To fix public education in NH, we must understand the current generation of learners • New Hampshire Bulletin
There is much discussion in New Hampshire’s General Court regarding public school funding.
Should the state increase or decrease public funds for education freedom accounts? What is considered an adequately funded education? What are the minimum academic standards of an appropriate public education? Is the current expansion of extended learning opportunities the best use of funds to provide students with career readiness skills?
These questions deserve much debate at school board meetings and within the General Court. Each question seeks to ensure a strong return on taxpayer investment while equipping students with the skills needed to thrive in the future. A laudable approach for any debate about education. However, there is a flaw in the framework of these questions. Each question predicates its solution as a function of the budget process. It assumes that shifting funding from one solution to another will solve a given educational problem.
This approach is unlikely to succeed. Regardless of whether funding is increased or reduced at the state and local levels, the deep-rooted generational and technological challenges impacting student learning outcomes will persist.
There are practical solutions that school districts can implement for the 2025-2026 school year to address these challenges and turn the tide on the concerning trends in student learning outcomes.
Practical solutions for school districts
New Hampshire teachers are keenly aware of the state and nationwide student achievement data. There are downward trends in nearly all empirical categories. Setting aside the debate over whether these data truly reflect student achievement, teachers and parents have valid frustration and concerns about these trends. Much hand-wringing and finger pointing have resulted.
After all, these students are the future guardians of our democratic institutions and habits. We must do better by them. To accomplish this, everyone involved in the educational process has to examine the unique impediments to achievement Generations Z and Alpha (Zers and Alphas) are facing due to the very technology that has defined their generation.
Here are 4 practical, budget-neutral solutions school districts can swiftly implement for the 2025-2026 academic year to combat these impediments.
1) Districtwide, bell-to-bell cellphone ban
The causal links between teen smartphone usage and higher rates of anxiety, depression, suicide, and the inability to focus have been demonstrated ad nauseam. Any district that truly values its role in nurturing developing minds and supporting youth mental health should implement a full ban from bell to bell — little else should be considered.
Furthermore, school districts should rethink the amount of technology within the classroom. Zers and Alphas tend to engage with classroom technology — such as Chromebooks, tablets, and gamified tools — using the same unproductive habits they have developed on their personal devices. Consequently, school technology might be creating a similar impediment to learning.
Consider that during the same period in which schools have rapidly integrated technology into mainstream classrooms, achievement scores have declined. This could be a false correlation, but it still deserves meaningful examination by school districts looking to adopt new technologies.
2) Professional development examining the unique generational learning challenges of Generations Z and Alpha
When smartphones came on the scene in 2007, they were marketed as community connectors that would allow individuals to build and maintain relationships like never before. Nearly 20 years on we know that this is not the case, especially for developing minds. By offering unparalleled independence, smart technology has drastically isolated its users.
Students raised in today’s tech-driven environment have missed out on the community-based learning experiences that previous generations once enjoyed. As a result, some have become dependent on screens, while struggling to develop social skills and the resilience needed to navigate challenges.
Resilience is the foundation of learning. To learn, a student must be able to endure the challenges of the unknown. The ease of retreating into a world of carefully curated, pleasurable content at the slightest difficulty has hindered students from building resilience. Every teacher, parent, and school administrator should read Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation” to examine the causes of this technological rewiring of young minds in the face of challenges.
3) Committee to examine benefits of low-supervision, unstructured recess for all grades
Since the late 1990s there has been a precipitous drop in the amount of time children have spent at play. Specifically, low-supervision, risky, unstructured play. Think of the type of play seen in “The Sandlot.” In stark contrast, parents have opted for the more physically safe environment of indoor, tech-driven entertainment.
In this environment, young minds are exposed to all of the negative effects of smart technology and social media. Moreover, they miss out on the developmentally necessary skills learned from play. Playing with peers in a low-supervision, knee-skinning fashion, is an evolutionary process by which developing minds learn resilience, independence, problem-solving, creativity, and peer-pruned habits. Play is the biological mechanism by which we learn to moderate our behaviors within a group.
Every New Hampshire school district should establish a committee to examine the behavioral benefits of student-led recess, where peers can moderate each other in an unstructured block of time. Developing children are more likely to follow and critique the behavioral examples of their peers instead of heeding the advice of an adult. Read any study on the intersection of conformity bias and prestige bias in adolescents and you will find this to be the case.
Perhaps the solution to the rise in conduct issues in schools lies not so much with adults implementing Social Emotional Learning programs, but in the natural habits formed and extinguished through peer interactions.
4) Immediately develop acceptable use policies for AI
Artificial intelligence — in the form of Large Language Models — is the single most significant development in education since the invention of the pencil. Over two years into this technological leap, less than half of teachers and schools have engaged in intensive AI training.
This lack of urgency to train teachers is shockingly inadequate. Shocking because school districts have failed to train teachers on a game-changing tech that could meet the needs of all learners. More shocking because it is a willful abdication of a school district’s responsibility to understand how AI will change the academic and behavioral habits of their students.
There are an abundance of articles considering the pros and cons of AI within the classroom. School districts should carefully consider both sides of this argument to develop an acceptable use model that meets the needs of its learning community.
Policies that permit excessive reliance on AI by students risk diminishing their capacity for independent and critical thinking. Conversely, school districts that adopt an abstinence-only approach to AI fail to recognize its growing significance in education and the social lives of their students.
School districts must act swiftly to establish these policies in light of upcoming federal legislation that could impose a 10-year freeze on state-level AI regulation.
The 2025-2026 school year
Writing about his trip to America in the early 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville opined that “[a]mong democratic nations, each new generation is a new people.” Each generation in a democracy needs to take ownership of the development of its habits. Habits that will go on to inform the tone and tenor of democratic life. An entire generation is forming its habits around technology that could have devastating or beneficial consequences for American democracy. It is up to everyone within the public education community to help nudge them toward the beneficial outcome.
If social psychologist Jean Twenge is correct about technology’s role in delineating generations, then a simple debate about educational funding is not enough to correct the problems facing education in New Hampshire. Practical solutions that address the habits being formed in Generations Z and Alpha by technology must lead the discussion of trends seen in student achievement.
originally published at https%3A%2F%2Fnewhampshirebulletin.com%2F2025%2F05%2F21%2Fto-fix-public-education-in-nh-we-must-understand-the-current-generation-of-learners%2F by Tyler Paré