A reading list for thinking critically about technology in school — chosen to inform, not to alarm. It includes the strongest evidence on every side, because that's the standard we're asking the district to meet.
Start here. The most rigorous, most recent evidence on screens, devices, and learning — including the studies with mixed results.
The most comprehensive global review: little robust evidence that edtech improves learning at scale, much of the favorable evidence is industry-funded, and technology should be admitted to classrooms only on proof of benefit. Recommends banning phones where they disrupt learning.
Across 80+ education systems: students distracted by digital devices in math class scored significantly lower — equivalent to roughly three-quarters of a year of learning — and even nearby classmates' phone use dragged scores down.
The landmark experiment behind "out of sight" policies: a silenced phone face-down on the desk still measurably reduces working memory — the phone has to be in another room (or locker) for attention to fully return.
How Sweden — an early all-in digitalizer — reversed course and reinvested in paper textbooks after Karolinska Institutet researchers concluded there is "clear scientific evidence that digital tools impair rather than enhance student learning."
The best U.S. natural experiment so far: full-day bans produced roughly 3.5-percentile-point test gains by year two, with larger effects for struggling students.
Included deliberately: in-class phone use plummeted (61% of students to 13%) but academic gains lagged in the first year. Honest takeaway — removing phones is necessary but not sufficient; what fills the reclaimed attention matters.
Deeper treatments of attention, childhood, and the design of the technology in question.
The book that moved the national conversation: how the "great rewiring" of childhood around smartphones and social media tracks the surge in teen anxiety and depression — and what schools and parents can do, including phone-free schools.
A neuroscientist's case, school by school and study by study, that classroom devices consistently undermine learning — the closest thing to a book-length version of this site's question about 1:1 programs.
Why attention — the foundation of all learning — is collapsing, and why that's a design choice of the attention economy rather than a personal failing of our kids.
The constructive counterweight: mentoring kids toward healthy technology use rather than only restricting it. A good fit for this site's "purposeful, not anti-tech" frame.
A recent, practical playbook for families who want to go beyond "limits" — with concrete scripts for coordinating with other parents and with schools.
The earlier classic on how the medium itself reshapes deep reading and sustained thought — the cognitive skills school exists to build.
Shorter reads, including the local reporting that documents the SPPS story.
The widely-shared essay version of The Anxious Generation's argument.
The case for bell-to-bell phone-free schools, aimed at school leaders.
What the policy actually looks like inside SPPS's largest high school.
The history: how SPPS redirected a voter-approved levy into a 1:1 iPad lease — useful context for asking what review the program has received since.
How districts elsewhere are rebalancing — including a return to paper textbooks.
Groups doing ongoing work — several with Minnesota chapters or roots.
Built around exactly this site's question: a framework for evaluating whether classroom technology is pedagogically purposeful, with toolkits for parents raising the issue with their districts.
Minnesota's homegrown digital-wellness organization; works directly with schools and youth.
Parent-to-parent pacts to delay smartphones; local chapters coordinate by school and district.
Campaign and evidence base specifically for phones-away school policies, with advocacy materials.
National advocacy network on childhood and the attention economy, including an edtech working group.
Know a source that belongs here? Suggest it — additions need a working link and a sentence on why it helps Saint Paul families.