Parents Are Drowning in School Apps!
You’re signing up through an app to contribute to your kid’s next in class party, trying to decide if you should grab the easier “25 napkins” or try to take a half day from work to choose “class helper,” when — BING! — another app notification goes off. It’s your other kid’s soccer coach. Today’s practice has moved up an hour. You opt for napkins and update your family calendar, synced with your partner for optimal visibility and shared load. Another chime! Your eldest’s science project is due on Friday, it reminds. Exasperated, you put your phone aside and get back to work. Then your phone rings: Your youngest’s school is calling. He has a bellyache at daycare and needs to be picked up. You are a modern parent, and a sea of apps is half of your waking existence.
Being an “involved” parent in 2025, be it academically, athletically, or otherwise, involves some serious technology. Parents quickly end up in information overload, not to mention password chaos. Recent data shows that educational app downloads, including apps like ClassDojo, Operoo, ParentSquare, Konstella and Google Classroom, rose significantly in 2020 with the pandemic and have maintained their popularity since — especially in North America, where 44% of the revenue for educational apps is held. The same data shows in 2023, educational apps made $5.93 billion in revenue. That’s a lot of “pings.”
There's Always an App for That
Parents new to, well, parenting, (or to a new sports season or the first year at a new school) might notice the transparent quantity of apps is overwhelming. So what are all these apps for, anyway? Dana Kampman, a Baltimore, MD resident and parent of a teen, has observed her kids’ schools have separate apps for grades, attendance, behavior, announcements, lunch payments and extracurriculars.
“The transparent number of apps schools use is overwhelming,” she says. “It’s not just one app per school. One year, I was toggling between five different apps just to keep up with everything for my two kids. It’s exhausting to keep track of. I’ve had times where I completely missed important announcements because they came through an app I didn’t think to check that day.”
Some parents remember a world before apps, where sign-up lists were on classroom doors, and folders of papers came home. A generation before us, sometimes kids even hopped off the bus with notes from teachers pinned to their shirts. Now, keeping track of all a child’s academic metrics can add to the invisible load.
“It’s not just the apps; it’s the constant vigilance they require,” says Mary Willcox Smith, author and parenting coach from Virginia. “You never feel ‘done’ because there’s always something else lurking in the notifications. Moms tell me they feel like they’re running a mini call center out of their heads, constantly toggling between who needs what and when.” She says it feels relentless.
“[Parents] are also coordinating dinner, doctor’s appointments, and what color shirt their kid needs to wear for Spirit Day,” she says. “The real kicker? These apps were supposed to make things easier. Instead, they’re one more thing to juggle — and that’s where the invisible load crushes parents.”
Some schools only allow one login per household, which can contribute to inequities at home. Even when two parents are able to join, it can be tough to have two separate email addresses or accounts coordinating for one child. For some households, this means that one parent becomes the default app master — and additional responsibilities are added to that ever-growing mental load list.
Unreasonable Expectations?
Whereas just a few years ago, parents just had to help empty backpacks and keep an eye on their email for school concerns, now the stakes are higher. “There’s the hidden expectation that parents are always ‘on,’ constantly checking and responding,” says Dr. Regina Lark, an executive function and organizational expert in Los Angeles. “This can create stress, particularly for parents already balancing a heavy mental load, or if one of the parents is neurodivergent. While apps can simplify some things, they also introduce new layers of complexity. Not all parents are equally tech-savvy, and there’s often a learning curve.”
For others, it increases accessibility rather than adding a barrier. “One more major benefit of the ClassDojo app is it has a really nice translation feature for families whose second language is English,” says Ashlee Higgins, educator and app user at BCLUW Community Schools in central Iowa. Other apps offer similar translation features, using Google Translate or built-in home languages for users, making it easier for schools to communicate with parents in the language they’re most familiar with.
The Upside to Apps
Parents who have put their kindergartener on the bus have found themselves wishing a few hours later they could see how they were doing, even wanting to be a fly on the wall in their classroom. One benefit of school-based apps is giving educators a school-approved way of sharing pictures of their kids with families.
“My favorite way to use Class DoJo is to take pictures of the students working in the classroom and post them to our classroom story,” Higgins says. “This gives parents a peek into what a day in the classroom looks like for their child. My hope is it also gives them a jumping off point for conversation with their child at home about things they are learning in school.” She says kids are often very excited for her to take a picture of their projects and post it for the adults at home to see.
Apps can also be an easy way to send home quick notes or behavior reports, especially for kids who may not have the organizational skills to bring a planner or document back and forth from home to school and back yet.For some parents, a quick glance at a missing homework assignment or note from a teacher is a lot more accessible than a longer email in a busy inbox.
Behavior systems often involve parent communication as a key feature, which ultimately should help kids succeed academically too. This should be the goal of an app, says Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens, founder of Fit Learning, a tutoring company in Lakeville, Conn.
