Alina Lewis testifies on ed tech as a hoax and need for real learning

Thank you.

Hi, thank you.

My name is Alina Lewis.

I'm a public school parent, New York City public school alum.

I was a DOE high school history teacher and assistant principal in the DOE.

I teach teachers at CUNY in the teacher prep program, and I'm an ed researcher.

Thank you so much for holding these hearings.

And this policy, I am encouraged by the fact that it has opened a very necessary conversation about big tech, ed tech, and our public schools.

I've seen the shift toward commercial products and large ed tech contrasts in the last 10 to 15 years, and how gradually screen time and the use of all these products and scripted curriculum has increased.

I'm glad you mentioned evidence-based practices because all the research shows that screens are bad for kids.

Research also shows that play, recess, and opportunities for authentic learning experience are effective and good for kids.

In other school contexts, educators have been guided by this research.

And in fact, of course, in the most sought after private schools where all the Silicon Valley execs and their kids, they have play and recess and no screens.

But in New York City public schools,

things look different.

We have a Mira, a bot that reads to kids.

Literacy is fundamentally a socially embedded act.

How have we come to this idea that it is good and that is helpful and good to have a bot read to kids?

We have our kids wasting colossal amounts of time on iReady, which is the biggest hoax that has been played on the New York City public schools in a long time.

And of course, we have our kids reading snippets of books instead of real books on screens for HMH.

15 seconds.

Great.

I refuse to accept the fact that New York City public school students are going to be denied real learning opportunities while the kids of the big tech companies and the tech execs get to play and explore and inquire.

And thank you for listening.

I agree with you more.

Thank you so much for your testimony.

Thank you to this entire panel for your testimony.

Thank you, Despen.

And while we're transitioning, I do want to plug that the City Council allocates millions of dollars each year to a program called Cities First Readers, which in reference to something we heard more than once,

it empowers parents and children as young as zero, zero to five, I think, to engage in community.

And where they do reading and literacy work, not just for the kids, but with the family, recognizing that literacy and reading

is a social, is something that's social and part of our community, not just something that's read to you by a computer.

Now we're moving to online testimony.

We have several witnesses online.

First up is Deepthi Sharma, followed by Kayla Spence.

You may begin.