🛝 40% of Toddlers Own Tablets. 70% of Kids Can't Hold a Pencil.

Welcome to Playground Post, a bi-weekly newsletter that keeps education innovators ahead of what's next.

This week's reality check: Schools spent a decade adopting education technology without ever requiring proof it works. Now only 1 in 7 have fully recovered from pandemic learning loss, and half of U.S. states are mandating cursive to students who can barely grip a crayon.

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Data Gem

New York City students receive approximately 130 fewer instructional hours per year than the national average, roughly equivalent to 20 fewer school days. About 1 in 3 NYC children were chronically absent last year.

EdTech Never Had to Prove It Works

When AI first arrived, developers told educators they didn't know what it would do. Schools adopted it anyway.

Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath argues this pattern defines a generation of education technology adoption. He makes the case that schools embraced edtech without ever requiring vendors to demonstrate effectiveness, building a market on assumption rather than evidence.

"Digital technology never made a claim to anything," Horvath told EdSurge. "It just kind of appeared and people just started using it. When AI came out, the developers flat-out said, we don't know what this does. Why don't you guys tell us what it does? And for some reason we shoved it into schools."

The research supports his skepticism - studies consistently show that people learn more from hard copy text than from digital text. 

Yet schools keep moving in the opposite direction. 

In spring 2021, 90% of district leaders said they were providing a device for every middle and high school student, and 84% were doing the same for elementary students.

The consequences start early. 

Around 40% of 2-year-olds now have their own tablets. Before age 5, the brain is in what Horvath calls "input mode," absorbing everything and forming the foundation for later learning. Habits formed during this window get locked in once the brain shifts to structured learning.

Several states are pushing back. Proposed legislation would cap screen time at 90 minutes daily for K through 2nd grade and two hours for grades 2 through 5. 

Horvath insists he isn't anti-technology. His argument is that schools should choose learning as their "ultimate master." That applies especially to handwriting, which he calls "arguably the most complex thing we do" in terms of motor skills. Research shows writing by hand improves reading ability and that note-taking isn't something students do while they learn. It is the learning.

For education innovators, Horvath's argument reveals a gap in the edtech market: there is no widely adopted system for evaluating whether education technology actually improves learning. The opportunity is in efficacy evaluation platforms that help districts make evidence-based procurement decisions.

Only 1 in 7 Schools Have Fully Recovered From Pandemic Learning Loss

Five years after COVID disrupted American classrooms, the recovery numbers are in.

About one-third of schools have recovered in either math or reading. But only 1 in 7 have recovered in both subjects, according to a new NWEA study analyzing test scores from more than 5 million students across 9,326 public schools.

Schools with smaller initial declines were more likely to recover. 

Schools serving higher-poverty and historically marginalized students were less likely to have bounced back, but they showed the largest achievement gains since 2020.

The study labeled these high-gain schools "Rebounders" and said they offer critical lessons about the practices and investments that help students regain lost ground. 

The researchers recommended that state leaders prioritize schools with the largest remaining gaps, adopt realistic recovery timelines, and align supports with individual schools' trajectories rather than applying the same interventions everywhere.

Here's what makes the recovery so difficult: even the tools schools depend on are producing uneven results.

NWEA found last year that attending summer school helped modestly increase math achievement in 2022 and 2023 but had no measurable impact on reading. 

The average student still needs an estimated 4.8 additional months of schooling in reading and 4.3 months in math to reach pre-pandemic levels. 

That's not a gap that closes quickly.

Diagnostic assessment platforms that identify where individual schools stand on the recovery curve could help districts allocate resources more effectively. And the "Rebounder" pattern signals opportunity for analytics platforms that identify what high-recovery schools are doing differently and help replicate those practices at scale.

Half of States Now Mandate Cursive. Most Kids Can't Hold a Pencil Properly.

At least half of U.S. states have adopted cursive writing instruction requirements in recent years, reversing a sharp decline after the Common Core standards omitted cursive in 2010.

Pennsylvania became the latest on February 11. They framed it as an investment in cognitive development, legal preparedness, and historical literacy.

But here's the problem: the students being asked to learn cursive are struggling with far more basic skills.

In a January 2026 survey of 1,163 early educators, the EdWeek Research Center found that 70% reported their students' fine motor skills have decreased over the past two years. 

The cause is not hard to identify. 40% of U.S. children own their own tablet by age 2, and 75% of parents whose children use screens don't apply any limits, according to a 2025 Common Sense Media report. 

By the time these children reach the classroom, they've spent years swiping and tapping rather than gripping, drawing, and cutting.

The device saturation extends into schools themselves. 90% of district leaders were providing devices for every middle and high school student in the past few years.

Now states want those same students to learn cursive. 

And the teachers assigned to teach it face their own challenge: many never learned it themselves.

"The younger generation of teachers were never taught handwriting when they were in school. Right now, they're expected to teach it," said Christina Bretz, an occupational therapist with Learning Without Tears, a company that provides professional development on handwriting and literacy skills.

Most recent cursive legislation doesn't include funding for teacher training. The mandates create a new requirement without providing the resources to meet it.

Occupational therapy experts say the fix starts well before cursive. Bretz recommends strengthening fine motor skills starting in pre-K, with foundational exercises like holding a crayon correctly while using the non-dominant hand to steady the paper. "Those foundational skills are really going to set students up for success," she said.

For education innovators, the cursive revival creates demand on multiple fronts. Fine motor skill development programs for pre-K and early elementary address the root problem before students ever encounter cursive. 

Teacher training platforms fill the gap left by legislation that mandates instruction without funding preparation. And hybrid analog-digital writing curricula that satisfy state requirements while acknowledging the device-heavy reality of modern classrooms could find traction as more states follow Pennsylvania's lead.

⚡️More Quick Hits

This week in education:

• Indiana passes bell-to-bell cellphone and smartwatch ban for all K-12 schools — SB 78 requires districts to adopt phone-free policies by July 1, 2026, with school-issued devices mandated by 2028; one district estimated $275,000 for storage pouches alone

• Texas approves 4,200 corrections to Bible-infused curriculum used by 400,000 students — The state board voted 9-6 to fix Bluebonnet Learning materials across roughly 1 in 4 Texas districts, while four other publishers submitted a combined 16 edits

• Oregon's $35 million annual investment in summer school showing results — Nearly 30,000 students across 106 districts in 30 of 36 counties participated in literacy-focused programs with measurable gains

• English learner funding flat at $890 million despite 30% population growth — Title III remains the only dedicated federal funding stream for English learners, who now represent approximately 10% of all U.S. students

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