An Evaluation of the Personal Device Ban
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In the 2025–2026 school year, the administration announced the rollout of a new policy. Students may no longer use their personal devices for schoolwork. Below is a list of benefits and drawbacks of this new policy, and an evaluation of each.
Drawbacks
Benefits
No option for increased performance
No ability to access personal accounts
Ease of surveillance and security
Universal standard
Ease of surveillance and security: District-provided Chromebooks come with a host of surveillance software that the school needs to ensure safe internet activity and productivity. GoGuardian, for instance, allows teachers to view students’ screens remotely and freeze their device or take control of it if appropriate, and StudentKeeper blocks dangerous or unsecure websites. Personal devices do not come preloaded with these software, which allows students to bypass some security measures. However, the district internet connection does have a filter that blocks most questionable websites anyway. Unless a student uses a personal device while connecting to an external network (which is fairly difficult, since the school’s thick walls significantly reduce connection to outside signals), that student would not have access to an unfiltered internet connection.
Universal standard: All district-provided Chromebooks run on the same operating system and have the same controls. This ensures that instructions can be universal, since navigation of each device is identical. However, almost all student activity takes place on Google Chrome, which acts very similarly between devices. Most students on a personal laptop would have no issue navigating Google Drive, Gmail, Google Classroom, AP Classroom, Infinite Campus, or any of the other websites students use every day because Windows, MacOS, and ChromeOS (the operating system on Chromebooks) all have near-identical versions of Google Chrome. Thus, using a district-provided device has little benefit in this context.
Another benefit of universal devices is that it is easier for students and teachers to troubleshoot issues when they arise. Since identical devices will tend to have similar problems, students and teachers can gain familiarity with them and fix those problems themselves. If students were to use their own devices, unfamiliar issues would more often arise, meaning that a student must use valuable instructional time to visit IT to have the problem fixed.
No option for increased performance. Although the district does provide devices, those devices can hardly be considered good. From the experience of Lauryn Heine, an HHS junior, “Last year I was in AP testing for my AP human geography class. We were setting up for the test but my chromebook would not turn on…I went down to the library and waited to get a loaner for the test, but ultimately I was late and it was a stressful start to an already stressful test.” Another junior, Oktober Brown also states, “Since the start of this school year alone, there have been many instances where I have had to ask for extensions, to use a different device, or had to wait to do all of my work at home because my chromebook took a significant amount of time to load or it did not start at all.” The district-provided Chromebooks have 4GB of memory (hardly enough for a few Google tabs and about a quarter of the standard on modern laptops) and an Intel Celeron processor (the lowest-end and slowest Intel computer processors on the market). While it would be unreasonable to ask for the district to double or triple their Chromebook budget to provide students with respectable computers, it’s also unreasonable to assume that these devices will meet the needs of every student. Some students want to have droves of Google tabs open, some want to work on their CAD projects with decent performance inside and out of the classroom, and some have other workflows that require at least modest performance. Now that personal devices are banned from the classroom, such students simply have to settle for less.
No ability to access personal accounts. Many students use personal accounts to coordinate their schedules and to-do lists. Not being able to access one’s personal Google Calendar during the school day makes organization more difficult. Senior Evan Rosenau states, “I have a job and other commitments outside of school. Being unable to access these things has made it very difficult for me to maximize my time, having to waste minutes in focus on a day I have no homework, when I could be making meaningful progress on my other commitments.”
My Recommendation
I feel that students should be able to use their personal devices in the classroom, but not without a few restrictions. Students’ access to higher performance and personal accounts is of some importance, and can be accounted for largely without compromising the administration’s goals. Both GoGuardian and StudentKeeper have Windows applications. If students are required to allow IT to download and use these surveillance applications to use their personal devices, they can be given the same digital treatment as any student with a Chromebook. While the district’s fears of students circumventing these measures are not unfounded, StudentKeeper has the ability to block unapproved third-party applications on Windows. Plus, if a student is caught circumventing the district filters or surveillance software, their personal device privileges could simply be revoked.
It also isn’t unreasonable for the district to require students to be responsible for their personal devices and bring their Chromebooks to school as backups. In fact, that’s what they did before the ban. If a student has an issue with their personal device that they’re unable to solve quickly, that student could just switch over to their Chromebook and continue their work.
As it stands, I see the administration’s policy of disallowing the use of personal devices as unnecessary and overbearing. If you agree, feel free to send a school administrator a kindly-worded email expressing your opinion.
