provide a workable low-screen pathway wherever that can be done without denying the child the curriculum.

That is not parents dictating every lesson. It is institutions earning trust before reorganizing children’s days around commercial technology.

What a Better School Technology Policy Would Look Like

The alternative to all-day technology is not an imaginary return to chalkboards and fountain pens. It is a deliberate mixed-medium education.

Young children would first build language, motor control, handwriting, attention, social confidence and familiarity with physical books. Devices would be introduced for defined purposes rather than as the surface beneath every purpose.

Children would still learn to type. They would still learn to research online, create digital work, understand AI and recognize manipulation. Disabled children would retain technology that gives them access. Teachers would retain tools that demonstrably help them teach.

But the default would change from “digital unless someone objects” to “choose the medium that best serves the learning objective.”

That policy would include:

• protected daily handwriting and printed-reading time in primary school;
• explicit instruction in legible print, with a meaningful introduction to cursive;
• paper options for sustained reading, drafting and appropriate assessments;
• screen-free lessons and parts of the day, especially for younger children;
• no ambient television or video without a stated, time-limited purpose;
• device use measured in minutes and by activity, not hidden behind the vague label of learning;
• independent evidence requirements before a product is purchased or renewed;
• annual audits of educational value, accessibility, distraction, privacy and total screen exposure;
• student and teacher feedback alongside attainment data;
• no generative AI for children who have not yet developed the underlying skill the system would perform for them;
• AI literacy taught as critical literacy, including error, bias, privacy, authorship and environmental cost;
• secure, minimal data collection with firm deletion schedules; and
• transparent consultation with families before major changes.

Technology should have to keep earning its place. A contract renewal date is not evidence of educational value.

The Right Question Is Not Whether Schools Are Modern

A school can fill every room with screens and still rely on shallow, passive instruction. Another can use books, pencils, conversation and carefully chosen software while preparing children exceptionally well for a digital world.

Modernity is not measured by the number of devices visible in a classroom.

It is measured by whether a school can examine evidence, resist commercial pressure, reverse an unsuccessful decision and explain its choices to the families whose children live with the consequences.

Parents are not irrational for asking why an emergency system survived the emergency. They are not anti-education for wanting children to write by hand, read physical books, look at their teachers and learn how to sustain attention without a screen filling every silence. They are not anti-technology for asking technology to remain a tool.

We should not have to prove that pencils are innovative. Schools that replace them should have to prove that the replacement is better.

And when the proposed change is large enough to reshape how a child reads, writes, thinks, focuses and spends most of the day, parents should not learn about it after the screen has already become the classroom.

Questions Parents Can Ask Their School

• How many minutes of screen use should I expect on a typical day, broken down by subject and activity?
• Which learning outcomes require a device, and why is a device better for those outcomes?
• How often does my child read a physical book and write an extended piece by hand?
• Is handwriting explicitly taught and assessed? Is cursive introduced?
• Are tests digital by default? Is a paper version available when the interface is not part of what is being tested?
• Are classroom televisions or displays ever used as background entertainment?
• Which companies receive my child’s information, and can I see the contracts and privacy assessments?
• Does any system use generative AI, automated scoring, emotion recognition, behavioral profiling or targeted recommendations?
• What alternative is offered if a platform is unsuitable for my child?
• What evidence would cause the school to reduce or stop using a product?

How NYC Parents Can Turn Those Questions Into Action

Start with a written request to the classroom teacher and principal. Ask for concrete information rather than a general reassurance that technology is educational. Request a typical weekly breakdown of individual device use, whole-class screen use, digital homework, paper reading and handwriting. Ask which items are school choices, which are NYCPS requirements and which are New York State requirements.

Bring the issue to the parent members of the School Leadership Team. SLTs are part of shared decision-making at the school level and connect educational priorities with the school’s Comprehensive Educational Plan. Ask that screen exposure, handwriting and education-technology effectiveness be placed on the agenda and documented.

