Parents are asking officials in the New Paltz Central School District (NPCSD) to reconsider their policy of providing Chromebooks for all students in grades 3-12, focusing particularly on studies that continued use does more harm than good.
Though parents have spoken at meetings of the board of education about their misgivings with the use of Chromebooks, the message is perhaps most extensively covered in a recent letter to the board written by Eric Brattain, parent of a 7th-grader at New Paltz Middle School. The undated letter follows another one written on April 21, which argues that the district’s 1:1 Chromebook policy is “doing measurable harm” to students.
“That argument is on the record and I’m not going to re-run it here,” wrote Brattain. “What I want to do this time is take the next step, which is to describe what an alternative could actually look like and to ask the board to charter the work of getting us there. The goal is to make the choice concrete enough that the community can weigh it honestly.”
Technology isn’t just prevalent in New Paltz; communities across the state, the country and around the world are continuously grappling with striking a balance between keeping up with technology and keeping kids safe.
Though an increased focus on technology was already in the works for years, school districts like New Paltz began accelerating the use of Chromebooks in response to the global Covid pandemic, which saw students end the 2019-20 and start the 2020-21 school years learning remotely. Even after students returned to the classroom, many districts continued using the Chromebooks.
The NPCSD cites the New York State Education Department’s (NYSED) December 2020 Computer Science and Digital Fluency Learning Standards K-12, which opens with the following: “For New York State students to lead productive and successful lives upon graduation, they must understand and know how to use digital technologies. Technology knowledge and skills are vital for full participation in 21st-century life, work and citizenship.”
The Digital Ecosystem in NPCSD (www.newpaltz.k12.ny.us/our-departments/educational-programs/the-digital-ecosystem-in-npcsd) includes another passage from the state’s standards: “Sufficient access to a computing device is essential for educational equity.”
But while many school districts say they’re following the directive of NYSED, Brattain argued in his letter that doing so runs counter to the law, citing state Education Law §701, which says that “boards of education, trustees or such body or officer as perform the functions of such boards, shall designate text-books to be used in the schools under their charge.”
Since 1999, the definition of a textbook in the statute has included, “any courseware or other content-based instructional materials in an electronic format.”
Brattain further cites legal precedent established in Appeal of McLoughlin (2005): “This is well-settled law, summarized in plain language by the New York State Association of School Attorneys: school boards have broad discretion over curriculum and book selection.”
Ending the 1:1 Chromebook program isn’t universally supported. A technology forum was held prior to the April 21 meeting of the board of education. Summarizing that discussion in his May 10 community update, superintendent Stephen Gratto said it was clear that the district needed to reflect on its use of educational technology.
“This is true about all facets of a school district of course, we should always be reflecting on the best ways to do things,” Gratto said. “However, concerns about overuse or inappropriate use of technology expressed by parents puts extra emphasis on this topic.”
Presently, students in grades 3-12 are assigned Chromebooks, with grades 6-12 bringing them home. Critics of the program say students on the younger end of the spectrum can be exposed to inappropriate material with home use of a Chromebook, and students of any age may be losing critical thinking skills.
In his May 10 community update, Gratto said he shared with faculty and administrators a series of questions on the subject of technology, including, “How do we prevent students from having cognitive overload from using a lot of technology?”, “What is the proper time to have students use chromebooks (sic) in school and at home?” and “to what extent can we/do we have technology choice in classrooms?”
“Obviously, there is a lot to think about here,” Gratto said. “There must be consideration of the need for teacher autonomy when planning the best way to provide instruction while also realizing that parents have very real concerns about their children and technology and we must consider these concerns and how we can do our jobs even better.”
At the May 20 school board meeting, Gratto said that the subsequent discussion with faculty and administrators regarding the 1:1 Chromebook program in the sixth grade showed a “unified” disinterest in ending it completely.
“They do think that there could be some ways to improve the rollout,” Gratto said. “They felt that it should be a broader question than just sixth grade. They felt the same conversation should be had district-wide, and especially in the seventh and eighth grade, which certainly makes sense.”
Gratto said educators agreed that the district could provide parents with more information ahead of time on the use of Chromebooks; one expressed surprise that sixth-graders might need to use their Chromebooks for extended periods of time at home because they don’t ordinarily get more than a half hour of homework.
Sixth-graders will no longer receive their Chromebooks at orientation as in the past, but will instead receive them over the first week or two “where their teachers can give them proper instruction on when to use them and how to use them,” Gratto said.
Brattain’s letter posited another potential change in how the NPCSD uses Chromebooks.
“The devices don’t get thrown out,” he said. “What changes is where they live and how they get used. They move from individual student backpacks into shared classroom or hallway carts. When a teacher’s lesson genuinely calls for a device, the cart comes out and the laptops come into the lesson … The cart is a tool that’s reached for when it’s the right one for a specific situation, under the teacher’s full control, and then out of sight and out of mind when not called for.”
In this proposal, “(t)he primary medium of instruction becomes print. Math gets worked on paper, with a real textbook to flip through for examples, revision, or looking ahead,” Brattain said. “Essays get drafted in writing journals before they get typed up. Science notebooks with handwritten observations and diagrams. Note-taking is by hand. The teacher can connect with the students without fighting the screens for attention. The cognitive load that comes with managing Chromebooks, both for students and for the teacher, makes way for genuine classroom engagement.”
At the May 20 meeting of the board of education, trustees offered a range of opinions on the use of Chromebooks by students, but they pledged collectively to continue reviewing the district’s program against expert information.
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