In Pivot, Teachers Union Pitches 'Devices Down, Eyes Up, Hands-On' Plan

“Young people are resilient, but too often, the kids are not alright,” American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten told a packed room at the National Press Club last month. “A major reason is that they are drowning in tech.”

Coming from the leader of the nation’s largest teachers union, who less than a year earlier partnered her organization with OpenAI and Microsoft to push more AI into classrooms, the claim repositioned the union in a quickly escalating debate around youth and technology in schools. Every parent of a school-aged child has run into the fear-inducing statistics on technology’s effects on kids, and as moms of young children who also happen to research family tech policy, this is familiar territory for us. But Weingarten’s remarks in her address, “Devices down, eyes up, hands-on,” captured a growing sense of urgency for tech in schools.

This urgency can be felt across the country, as parents attempt to opt their kids out of edtech and in some cases filing lawsuits against companies like i-Ready and IXL for using their children’s data without parental consent. Teachers are also expressing concerns of cheating and cognitive decline as their school districts move ahead with implementation. Last month in Los Angeles, the board of the nation’s second-largest school district voted unanimously to ban district-issued devices for the youngest students, cap screen time by grade level, and steer elementary classrooms away from one-device-per-child. It was the product of more than a year of pressure from Schools Beyond Screens, a coalition founded by LAUSD parents and teachers who had become increasingly frustrated by what they called Big Tech’s encroachment into their schools.

Elsewhere, inspired parents are mobilizing and joining organizations to find a collective voice and strategy for change. And change seems on the horizon as states such as Vermont (Act 72) and Utah (S.B.267) pass edtech laws to restrict the use of screens in schools and bolster privacy requirements. AI looms heavily over these debates, with incredibly unfavorable attitudes toward AI and negative research about student impact being reported, many state legislatures are actively working on bills that will limit the use of AI in K-12 education, and five states (ID, IL, OH, NY, UT) have already passed and implemented such legislation.

Regardless of research on impacts and parents’ call to ban screens in schools, Weingarten did not propose a technological blackout for young students; instead, she proposed a cautious approach to reforming the education narrative. Weingarten puts forth an optimistically bipartisan, 10-point plan that puts children first without discounting the need for students to be familiar with AI for future economic success. The plan, which largely emphasizes resorting back to the tried and true methods of education with limited technology and highly engaging critical thinking, also supports teachers in decisions about how and when to integrate technology. The plan is not without flaws and concessions. Funding continues to be one of the key issues in public education and Randi Weingarten has a suggestion for some relief as she proposes financial pressure on Big Tech. The tech tax would hold Big Tech accountable for AI and technological displacement, as Weingarten highlights the importance of family stability in educational achievement as well as prohibiting research funded by Big Tech companies with potential for financial gain.

Here are the AFT’s 10 points to boost student learning and success in the AI era, followed by our annotations to expand on the context for them:

1. No screens (including online assessments) for students in prekindergarten through second grade, unless there is a compelling reason, such as to most effectively support a student with special needs.

Utah is currently the only state that has passed legislation to prohibit screen time for kindergarten through third grade with limited exceptions, and 12 states have proposed legislation that aims to restrict screen time, the use of AI, and digital devices in educational settings.

2. No student-facing AI in elementary schools- not only to prevent harm, but to build children’s skills like relationship building and persistence. All other student-facing AI, including digital literacy efforts, must be supervised by educators. And until at least age 16, there should be a total ban on so-called “social companion” chatbots, computer programs that simulate human relationships.

Studies demonstrate a considerable decline of cognitive ability in students that habitually use AI for educational purposes. In some cases, schools have begun to implement their own restrictions for student-facing AI which are likely to deter these harmful effects. However, children’s psychosocial skills are still likely to be at high risk as AI markets continue to roll-out child-focused chatbots and engagement with companion chatbots often occurs outside of school hours.

3. Redesign schooling so active learning, including project-based, experiential and career-connected learning, is the norm across all grade levels. That means redesigning accountability as well.

