Please sign- remove distractions and over loading on screen time

[Anonymous]

I don’t have an issue with using Chromebooks, I have an issue with Chromebooks having so many distractions and not being adequately locked down. If during class a kid could only open one single application I’d be all for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As an MCPS teacher, we are trying to hard to limit screen time. The curriculum we are given, plus the crappiest internet monitoring system (GoGuardian was LEAGUES better than Lightspeed is), doesn't give us much flexibility. Students are finding ways to get around Lightspeed. I have emailed IT so many times to block a site and they haven't blocked a single one I've suggested.

There's IT ??? How do you contact them?

Parent here. Yes my kid’s middle school has an IT person. My kid’s MS teacher wrote that kids were playing games in her class when they should be working and I wrote to ask my kid’s guidance counselor how to block game sites since we don’t have admin rights to the McPS laptops and she gave me the name of the school IT guy and I sent URLs that I found on my kid’s laptop of game sites for him to submit to MCPS to block. Of course, the gaming sites can change URL in an instant so it’s difficult for MCPS to block them all but if you see them on your kid’s laptop you can report them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As an MCPS teacher, we are trying to hard to limit screen time. The curriculum we are given, plus the crappiest internet monitoring system (GoGuardian was LEAGUES better than Lightspeed is), doesn't give us much flexibility. Students are finding ways to get around Lightspeed. I have emailed IT so many times to block a site and they haven't blocked a single one I've suggested.

Is there something parents can do to support getting GoGuardian back?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Use petitions website whatever it is that most people use to circulate in Montgomery county

It is a Statewide Petition. Reading is fundamental.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As an MCPS teacher, we are trying to hard to limit screen time. The curriculum we are given, plus the crappiest internet monitoring system (GoGuardian was LEAGUES better than Lightspeed is), doesn't give us much flexibility. Students are finding ways to get around Lightspeed. I have emailed IT so many times to block a site and they haven't blocked a single one I've suggested.

Is there something parents can do to support getting GoGuardian back?

+1 That's really bad that the IT people aren't blocking sites when teachers ask for this and are reporting it as a problem.

[Anonymous]

Learning to use technology appropriately is certainly important but you don't need to put kids on Chromebooks all day to do that. Honestly as long as they have access to Internet connected devices someone will figure out how to access blocked websites. Most of the school day they should not be on a laptop, the notion that this is necessary for learning is absurd.

[Anonymous]

In most countries, feeling lonely at school increased while academic performance on standardized tests in math, reading, and science declined, particularly between 2012 and 2022. Thus, declines in adolescent well-being and academic performance are international rather than isolated to only some countries. Increases in loneliness and declines in academic performance were larger in countries with greater increases in adolescent smartphone access and in countries where adolescents reported spending more time using electronic devices for leisure purposes during school hours.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jad.70058

This should be a five alarm fire for education leaders but they don't seem to give a single, solitary F about it. My guess is they are vying for cushy EdTech jobs. What a disgusting pack of leeches.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t have an issue with using Chromebooks, I have an issue with Chromebooks having so many distractions and not being adequately locked down. If during class a kid could only open one single application I’d be all for it.

I do have an issue with it. In addition to the fact that MCPS hasn't adequately locked down the Chromebooks, there's so many blookets and quizzes, and kids aren't learning how to adequately write and synthesize information.

And even my kid's reading materials for MS English and social studies classes are online with no printouts, and the homeworks are entirely to be submitted online. I would like to limit my kid's screentime at home, but I can't because MCPS makes them do practically everything online.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t have an issue with using Chromebooks, I have an issue with Chromebooks having so many distractions and not being adequately locked down. If during class a kid could only open one single application I’d be all for it.

I do have an issue with it. In addition to the fact that MCPS hasn't adequately locked down the Chromebooks, there's so many blookets and quizzes, and kids aren't learning how to adequately write and synthesize information.

And even my kid's reading materials for MS English and social studies classes are online with no printouts, and the homeworks are entirely to be submitted online. I would like to limit my kid's screentime at home, but I can't because MCPS makes them do practically everything online.