Use the PTA or Parent Association to collect experiences across classes and grades. One isolated complaint is easy to explain away as a classroom preference. A structured parent survey can reveal whether the issue is consistent, how much practice differs between teachers and which children experience headaches, distraction, accessibility barriers or difficulty with digital tests.

Raise district-wide patterns with the relevant Community Education Council. Citywide concerns can also be directed to the appropriate Citywide Council and the Panel for Educational Policy. The new Technology in Schools Coalition should be asked to publish its membership, evidence, meeting materials, conflicts of interest and recommendations.

For student-data concerns, use the NYCPS Parents’ Bill of Rights process. Parents can request records and file a complaint with the NYCPS Chief Privacy Officer or the New York State Education Department when they believe protected information has been mishandled.

If a child has a disability or health condition that makes prolonged screen use inaccessible, this is not merely a philosophical disagreement about technology. Discuss the barrier with the school’s special-education or Section 504 team and seek an individualized accommodation supported by the child’s needs. The appropriate adjustment might include paper materials, screen breaks, assistive technology, altered display settings or a different assessment arrangement. Removing all technology may be the wrong accommodation for a child who relies on it for access.

The aim is not to force one family’s preferences onto every child. It is to require the school to know what it is doing, measure the consequences, protect alternatives and involve families before convenience hardens into policy.

What Parents in England Should Ask

Parents in England can use the same evidence questions while grounding them in the school’s legal structure. Ask how the school is meeting the handwriting expectations in the English national curriculum, how joined handwriting is taught and practiced and how its computing curriculum complements rather than replaces physical literacy.

Maintained schools, academies and independent schools do not all operate under identical curriculum duties. Parents should therefore ask the headteacher and governing body or academy trust which standards the school follows, what its written curriculum promises and how leaders monitor whether classroom practice matches it.

They should also ask for the school’s privacy notices, list of education-technology providers, data-protection impact assessments where applicable and the route for contacting the data protection officer. As in New York, privacy compliance answers only one part of the question. Parents should still ask whether the product improves learning, how much screen time it creates and what non-digital alternative exists.

Sources and Further Reading

• New York City Public Schools banning AI use through middle school, ABC News, September 2, 2026
• US Department of Education guidance on responsible classroom technology, August 20, 2026
• PISA 2022 Results, OECD
• PISA 2022 findings on digital distraction and moderate device use, OECD
• Laptops and tablets delivered during COVID-19, UK Department for Education
• US public-school technology support during COVID-19, National Center for Education Statistics
• NYC Comptroller audit of remote-learning device distribution, July 2021
• NYC Comptroller summary of device-distribution findings
• NYCPS guidance on artificial intelligence and screen time, September 2026
• New York State computer-based testing requirements
• NYCPS grades 3 through 8 test-score release for 2023-24
• New York State preliminary grades 3 through 8 assessment data for 2025-26
• Analysis of the unusual 2026 New York and NYC reading-score changes, Chalkbeat
• NYCPS Parents’ Bill of Rights for Data Privacy and Security
• New York State bill proposing required cursive instruction
• Why cursive is returning to US classrooms, National Education Association, 2026
• Education Week survey of one-device-per-student expansion during COVID-19
• National curriculum in England
• English programs of study, including statutory handwriting expectations
• Mobile devices in primary-school literacy and numeracy: systematic review
• Handwriting versus typing and brain connectivity, Frontiers in Psychology, 2024
• The neuroscience behind handwriting and typing: review, 2025
• Cursive Handwriting Instruction in K-12 Classrooms: systematic review, Iowa Reading Research Center, 2026
• Children’s reading on paper versus screens: meta-analysis
• Digital versus paper reading: systematic literature review
• Early-childhood screen contexts and cognitive development: meta-analysis, JAMA Pediatrics, 2024
• Protecting Student Privacy: FERPA frequently asked questions, US Department of Education

Editorial note: Educational attainment fell after COVID-19, but the evidence does not support attributing a defined share of that decline to tablets or classroom screens. The article intentionally distinguishes causal findings, associations and policy arguments.