Ohio classrooms lean into analog learning in the AI era
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Parents, educators and lawmakers are pushing schools to curb classroom screen use amid concerns about student attention, behavior and learning.
Why it matters: School cellphone bans in Ohio and elsewhere are expanding into broader efforts to limit screen use and establish guardrails around AI in education.
The big picture: At least 16 states — both red and blue — have considered bills this year to limit classroom technology.
What they did: Schools Beyond Screens formed with fewer than a dozen parents in Los Angeles Unified School District last year, but the nonprofit has grown to include thousands of parents and educators nationwide, SBS policy director Kate Brody tells Axios.
- SBS worked with the school board in the nation's second-largest district to pass a resolution limiting classroom screen time and eliminating school-issued devices for students in first grade and younger. Similar resolutions have emerged in New York City and Washington, D.C.
- McPherson Middle School principal Inge Esping told Axios that the suspension rate at her Kansas school fell 70% after cellphones were banned in 2022. Students also started speaking more with one another and with teachers.
Zoom in: A 2024 law required Ohio school districts to make cellphone usage "as limited as possible during school hours."
- Lawmakers went a step further the next year to prohibit students' phone usage during the instructional day.
- The state also required districts to adopt an AI policy by this July.
Locally, Columbus schools passed a policy in March that considers unauthorized AI use a form of plagiarism. It outlines usage by grade level, guardrails and permitted and prohibited uses.
Zoom out: The American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers' union in the U.S., released a 10-point plan to introduce AI and screen-time guardrails in classrooms.
- The plan would limit AI use and ban screens for students in prekindergarten through second grade "unless there is a compelling reason," such as supporting students with special needs.
The other side: "When used with intention and balance," ed tech "can support differentiation, accessibility, enrichment, and workforce preparation in the K-12 classroom," says a 2025 report from the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), a nonprofit for ed tech leaders that has corporate partners including Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
The bottom line: "We also need to recognize that tech alone is not an enhancement of learning," Esping says.
- Teachers remain "the most important" factor in what students "will or won't learn," she adds.