The US Spent $30 Billion on Classroom Laptops and Got the First Generation Less Capable Than Its Parents

Source: Slashdot

Background

More than two decades after Maine became the first state to hand laptops to middle schoolers—distributing 17,000 Apple machines across 243 schools in 2002—neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath told a U.S. Senate committee earlier this year that Generation Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the one before it【source】.

Federal Spending on Classroom Devices

The United States spent more than $30 billion in 2024 alone to place laptops and tablets in classrooms.

Research Findings

• PISA data for 15‑year‑olds worldwide shows a stark correlation between time spent on school computers and lower test scores.
• A 2014 study of 3,000 university students found they were off‑task on their machines nearly two‑thirds of the time.
• Fortune (2017) reported that Maine’s own test scores had not improved in the 15 years since the laptop program launched, prompting then‑governor Paul LePage to label the initiative a “massive failure.”

Interpretation

Horvath framed the generation’s eroding capabilities not as a personal failure but as a policy one, describing Gen Z as victims of a failed pedagogical experiment.