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[quote=Anonymous]I agree with everyone decrying the prevalence of EdTech in elementary. We are in DCPS and what is very apparent to me is that iReady has captured DCPS by being the way they do learning assessments. It creates an imperative for kids to do lessons on iReady because this helps them better learn, not content, but how to perform on iReady assessments.

However, I will say that as a low screen family, you can fight back. We basically never do iReady lessons at home. Sometimes my kid does them at school but I always tell teachers that my preference is for her to get pencil and paper work, and that she learns better that way. Our school makes a big deal about kids having access to Epic, but we insist on library visits and physical books. Second best is a kindle, which better approximates a physical book experience (better than Epic at least). We almost never use Epic. We complain when we hear about our kid spending large chunks of the day watching YouTube or movies, and when we complain we absolutely see a decline in these activities in the classroom.

We also left a school in early elementary in part due to the level of screen use. There was a parent survey in our last year there where I was shocked to see that most parents want MORE tech used in classrooms. A lot of kids were also bringing phones to school (this was before the new DCPS policy about phones, not sure what it's like there now), and teachers too often used videos to placate classrooms. We moved to a school that still has too much screen time but it's better.

So I guess my point is that while I am fully on board with the no-screen/low-screen education revolution, you have more options as a parent than just complaining anonymously online. Elementary is the best time to do it because it's where the research on screens I most compelling and it's also before grades matter. So you can do things like flatly refuse to have your kid do screen-based homework and let the teacher know they are welcome to send home paper homework instead. You can fight back. [/quote]

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