American schools weren’t broken until Silicon Valley used a lie to convince them they were—now reading and math scores are plummeting

For more than a decade, a trend has emerged in standardized testing data for students in Utah. After years of increasing reading and math scores, results from the state’s National Assessment of Educational Progress testing for fourth- and eighth-graders have shown a steady and continuing downturn. 

Neuroscientist and former teacher Jared Cooney Horvath noticed the inflection point of this data coincided with the implementation of Student Assessment of Growth and Excellence (SAGE), the state’s first computer-adaptive test.

“Before 2014, computers were in schools, they were just peripheral,” Horvath told Fortune. “After 2014, every school had to have digital infrastructure in order to take the state assessment.”

According to Horvath, author of the 2025 book The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning—and How to Help Them Thrive Again, Utah’s test score data isn’t a fluke; it’s part of a global trend of plummeting test scores that have coincided with the rise of easy access to computers and tablets in the classroom.

Earlier this year, Horvath testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, arguing the technology’s impact on more than just test scores, but on the cognitive capabilities they are intended to measure. He said for the first time in modern history, today’s generation has failed to outperform their parents on standardized assessments. In other words, Gen Z is the first generation to be less cognitively capable than their predecessors.

Citing data from the Program for International Student Assessment taken from 15-year-olds around the world, Horvath revealed it’s not just a dip in test scores, but also a correlation between these slumping scores and how much time students spend on computers, such that more time in front of screens was associated with worse scores.

Technology was put in schools in a bid to help them learn. Instead, Horvath said, computers had an adverse impact on learning.

Horvath blames educational technology (edtech) for these atrophying skill sets, arguing that at the turn of the 21th century and through its first decade and a half, tech companies and advocates pushed a false narrative that the education system was broken, but computers could fix it. Instead, Horvath said, the plan backfired.

“This is not a........

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