From iPad Carts to AI: Why family, school, and community Engagement serves as a core strategy for technology in education
Across the country, schools and communities are grappling with an important question: How do we prepare young people to thrive in a world shaped by constant information, rapid technological change, and complex social challenges?
This tension is increasingly visible in national policy conversations. In February 2026, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education held a hearing titled Building an AI-Ready America: Teaching in the AI Age to examine how rapidly artificial intelligence is entering classrooms.
Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) cited a Walton Family Foundation report showing that 60 percent of U.S. public school teachers used an AI tool during the 2024–2025 academic year, nearly double the previous year. Yet the hearing also revealed a readiness gap: 70 percent of teachers report feeling unprepared to use AI effectively, and more than 90 percent say they need additional support from school leaders.
Witness Allyson Knox, Senior Director of Education and Workforce Policy at Microsoft, told lawmakers that “generative AI has become the fastest spreading technology in human history.” At the same time, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) warned that if implemented poorly, AI could “violate students’ privacy, exacerbate existing disparities, and quash critical thinking skills.”
These discussions reflect a growing national effort to keep pace with emerging technologies. Yet the deeper challenge lies in helping young people navigate the constant flow of headlines, images, and narratives they encounter across social media, digital platforms, and algorithmically curated content.
In this environment, literacy extends beyond reading and writing. Students must learn to evaluate digital information, interpret data, analyze media narratives, and make thoughtful decisions about how they engage in digital spaces and how that engagement shapes their lives.
If education systems organize primarily around keeping pace with technology, they risk chasing an ever-moving target.
Technology will continue to evolve, but the intellectual and ethical capacities young people need to interpret information, question narratives, understand how technologies like generative AI are created and who they benefit, evaluate risks and safety concerns, and form their own values will remain essential across generations.
Family and Community Engagement for Applied Literacies
For more than a decade, education systems have raced to keep pace with new technologies, from classroom iPad carts to artificial intelligence tools. Yet the real challenge has never been the technology itself; it is whether schools, families, and communities are building the literacies and relationships young people need to understand, design, question, and responsibly use it.
Decades of research demonstrate that when families and educators build trusting partnerships connected to learning, children experience stronger academic and developmental outcomes (Henderson et al., 2007; Mapp & Kuttner, 2013). In this way, family and community engagement functions as the conditions and infrastructure for learning and development.
Young people build understanding and develop their own perspectives across homes, schools, community spaces, and digital environments. Families shape how children interpret media messages, engage with technology, and discuss current events. Community organizations create spaces where young people apply literacy through civic participation and problem solving. Educators help connect these lived experiences to academic knowledge and disciplinary thinking.
When these families, schools, and community members are aligned and engaged in shared leadership, literacy development becomes more powerful and more meaningful. Students connect what they learn in school with what they observe in their communities and what they encounter online.
A new question to consider is:
How might help young people develop the intellectual, ethical, and civic capacities needed to navigate a complex information environment, along with the digital wellness practices required to care for themselves as they engage with and interpret digital content?
In many ways, this work is not only about preparing children and youth. Families, educators, and community members are learning alongside them as technology reshapes how we access information and understand the world.
An engagement approach provides an opportunity for schools, families, and community members to collectively:
De-center emerging digital tools and products
Prioritize the applied literacies that allow young people to interpret and evaluate the information and technologies they encounter across diverse experiences
Foster a plan that includes shared guardrails, priorities, and goals for how digital tools and products will be used to deepen learning and foster college, career, and life readiness.
The goal is not simply to keep pace with technology. The goal is to collaboratively build the intellectual and ethical muscle to move through rapidly evolving digital environments with civic engagement, discernment, agency, and leadership.
To support this work, Powerhouse Collective offers the Powerhouse Engaged Literacy Model™, which positions family and community engagement as the connective infrastructure linking teaching and learning across home, school, and community contexts while strengthening both foundational and applied literacies for children, youth, and adults.
In the coming weeks, we’ll share more on this approach and how you can participate in deepening this work in your community. If you’re interested in partnership or resources, send us a message y
Cited References
Henderson, A. T., Mapp, K. L., Johnson, V. R., & Davies, D. (2007). Beyond the bake sale: The essential guide to family–school partnerships. The New Press.
Mapp, K. L., & Kuttner, P. J. (2013). Partners in education: A dual capacity-building framework for family–school partnerships. U.S. Department of Education.
U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education. (2026, February 24). Building an AI-ready America: Teaching in the AI age [Hearing]. U.S. House of Representatives. https://edworkforce.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=413107
Walton Family Foundation. (2024). Teachers and AI: How educators are using generative AI in the classroom. Kiley Holds Hearing on Teaching in the AI Age | Committee on Education & the Workforce. https://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/
