The Trump administration has a vision for the future of K-12 education: an AI-powered robot teacher named “Plato.”
This yet-to-be-invented AI educator will provide a “personalized experience, adaptive to the needs of each student,” and improve students’ critical-thinking skills, said first lady Melania Trump at a White House event last month. Plato will be “always patient, always available,” she said.
But if Plato ever does exist, the tool would likely be illegal in Utah, a state that Trump carried by more than 20 percentage points in the 2024 election.
Utah’s schools are barred from using AI to grade student work or make high-stakes decisions about student learning, under legislation signed earlier this year by GOP Gov. Spencer Cox.
Utah’s new law also directs school boards to adopt tech policies prohibiting the use of digital devices for students in grades K-3, except in a few circumstances, and ending 1-to-1 computing programs in grades 4-6 that allow students to take school-issued devices home.
President Donald Trump’s embrace of AI as central to the future of instruction, even as members of his own party hit the brakes on digital learning tools, is showcasing the unusual politics surrounding a rising backlash against the overuse of technology in schools playing out in local school boards, state legislatures, and the U.S. Capitol.
State lawmakers in at least 17 states, representing both sides of the political aisle, have introduced or supported legislation this year aimed at limiting screen time in school and for homework, allowing parents to opt their children out of tech-driven assignments and instruction, restricting the use of AI in schools, or examining the impact of education technology on student learning with a more critical eye.
Teachers’ union opposes a Democrat’s proposed tech-use restrictions
The opposition to these measures is bipartisan, too.
Case in point: A bipartisan measure introduced by Angela Arsenault, a Democratic state representative in Vermont, would allow parents to opt their children out of using tech tools in school.
It faces opposition from the state’s teachers’ union, which argued it would be “burdensome” for educators to create both digital and analog versions of every assignment, said Don Tinney, the president of the Vermont affiliate of the National Education Association.
“The politics [of scaling back ed tech] are a little funky,” Arsenault said. “I see this as a very nonpartisan issue. It’s pretty universal that people want kids to be safe and happy and healthy. We want our kids to learn and thrive. We want our schools to be safe places. And if we’re introducing products that have not been tested or proven, we’re failing.”
Some of her fellow Democrats disagree.
The Biden administration, for instance, encouraged schools to tap into AI’s potential for easing teachers’ workloads and personalizing instruction for students, though it cautioned against relying solely on AI for high-stakes educational decisions.
And during a Senate hearing on screen time in schools earlier this year, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., argued that “technology can be a force for good in children’s lives,” though he cautioned that there need to be “strong guardrails” to protect students from harm.
In one high profile instance, a state teachers’ union—the Iowa Education Association—lent its support to a bill to limit digital instruction in elementary school to 60 minutes a day. The legislation was sponsored by state Rep. Samantha Fett, a Republican and founding member of the Warren County chapter of Moms For Liberty, a conservative parent group.
Debate about ed tech within the GOP is rising
The divisions may be even more stark in Republican ranks.
Trump gave AI in education a high-profile shoutout in his State of the Union Address earlier this year. Among Melania Trump’s special guests at the speech: Everest Nevraumont, 10, a student from Alpha Schools, a network of private schools where students spend two hours a day learning reading and math using AI-powered software.
The Trump administration’s full embrace of AI goes beyond symbolism: Trump called last year for infusing AI throughout K-12 education, including training teachers on how to integrate the technology into their instruction and workflows.
But some of the president’s biggest allies aren’t on board.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, argued in a Jan. 15 hearing that the time students spend on digital devices in school—even for learning purposes—has contributed to a teen mental health crisis, while dragging down academic outcomes.
Kansas state Sen. Scott Hill, a self-described “very conservative” Republican, introduced a bill that would have banned tech at the elementary level, with limited exceptions, and allowed parents of students at any level to opt their children out of 1-to-1 computing programs.
Hill doubts his differences with Trump on this issue would matter much to the president.
“I just don’t have that kind of clout,” he joked. He also said he’d be happy to discuss his perspective with Trump. “If he wants to call me, I have a listed phone number.”
Legislation to rein in ed-tech use faces mixed results
A few pieces of legislation seeking to rein in ed tech have made it over the finish line this year, including the Utah legislation and an Alabama measure barring digital tools in kindergarten and state-financed early-childhood education programs.
Still, some of the most dramatic attempts to limit screen time in schools have been similarly scaled back.
For instance, the initial version of a Tennessee bill introduced by state Rep. Michele Reneau, a Republican, would have barred digital tools in elementary schools. It was revised to instead require districts to craft technology guidelines for grades K-5 that seek to minimize screen time, after lawmakers in both parties questioned whether the original version would be workable for schools.
