By Megan Colburn, Marketing Lead, Khan Academy Kids
It’s one of the most debated questions in early childhood education right now: does technology belong in PreK classrooms? Last month, we brought together three leading voices to dig into the research, and the answer turned out to be more nuanced, more human, and more hopeful than a simple yes or no.
Meet the Panel
Sal Khan is the Founder and CEO of Khan Academy, a nonprofit on a mission to provide free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek is a Professor of Psychology at Temple University, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and one of the world’s leading researchers on early language, literacy, play, and learning. Michelle Kang is the CEO of NAEYC—the National Association for the Education of Young Children—the nation’s largest organization advancing high-quality early learning.
Here’s what they had to say.
“Technology is a tool. What matters is who’s holding it.”
The panel opened with a challenge to how we even frame the question.
Does technology belong in PreK? Think about it: do we ask whether a book belongs in PreK? Instead, what we ask is: how is it being used? Why, and for whom?
Michelle Kang, NAEYC CEO
Sal Khan echoed that framing: “Sometimes we get caught up with the format, as opposed to the thing we’re actually trying to solve for.”
For all three panelists, the answer isn’t about screens versus no screens, it’s about intentionality, quality, and the educator holding the tool.
What Does the Research Actually Say?
Dr. Hirsh-Pasek has spent decades studying how young children learn, and she came to the webinar with receipts.
Her team’s research on “technoference”—what happens when a caregiver’s phone interrupts a learning moment—showed that children failed to retain new words when a cell phone call broke up a teaching interaction. The disruption wasn’t just a distraction. It physically altered what the child’s brain absorbed.
But the research on intentional tech use told a different story.
Studies comparing children reading e-books with a parent versus traditional books with a parent found almost no difference in learning outcomes. The key variable wasn’t the format, it was the human in the room.
The most important thing for little kids is human-to-human interaction, there is nothing you can do to substitute it. But you can supplement it.
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Brookings Fellow & Author
The 6-Point Checklist for Quality EdTech
Hirsh-Pasek has developed a research-backed framework for evaluating any digital learning product and she shared it plainly: if a tool doesn’t check these boxes, skip it.
Good technology for young children should be:
- Active, not passive — the child is doing something, not just watching
- Engaging without being distracting — bells and whistles that pull kids out of the narrative kill learning
- Meaningful — content the child can connect to
- Socially interactive — designed to involve a peer or adult, not isolate
- Iterative — concepts are revisited and built upon
- Joyful — it should be genuinely fun
If an app doesn’t have a clear learning goal, it’s not educational. I don’t care what they say.
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Brookings Fellow & Author
When those six qualities are present, she explained, children build what researchers call the “six C’s”: collaboration, communication, content knowledge, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence.
For more on the “six C’s” and what healthy technology use looks like for young children, explore our free guide, “Beyond Screen Time.”
Technology Can Help Equity — If We Let It
Michelle Kang brought the conversation to the classroom level — and to the systemic challenges that technology, done right, can start to address.
One area she highlighted: dual language learners.
The accessibility of language has sometimes made it difficult for children and families. Technology that meets a child in their home language, through play — that’s a genuine use of tech for good.
Michelle Kang, NAEYC CEO
She also named something that doesn’t get talked about enough: teacher burnout.
Early childhood education is in a workforce crisis. Educators are leaving the field; not because they don’t love the work, but because the workload is unsustainable.
“Administrative burden is real,” Kang said. “It takes teachers away from children. Can technology help with documentation, data entry — freeing up teachers to do what they do best, which is spend time with children?”
That’s the question the best EdTech products should be asking.
AI in Early Childhood: Promising, with Caveats
The panel was candid about the current state of AI in ECE.
Hirsh-Pasek was direct: AI companion toys, in her view, should be avoided altogether. She described a Common Sense Media report in which one such toy gave a child a dangerous suggestion in response to an innocent comment about jumping.
But she and Sal Khan also acknowledged the longer-term potential — AI that prompts deeper family conversations, extends a child’s curiosity, or helps teachers identify activities matched to individual learning needs.
“We at Khan Academy Kids will be exploring this over the coming years,” Sal said. “But we don’t want to put it out until we feel confident it’s actually working.”
The consensus: the technology isn’t there yet for assessing soft skills like curiosity or creativity. When it is, the bar for getting it right will be high.
A Free Two-Year Pilot for Publicly Funded PreK Programs
If this webinar raised questions for your program about what intentional, research-aligned technology could look like in practice, we want to make it easy to find out.
Khan Academy Kids for Schools includes:
- 4000+ standards-aligned learning activities helping develop children’s early math, literacy, and executive functioning skills
- eBook library featuring more than 400 fiction and non-fiction titles with read-along narration and independent reading opportunities
- Playful, bilingual PreK assessments in English and Spanish — approximately 5 minutes per assessment, designed to feel like play for children and reduce teacher documentation time
- A web-based teacher dashboard for tracking individual student progress
- School and district-level reporting that gives administrators the data they need to make instructional decisions
- Professional development and implementation support to help your team get the most out of the tool
For SY 2026–27 and SY 2027–28, qualifying publicly funded PreK programs can access Khan Academy Kids for Schools at no cost. This is a two-year opportunity for programs to pilot the assessments, help shape the product, and give their educators and administrators a meaningful tool — without any budget risk.
Eligibility: US-based publicly funded PreK programs (including Head Start and state PreK) with a minimum of 200 students in PreK through 2nd grade.
Our PreK assessments are currently being validated through an independent study with MDRC, with more than 1,000 students across 67 classrooms in 5 states. The data we’re gathering is shaping a product built for the real complexity of early childhood programs — bilingual learners, diverse communities, and the educators who serve them.
Ready to See If Your Program Qualifies?
It takes just a few minutes to find out if your program is eligible for the two-year free pilot.
Questions? Reach out to our partnerships team at khankidspartners@khanacademy.org. We’d love to learn more about your program.
A note on this post: The insights above are drawn from our March 2026 webinar, Technology in Early Childhood Education: What the Research Actually Says, featuring Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Michelle Kang, and Sal Khan.
