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Smithfield begins backend monitoring to measure student screen time; survey of teachers underway
Summary
District staff told the School Committee they have deployed a no-cost backend monitoring tool through the district filtering vendor to collect device-usage data and have sent a teacher survey (responses due April 6) to help distinguish perception from actual use; staff warned state testing may affect short-term results.
A district staff member told the Smithfield School Committee the district has started collecting data to measure how much time students spend on school-issued devices.
The staff member described a two-part approach: a teacher survey sent to all teachers (responses due April 6) to capture teacher estimates, and a no-cost backend monitoring tool deployed by the district’s filtering vendor two weeks earlier to capture actual device usage by grade span. "We did not have a reliable way to track that before," the staff member said, describing the monitoring tool as part of the existing filtering system.
Staff cautioned that state testing could skew short-term usage numbers because students may be on devices for testing periods; they said they will factor testing into their analysis. The committee asked clarifying questions about whether testing kiosks would be captured; staff said the tool may not pick up testing kiosk activity and that they will account for test-related usage when analyzing the data.
The district framed the effort as an initial "dipstick" to compare perceived use to actual use and said the monitoring will allow reporting by grade span and usage type. No specific policy changes or disciplinary actions were proposed during the meeting; staff said the goal is better data to inform later decisions.
The committee was given a timeline for data collection and analysis but no firm public-release date for results was announced; staff indicated they will return with findings once they have factored in testing effects and aggregated meaningful samples.
Because the transcript records the survey due date and the deployment of the monitoring tool, the committee may expect a follow-up report once data collection and analysis are complete.
