Education Week - February 13, 2019 - 10

Debunking the Myth
Of Rich Parents, Tech
By Benjamin Herold
It's an idea that won't go away:
Wealthy parents don't want their children exposed to technology in school.
"The digital gap between rich and
poor kids is not what we expected,"
the New York Times proclaimed
last October. "The rich are banning
screens from class altogether."
The problem?
Such sweeping assertions are supported by neither available evidence
nor what's happening in some of
America's wealthiest school districts.
Instead, the "new digital divide"
is complicated and difficult to pin
down, Education Week found when
reviewing research, talking to experts, and interviewing parents and
school officials in affluent communities like Beverly Hills, Calif., and
Greenwich, Conn.
It's true, for example, that teens and
tweens from higher-income families
spend less time consuming media
each day than their less-affluent
peers, per surveys by the nonprofit
group Common Sense Media. And
students in wealthier public schools
generally report using digital devices
in the classroom less often than their
peers in poorer schools. (See chart).
But wealthier children are far
more likely to have their own laptops, smartphones, and tablets, Common Sense has found. And wealthier
parents are far less likely than their
lower-income counterparts to be worried about their kids sexting, being
cyberbullied, being exposed to pornography and violence, and spending too
much time online. (See chart).
Furthermore, such trends appear
to hold true even in Silicon Valley,
where rich parents were less likely
than their lower-income counterparts to strongly believe that children should not be exposed to technology at a young age. (See chart).
And while some tech executives

certainly do choose to send their
children to screen-free private Waldorf schools, parents like Joaquin
Lippincott are perfectly pleased
sending their kids to a public school
district that touts its delivery of
"state-of-the-art, cutting-edge technology resources, along with the
knowledge and skills to use these
tools in a meaningful way."
"We have so many gizmos and
gadgets in the house that my kids
are going to be exposed to technology no matter what," said Lippincott, a software-company CEO who
has two children in the Beverly
Hills school district. "The most important thing I've seen from our
school district is they are thinking
about it intentionally, not ignoring it
or trying to move backwards."

Parent Attitudes
Lisa Guernsey has been studying the ways parents use technology with their kids since before the
iPhone came along.
"Across income levels, there's always been a concern that technology
is changing the way we're parenting,"
said Guernsey, the director of the
Learning Technologies Project at New
America, a Washington think tank.
Of course, for some parents, such
concern does translate into banning
smartphones until their children
turn 14, or prohibiting their kids
from using iPads. When those parents are Bill Gates and Steve Jobs,
people snap to attention.
But empirical evidence and experts
broadly suggest that higher-income
parents actually grant their children
more access to technology, then use
their resources and advantages to try
to steer their kids toward healthy, productive uses of those tools.
Consider, for example, 2015 and
2016 reports from Common Sense
Media that explored media use by

Lower-Income Parents More Worried About Their Kids' Internet Use
Parents of all income
levels generally have
positive attitudes about
the educational impact of
technology. But lower-income
parents are significantly
more worried than their
richer counterparts about the
internet's downsides.

Percent of parents worried about child ...

SOURCE: Common Sense Media,
The Common Sense Census of
Plugged-In Parents of Tweens
and Teens (2016)

Over-sharing personal details

50
32

Being exposed to violent imagery

49
28

Accessing online pornography

49
28

Receiving hurtful comments

48
27

Receiving/sending sexual images

49
23

Losing ability to communicate well

35
23

HOUSEHOLD INCOME: n Less than $35,000

Students in More-Affluent
Schools Report Less
Device Usage
Students in schools with fewer
poor students use devices less
frequently in both math and
reading, according to surveys
administered as part of the 2017
national NAEP exams.
SOURCE: Education Week Research
Center analysis of NAEP data, 2019

tweens (8-12 years old) and teens (1318 years old).
* Among families with incomes
of $100,000 or more per year, the
group found, 62 percent of teens
had their own laptops, and 78 percent had their own smartphones.
Among teens whose families made
less than $35,000 per year, 25 percent had their own laptop, and 51
percent had their own smartphone.
* On any given day, 94 percent of
both high- and low-income tweens
used screen media. On average,
though, lower-income tweens spent
nearly two hours more per day on
those screens than their wealthier
peers, a disparity driven almost
entirely by additional time spent
watching TV and listening to music.
* Higher-income teens were most

54%
39

Spending too much time online

n $100,000 or more

% of students using a tablet or computer
in all or almost all of their classes

% of students using a digital device to practice/
review math every day or almost every day
% of students using a digital device
to conduct research for reading projects
every day or almost every day

24%
19
38
28
6
6

SCHOOL POVERTY LEVEL: n High poverty (76-100% free/reduced-price lunch)
n Low poverty (0-25% free/reduced-price lunch)

likely to say their parents talked to
them about when they can use media,
what types of media they can use,
and how to stay safe online. But those
same teens were also least likely to
say their parents know a lot about
what they do online, what games they
play, and what apps they use. In other
words, said Jenny Radesky, an assistant pediatrics professor at the University of Michigan, it's complicated.
Parents of all income levels seem
to share similarly positive attitudes
about technology's potential value for
their children. And lower-income parents actually appear to be more concerned than their wealthier counterparts about tech's potential downsides.
The difference may be the extent
to which parents from different tax
brackets feel able to help their kids

pursue the good while avoiding the
bad.
Rich, highly educated parents are
"constantly curating their children's
experiences" and "have a sense of
agency that they can set the limits
they want and find positive, more creative uses of media with their kids,"
Radesky said. "Lower-income parents
have a lot of other stresses on their
plate."

Tech in Schools
Disparities in how schools use
technology are similarly nuanced.
Among the nation's private
schools, there does not appear to
be any across-the-board trend of
"schools fully eschewing technology," said Myra McGovern, a spokes-

Melissa Lyttle for Education Week

In Beverly Hills, Parents Embrace Tech

Bernadette Lucas, the director of technology for the Beverly Hills Unified School District, Lisa Bieler,
the i4Coach at Horace Mann School, and Dr. Juliet Fine, the principal of Horace Mann School, have
been instrumental in integrating technology into learning in the classroom.

10 | EDUCATION WEEK | February 13, 2019 | www.edweek.org

Few places in America are as affluent
as Beverly Hills, Calif. And parents there
are "incredible partners" in pushing
for more and better use of classroom
technology, said Bernadette Lucas, the
director of technology for the community's
3,900-student school district.
"They want to make sure their children
are prepared to function in a national and
global context," Lucas said.
In recent years, that has shown up in
widespread support for two bond measures,
both of which included money for digital
devices for all Beverly Hills students.
The district's technology plan calls for
widespread access to digital content,
liberal use of adaptive software, and a
kindergarten-to-high school STEM pathway.
Parents certainly have questions, Lucas
said, about everything from screen time to
data privacy. But that's similar to what she
saw in her previous position, as the director
of instructional technology in the nearby

Los Angeles school district.
What is different is Beverly Hills parents'
sophistication in pushing for their children's
interests. That's why the district has focused
on involving families, through schoolbased technology committees and regular
conversations about the reasons and goals
behind using digital tools in the classroom.
It's made a big difference for parents like
Kimberly Combs, who recently returned to
her native Beverly Hills in large measure
so her two children could attend the local
public schools.
She's very much against "technology
as a babysitter," Combs said. But she's
very much for making sure her kids get
the deepest, most enriching experiences
possible.
"Beverly Hills isn't a brand that likes to be
behind the times," she said. "When we chose
to come back here, I felt very comfortable
that my children would have access to the
appropriate tools."
-BENJAMIN HEROLD

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - February 13, 2019

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