+1

Districts could even eliminate school electronic devices entirely. Many parents and teachers might protest that this would have an adverse impact on learning or tilt the scales in favor of wealthier students who have access to their own devices, but several studies suggest it might instead improve learning. One study of nearly 300,000 fourth and eighth graders in the United States found that students who spent more time using digital devices in language arts classes performed worse on reading tests. A 2018 meta-analysis found that reading on paper, compared with reading digitally, led to significantly better comprehension among students, from elementary school to college. Across 24 studies, college students who took handwritten notes were 58 percent more likely to get A’s in their courses than those who typed notes on laptops. In contrast, students who typed notes were 75 percent more likely to fail the course than those who wrote them by hand.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/opinion/laptop-classroom-test-scores.html?unlocked_article_code=1.108.N0ns.hz8GlmoZ4Hok&smid=nytcore-android-share

[Anonymous]

I guess I’m old but why the heck are parents blaming the school when their kids chooses to play video games? I would come down really hard on that as a parent if I found out. It’s like saying “of course my kid is throwing paper airplanes in class all day! You gave him access to paper!”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess I’m old but why the heck are parents blaming the school when their kids chooses to play video games? I would come down really hard on that as a parent if I found out. It’s like saying “of course my kid is throwing paper airplanes in class all day! You gave him access to paper!”

I don't think that's a great analogy, considering tech is designed to be addictive, unlike paper. It's more like putting a big bowl of M&M's on every student's desk every day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess I’m old but why the heck are parents blaming the school when their kids chooses to play video games? I would come down really hard on that as a parent if I found out. It’s like saying “of course my kid is throwing paper airplanes in class all day! You gave him access to paper!”

Yes, you must be old, as you don't understand what MCPS is like these days. MCPS gives kids Chromebooks, but doesn't have sufficient controls on them such that kids can't put video games on them. Parents are not in the classrooms to police this behavior at school. Teachers either don't know or don't have the bandwidth to stop the behavior when there are 30+ kids in class--it's not like the kids are playing video games loudly and disrupting class as in your paper airplane analogy where it's obvious. And parents don't have admin rights to the Chromebooks to delete any games or block any websites that are inappropriate or may be used, only MCPS does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I guess I’m old but why the heck are parents blaming the school when their kids chooses to play video games? I would come down really hard on that as a parent if I found out. It’s like saying “of course my kid is throwing paper airplanes in class all day! You gave him access to paper!”

I don't think that's a great analogy, considering tech is designed to be addictive, unlike paper. It's more like putting a big bowl of M&M's on every student's desk every day.

+1,000

Pro tip to the PP: most new parents today realize pretty quickly that most older adults who had kids decades ago don't really remember much about parenting and have no idea what things are like now. Don't embarrass yourself. I just read that something like a quarter of kids have watched porn at school. Even if it isn't your kid, do you want that around your kid? Is that conducive to learning, and if not is the solution to tell parents to tell their kids to stop? Be honest, would you be satisfied if that was the school's answer to your kid being exposed to porn they didn't choose to watch at school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I guess I’m old but why the heck are parents blaming the school when their kids chooses to play video games? I would come down really hard on that as a parent if I found out. It’s like saying “of course my kid is throwing paper airplanes in class all day! You gave him access to paper!”

I don't think that's a great analogy, considering tech is designed to be addictive, unlike paper. It's more like putting a big bowl of M&M's on every student's desk every day.

+1,000

Pro tip to the PP: most new parents today realize pretty quickly that most older adults who had kids decades ago don't really remember much about parenting and have no idea what things are like now. Don't embarrass yourself. I just read that something like a quarter of kids have watched porn at school. Even if it isn't your kid, do you want that around your kid? Is that conducive to learning, and if not is the solution to tell parents to tell their kids to stop? Be honest, would you be satisfied if that was the school's answer to your kid being exposed to porn they didn't choose to watch at school?

You must have read this article in the NY Times. It's not right that this is forced on our kids. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/opinion/laptop-classroom-test-scores.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1k8.qxFA.zsxYGwOCnhag&smid=nytcore-android-share

[Anonymous]

I wish this petition went further and called for the end of personal school issued devices.