Guest Essay: A software engineer's testimony about why EdTech products in schools are designed like other tech-- by selling data for profit.

Note from Emily: EdTech is Big Tech in a sweater vest: just like the business model of Big Tech companies like Meta and Google rely on the collection and sale of user data for profit, so do EdTech companies. Even if we could find EdTech products that improve learning outcomes (they don’t); are safe for use by children (they aren’t); don’t present legal concerns around product liability (they do); and are superior to human teachers (they aren’t), at the end of the day, it is the business model itself that is the problem and that business model is fundamentally at odds with child development.

But don’t just take it from me. Kyle, a software engineer and parent of a student in Seattle Public Schools, allowed me to share the testimony he delivered to our school board last week. As you will see, Kyle makes clear what many of us on the outside have suspected: mining and harvesting our children’s data is not an accident in EdTech products, it IS the product.

Watch the video here.

I’m Kyle. I am a software engineer and parent of a Seattle Pu

blic Schools kindergartener.

I build software for a living, and I want to offer a perspective grounded in that experience.

This district does not have a coherent, enforced EdTech policy. What it has are documents that delegate decisions to individual teachers and school administrators. Which devices, which tools, which grades, who authorizes what — those questions don’t have district-level answers. I learned from my child that their iPads were used in a music class which only meets every three weeks, where they should be making music instead.

And when a parent decides, in their child’s best interest, that they’d rather opt out of personal device use, that burden falls entirely on the classroom teacher, with no district guidance to support them.

That’s not fair to teachers either.

Here’s what I know professionally: tech companies collect children’s data for profit. Not as a side effect — as the business model. And securing internet-connected devices for children is genuinely hard. Seattle Public School’s own policies acknowledge web filtering is “best effort.” If the district cannot completely solve data harvesting and device safety, the responsible choice is to stop issuing 1:1 devices by default to our kids entirely.

I’m fully in favor of dedicated tech education — coding, computers, AI literacy, social media safety — at the right age and in a lab setting, with transparency and clarity for parents.1

But not iPads and Chromebooks issued as a general classroom tool.

EdTech does not improve education outcomes, and the data on this problem is not ambiguous. Sweden went all-in on classroom technology and reversed course, having to spend over $100 million reintroducing physical books after citing declining student performance across the country.

I’m asking for a district-level EdTech policy review with a real timeline and with an informed audit of ed-tech and devices. Not delegated down to schools.

Deferring real decision-making is still a decision, and our students deserve better.

-Kyle