And in Missouri, the first draft of a bipartisan bill would have restricted digital instruction to 45 minutes a day for students in K-5. The measure would have also required that 70% of student work be completed on paper, that students be taught cursive, and that teachers not assign homework that requires technology.
After educators raised concerns about the bill’s restrictiveness, it was revised to instead direct school districts to come up with their own policies to limit technology use at the elementary level, based on evidence.
The legislation, which has passed Missouri’s House of Representatives but not yet the state senate, also establishes a new statewide council to study the impact of technology in schools.
In Vermont, Arsenault and another Democratic state lawmaker, Edye Graning, originally introduced legislation requiring the ed tech platforms to register with the state and comply with state standards for certification before they can be used in schools. They revised their bill after the state’s education agency explained that it does not currently have the capacity to develop those standards.
The legislation—which has passed the Vermont House of Representatives—would instead create the edtech registry and call for the state’s education agency to write a report exploring how Vermont might go about crafting effectiveness standards for ed tech tools.
Arsenault sees the registry and the report as a big step towards holding her goal of holding ed tech companies accountable for the safety and efficacy of their products.
In Kansas, vehement opposition to Hill’s bill came from representatives for several school districts and state education groups, including the Wichita public schools, the Kansas affiliate of the National Education Association, and the Kansas PTA.
They argued the bill would throw up hurdles for districts, which rely on technology for state assessments and classroom management.
Gillian Chapman, the superintendent of the state’s Blue Valley school district, criticized the measure as trampling on local control. She said it tried to address the societal problems of social media through “the wrong lever.”
“At no time in the Blue Valley School District are students using devices during the school day for entertainment purposes or passive use only,” Chapman said in written testimony. Instead, “students are actively engaged and creating content in a structured and educational environment.”
Hill plans to reintroduce the bill next year, if he wins another term.
Lawmakers in both parties pushing tech restrictions were influenced by a book
Hill’s own perspective on ed tech has changed over time. Hill was on the state board of education when “the idea of electronic education started,” he said.
“I was very optimistic about it,” Hill recalled. “I thought this is going to be the education of the future. We all did. And what we found out is that not only is it not the education of the future, but it is destroying the education of the past.”
Hill was deeply influenced by a book titled The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning—and How to Help them Thrive Again, self-published last year by Jared Cooney Horvarth, a neuroscientist who testified at Cruz’s hearing in January. In the book, Horvarth argues that an expansion of technology is responsible for declining student achievement.
Other lawmakers who introduced bills to scale back digital tools in education, including Vermont’s Arsenault and Tennessee’s Reneau, also cited Horvath’s work in interviews with a reporter or in debates over their legislation.
“We ran an experiment in schools for the last 15 years” by employing educational technology at such a large scale, Horvarth said in an interview. There was “no evidence to prove it [worked], nothing but promise. It didn’t work, and we have stunted a generation now.”
Richard Culatta, the CEO of ISTE+ASCD, a professional development organization, argues that schools haven’t done a great job communicating with parents about how they’re using technology—or often, giving teachers the skills they need to use it effectively.
But students still need to understand how to use digital tools to prepare for the workforce of the future, he said.
If technology use is restricted too much in schools, students will “not have tools that help them be more creative explorers and problem-solvers. They will have an education that is essentially an 18th-century education in a 21st-century world,” Culatta said.
Do schools need to be forced to make changes through legislation?
Even experts and educators who worry schools rely too heavily on low-quality ed-tech tools are divided on whether legislation is the right way to address the issue.
Catharyn Shelton, an associate professor of educational technology at Northern Arizona University, said it’s unlikely schools will step in and limit screen time without new laws.
“The only way that things seem to change is through the policy,” said Shelton, a former high school teacher. “You have to kind of push schools’ hands, because schools are understaffed, overworked, overburdened.
“They can talk about [cutting back] and they can care about it,“ she said. But schools may not “have the bandwidth to make change” unless they’re required to.
On the other side of the debate, Meg Leta Jones, a professor at Georgetown University who studies the impact of technology on families, isn’t sure that one-size-fits-all legal requirements are the best way to achieve the goal of a more balanced approach to technology in schools.
Jones, who is on a technology advisory board at her own children’s public school in the District of Columbia, thinks that schools seeking to reduce screen time should work with parents to find the right path forward, since different communities and populations have different needs when it comes to technology.
“State legislation can be really heavy-handed. It can be antagonistic,” she said. “Flexibility and informal, hyperlocal rulemaking channels could help us move forward over the next couple of years.”
