Every morning, I wake up, drink a pot of tea, and scan the box scores before reading the major newspapers and the latest Substack posts on edtech and AI. I suppose everything about that sentence screams Gen X except the last one. Turns out it’s even older than that. My grandfather did the same thing. He always read papers with opposing views because he wanted to understand their arguments.
My recent challenge with edtech and AI is finding opposing views, especially on Substack. Maybe it’s my subscriptions or the algorithm, but it’s been hard of late to find any pro-edtech and AI posts. Same with The New York Times and other papers. The vibe is very negative. On Substack, edtech is mostly evil or, if you’re iReady, really evil.
I believe this is what’s called a vibes shift.
For the last twenty years, all the vibes favored edtech. One-to-one devices, universal high-speed internet in every school, gamification, flipped classrooms—no one questioned their merits. No one asked for the research base. In fact, leaders in every part of the education ecosystem I’ve worked in—school districts, policy advocacy and organizing, nonprofits—were convinced that educational justice meant increasing access to the latest technology in high-poverty schools and communities.
Then the pandemic happened. To say that it turbocharged edtech would be a massive understatement. Suddenly, technology went from being an add-on to the entire infrastructure of education. After the pandemic, a lot of folks, not just edtech leaders and funders, presumed that edtech, and then AI, were inevitable.
But another thing happened after the pandemic that I didn’t expect and that most folks in edtech are completely oblivious to. A lot of parents, especially well-off, well-connected parents, got really pissed off by the poor quality of virtual education. Many of these parents were already concerned about the impact of devices and social media on the social-emotional well-being of their kids outside school.
In both cases, the issue is trust. First, they lost trust in the tech overlords, especially the social media ones. Then they lost trust in the district leaders who kept their kids locked up at home tied to a screen.
It’s no wonder these two trends merged, kicking off a rapid, cascading series of policy changes: social media age limits, cell phone bans, and, more recently, the screen and AI backlash.
As I noted in a previous post, where I compared the parental techlash to the Science of Reading movement, this was unexpected by most folks in the education ecosystem. A year ago, it would have been unimaginable that school boards and legislatures would consider policies limiting edtech and shifting back to pencils and whiteboards. In my next post, I’ll explain why this parent movement has been so effective at shifting the vibe and painting edtech as evil—and why edtech can’t afford to stay so oblivious.
Does this movement have legs? More importantly, where does edtech go from here?
The first thing we have to acknowledge is edtech assumed we were the good guys, which is why it feels so awful to be labeled as evil. It’s kind of like what happened to carbs. Or drinking wine. But I digress.
In summary, the peak edtech party is over. Now our sector is working through the first four stages of grief.
Denial – There’s no techlash against screens! And even if there is, it’s totally overblown because everyone’s still buying screens, solutions, and AI. Just look at the EdWeek survey data. And BTW, there’s nothing wrong with drinking wine and eating potato chips.
Anger – These anti-screen people are a bunch of privileged parents who are probably also vegans. That Toy Story movie was a crappy hit job directed by one of those joyless cranks. Screw them and the inverted food pyramid!
Bargaining – These silly people are just misguided. We just need to show them the research we commissioned and prove that their children love our tools. We’ll give them a free version and throw in a bag of Lay's and a lovely bottle of Merlot.
Depression – Just give me the chips and the bottle.
To get to the fifth and final stage, acceptance, we must "recognize the reality and chart a path forward."
Let’s start by looking at the three sectors I’ve worked in.
In traditional K–12 school districts, the pandemic era is over. Even before the techlash, school district budgets, swollen by billions in ESSER funding, had begun to contract, and purchasers were becoming more discerning. Still, as recently as a year ago, tech wasn’t bad. It was vital infrastructure. AI was new and exciting—except, of course, for the cheating.
The parent techlash has fundamentally altered this dynamic. In most districts, one activist parent is a gadfly. Five parents are a major problem. Ten parents are a crisis. Twenty parents are a policy change—or the superintendent is looking for a new job.
There will be more restrictions.
The situation is even worse in policy advocacy. There’s a reason so many screen-time bills are being proposed and passed. I recently attended an event with dozens of my former policy advocacy friends. When I told them I lead an AI-powered edtech company, they looked at me as if I'd been snatched by aliens. In pop-culture terms, I had gone from being a member of the Resistance to a particularly nasty Sith.
Their sympathies naturally lie with parents. They are, at best, deeply suspicious of AI and, at worst, openly hostile. What’s particularly interesting is how bipartisan that suspicion has become, even among elected officials and their staffs. Then I remember that many of them are parents.
For education nonprofits that provide services, it’s more complicated. I’ll bet most people who work in these organizations agree with the parents and the policy advocates. But their leaders also must pay attention to funding trends. We’re still figuring out that balancing act. We’d better figure it out soon and chart a path forward.
More on that in my next post.
If you're just joining the series, you can start here:
Read post one, "Will U.S. Schools Ban Chatbots?"
Read post two, "Does Edtech Have Any Values?"