“The app should serve a specific purpose: improving learning outcomes,” she says. “The most important role of parents is to support strategies the teacher is using in the classroom.” She notes, for example, that ClassDojo allows for a point system to reinforce positive behavior. “Each student can receive points for participating in lessons, following instructions, turning in assignments, etc. Parents can then see the points their child earned during the day and allow the child to exchange those points for privileges at home, like screen time.”
However, for some parents, the idea of checking each child’s behavior system on an app daily can add an additional task to real life parenting in mornings and evenings. Parents should also ask if these behavior systems follow students year to year, and how the data is stored. Does next year’s teacher see how many “bad” days they’ve had before they’ve even met your child? For others, it can provide consistency and clear communication when bringing a note home is a thing of the past.
How Parents Can Alleviate App Overload
Some days parents might ask themselves — are these apps working for me? Do I have to use them? And are they safe for my kids? All valid questions.
Ask schools about app security
A multitude of apps can lead to some legal concerns. “Legally, this fragmentation also increases the risk of non-compliance with data privacy laws such as FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) and COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act),” says Benson Varghese, a managing partner at a law firm in Fort Worth, Texas. He remembers a private school client in 2022 who had a data breach for their third-party app used for tracking grades. “The breach exposed sensitive student data, including academic records and contact details, impacting over 200 families. This led to significant legal and reputational consequences for the institution, requiring immediate remediation and policy overhauls.”
In the flurry of other tasks, Varghese says schools often don’t vet apps thoroughly and can be more concerned with functionality than compliance. “Many apps collect more information than necessary, which violates COPPA when it involves children under 13 or FERPA if data is shared without explicit parental consent. Schools need legal frameworks in place that enforce vendor accountability through robust Data Processing Agreements (DPAs). These contracts should detail what data is collected, how it is stored, and who has access to it, while also mandating encryption and other security measures.”
Do your own research on privacy and accessibility
In 2022, Internet Safety Labs, a nonprofit organization, reported that 96% of apps schools may require sharing information with third parties. Josephine Wolff, professor of cybersecurity policy at The Fletcher School at Tufts University in Medford, MA, says apps may have the advantage of updating more instantaneously throughout the day, but that can also mean that an “enormous” amount of data is being stored by third parties about those students. She adds that parents and teachers may have little or no control over how that data is being protected and how long it is retained.
“In general, unless you know the exact terms of a school’s contract with an app provider, you should not store any of your child’s data on it that you would not want other people and companies to have access to,” Wolff says. “It’s worth carefully reviewing the app’s privacy policies to see which third parties they share data with and investigating what kinds of encryption and access controls the app uses, if at all possible.”
Cache Merrill, a parent, tech professional and founder of Zibtek, a software development company in Salt Lake City says parents can help by:
Setting up strong passwords
Enabling two-factor authentication when they can
Being cautious about app use on public Wi-fi or while traveling
Push for the ideal solution
While kids dream of snow days, parents dream of a streamlined app system across schools, ages, and kids. Have you asked?
Obviously it would be helpful if schools could streamline the number of platforms they use. One app, one login, fewer headaches. That’s the dream, but it’s not a short-term solution. “Schools could also do more to share the load with parents,” Smith says. “A well-designed app should integrate seamlessly, minimize this overload and prioritize ease of use,” Merrill adds.
So, speak up. “If schools and developers could hear more from parents about what’s actually helpful and what’s just adding more noise,” Kampman says, “I think they’d approach these systems differently.”
Involve the kids
Parents can involve kids in these apps, making accounts for them where they are able, or even just handing them the phone to check their own grades and report back. With some age-appropriate skill-building, this can ease some of the burden and promote independence in kids.
“Let’s teach them to check grades or stay on top of assignments — life skills they’ll actually use,” Smith says. Also, teaching non-tech skills around organization and communication can mean less depending on the app anyway. For example, if your kid is letting you know what’s coming up each week, it’s a safety net if you miss an app notification. (After all, it’s their spirit day, right?)
Designate an "app time"
Try setting a time each evening to check all the apps at once, then turn daytime notifications off. After all, schools still have to call if there’s a big issue, like a sick kid.
“I would tell parents to not feel obligated to respond to every notification,” Higgins says. “As teachers we work with a wide variety of students which therefore includes a wide range of parents and their preferences. As we do in the classroom, we try to accommodate parents as best as we can as well, working to help them feel a valued part of their child's education.”
From there, communicate with teachers about your necessary boundaries. This might mean sharing that you work during the day, and will be checking the app at a certain time, or requesting they email if the apps are too much.
“I will tell you I've never met a teacher who didn't want the very best for the students they work with,” Higgins says. “My hope as a teacher is that parents always know that we truly have your students' best interest at heart.”
Set your own boundaries around app use
Just like you wouldn’t require yourself to answer your colleague’s email in just a few hours, it might be time to give yourself some grace around answering app notifications.
It’s important to recognize that apps are just tools — they’re only as helpful as we allow them to be. “If an app feels more like a source of stress than a solution, take a step back and reassess how it’s being used,” Lark says. “Parenting is hard enough without the pressure of being a perfect ‘app manager.’”
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