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The Upshot|350 Teachers on How Screens Took Over Classrooms, as Early as Kindergarten
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/upshot/teachers-survey-chromebooks-class.html
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Devices really do help make learning more flexible, accessible and engaging.
Christina Barreto
Sixth grade, Yonkers, N.Y.
Teachers are constantly competing with their Chromebooks for attention.
Wesley Lima
High school English, Dartmouth, Mass.
Devices should be treated like cigarettes for kids.
Joshua Lemere
Sixth-grade English, Westminster, S.C.
American classrooms have been transformed by screens in the last five years, with most students, of all ages, now learning on computers or tablets during the school day.
Even as schools have moved rapidly to ban cellphones, screens are nearly universal: Ninety-nine percent of teachers said their school provided devices to students for use in class, in an informal national survey of 350 pre-K through 12th-grade teachers conducted by The New York Times in October.
Eight in 10 teachers said students at their school had a device assigned to them, compared with about a third who said that was the case in 2019 before the pandemic.
And of elementary schoolteachers, 81 percent said students at their school receive devices for use in class by kindergarten.
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In a separate Times questionnaire, sent to the 20 largest U.S. school districts, nearly all said they provide devices to students starting in kindergarten or earlier.
I cannot in good faith allow students to stare at screens for hours at school when I know that when they go home, the majority of students spend the majority of time watching screens.
Landon Durtschi
High school history, Bronx
I see students routinely have small windows of YouTube up while simultaneously having an assignment to work on.
Jason Zimmerman
High school math, Kansas City, Mo.
How much do school-issued devices distract from schoolwork?
Excludes teachers who say students don’t use devices in their classroom.
Time students spend on devices
My favorite part is watching students work live on their Google docs and I leave feedback while they work.
Laura Lou Delehanty
High school English, Leeds, Ala.
I was able to allow my students with different first languages to use technology to access a read-aloud of the same book in their home language.
Niki Goll
Fifth grade, Denver
Students learn to design and present material using their own creativity.
Amy Rosenstein
Third grade, Ardsley, N.Y.
I’ve seen them do incredible things with tech at astoundingly young ages, but I’ve also seen attention spans decrease dramatically in my 10 years as a teacher.
Brent Aaron Chapuis
Second grade, New Orleans
Share of teachers who say their students use devices in class for …
School-approved activities
Kids just want to use A.I. for everything. SO MUCH CHEATING!
Elexia Strickland
High school English, Richmond, Texas
Some days I spend more time fixing computer issues than helping the kids with math.
Mike Sullivan
Middle school math, Brockton, Mass.
My students have just lost their motivation and imagination without a device.
Stephanie Lewis
Library, Horseheads, N.Y.
Students do not know how to read a textbook and lack stamina to read longer pieces.
Mary Geasa
Middle school English and social studies, Pleasanton, Calif.
About the data
The Times’s survey was circulated to members of the American Federation of Teachers, a union; Educators for Excellence, a teacher-led advocacy group; Teach for America’s alumni group; and teachers’ Facebook groups. Responses were recorded from Oct. 6 to Oct. 25. The results are not a statistical sample of all U.S. schools.
The 350 teachers who responded taught in 40 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Washington, D.C. Roughly 60 percent taught in urban schools, more than the national share. Thirty percent were from suburban schools and 10 percent from rural ones. Two-thirds said they worked in low-income schools that receive federal Title I funding, similar to the share of those schools nationwide.
For each question, The Times removed respondents who answered “I don’t know.”
