Experts express concern

Early childhood experts agree that online preschools are a bad idea. More than one hundred early childhood leaders and organizations signed a position statement in which they express their deep concern about the high-tech industry’s push to target young children.

They point out that current knowledge about human development demonstrates that children learn best through exploratory, creative play and relationships with caring adults. And they quote the American Academy of Pediatrics: “Higher-order thinking skills and executive functions essential for school success, such as task persistence, impulse control, emotion regulation, and creative, flexible thinking, are best taught through unstructured and social (not digital) play.”

Online preschool is not a quality education

Preschool is not about learning letters and numbers on a computer screen. Preschool is about hands-on learning and exploring. “Children who are given this pseudo-preschool experience will not have the skills or knowledge of their peers who attend quality pre-K programs; the opportunity gap will widen at an even earlier age. States have a responsibility to provide high-quality early childhood education to every child,” warns Nancy Carlsson-Paige, professor emerita at Lesley University and co-founder of the nonprofit Defending the Early Years.

Online pre-K will only widen achievement gaps even more and increase inequality, says Carlsson-Paige. Children who get their preschool education through online preschools will be at a disadvantage compared to children who can attend preschools that offer activities that stimulate their cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development. Bottom line: you can’t compare what a child can learn through a screen to what a child can learn through human interaction.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/why-online-preschool-is-a-terrible-idea/

Overhaul this guidance document.  Instead put this tech money toward interactive, in-person prek.  The cyber education industry sadly includes school district administrators, very profitable non-profit organizations like the AASA Superintendents Association in Virginia, and venture capitalist firms who are hungry for the prek big dollar profits.