What does accountability look like here? In the battle over edtech, an ongoing issue is lack of responsibility and accountability for providers, often leaving students to shoulder the burden and bear the consequences.

4. Ensure students have a solid foundation in literacy, numeracy and civic engagement.

A recent report shows a steady decline in American test scores for math and reading since 2013, with significant setbacks occurring during the Covid-19 pandemic. Reading continues to show the most significant decline across all grades. Despite significant investments in education technology there has been little progress in raising students' test scores.

5. Focus on well-being, so that students and their families have their basic needs met and students are prepared to learn, as community schools do so successfully.

As described in a high-profile lawsuit last year, a teen's fatal reliance on ChatGPT began as homework help before his suicide. These tools bear on well-being and create new vulnerabilities at once.

6. Protect intellectual property and academic freedom, and support educators to understand, effectively use and make classroom-based decisions about technology integration.

Universities have led here, but around 80% of faculty use AI tools while fewer than one in four know of any institutional policy, producing "shadow AI" outside all oversight and inconsistent policies that have led to confusion.

7. Establish a new gold standard for safety and privacy for the use of AI in schools. Providers that cannot meet these requirements should not be eligible to serve K-12 education.

There is no certification or standard setting agency for edtech despite repeated calls for one and AI evals exacerbate the problem, since the field still lacks shared benchmarks for what “safe” even means, let alone making headway on a “gold standard” for learning outcomes. Similarly edtech companies already struggle to comply with COPPA’s parental consent requirements, and we are only beginning to understand the distinct additional privacy risks with AI.

8. Establish an independent research consortium to build a strong knowledge base for effective education practices that can be sustained and scaled. The research should include the effects of AI, screens and technology on students, and should not be paid for by the industries whose products are being researched.

While a growing number of research labs and groups are studying impacts of AI on children, Weingarten notes the administration gutted the Education Department and withheld roughly $300 million in research funding, which raises the obvious problem of who pays for industry-independent research once both federal money and tech money are off the table.

9. Ensure adequate funding of education by states and the federal government. This means reversing the trend of disinvestment since the Great Recession and targeting funding to level the playing field and promote opportunity for all students—and not letting AI and vouchers further defund public education.

Back in 2018, reporting warned of a reversed digital divide in which poorer and middle-class children would be “raised by screens, while the children of Silicon Valley's elite” returned to “wooden toys and the luxury of human interaction,” a split already emerging in schools, with public systems pushing devices and even digital-only preschools while affluent families banned screens from class.

10. A “tech tax” on Big Tech’s earnings and on some business operations, to ensure they pay their fair share for the adverse and disruptive consequences of this technology on American families, such as workers being displaced by AI.

Taxing AI has become a progressive talking point, with democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) promoting an overhaul of the tax code to incentivize human workers and Representative Greg Caser (D-Texas) suggesting a token tax that would support job pipelines in fields with labor shortages and retraining programs. While family economic stability is the main goal of these ideas, benefiting students, schools would presumably receive some of this funding as well.

The 10-point plan is in sharp contrast to the policy being pushed by the current White House. President Donald Trump’s education initiative, as outlined in his AI education Executive Order, “Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth,” is staunchly AI-forward and has been reinforced with an AI education taskforce charged with vague objectives such as “promoting the appropriate information of AI into education,” “providing comprehensive AI training for educators” and “fostering early exposure to AI concepts and technology to develop an AI-ready workforce and the next generation of American AI innovators.” The First Lady later appeared next to a humanoid robot and suggested such machines could deliver a “personalized” and “adaptive” education for every child.

Similarly, the White House’s National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence, released in March, emphasized child safety but made no mention of parental consent. Nor does Weingarten. In her speech, Weingarten mentioned parents having a “real say, as well,” but appears to have left them out of her ten point plan. While the Trump administration and union leaders may not necessarily want to accommodate family involvement in technology decisions at school, parents do not seem ready to fully defer to institutional decision-making around technology at this point in time.