Former education IT contractor, it’s majority chromebooks now, with physical books generally being either stationed inside classrooms or held in long-term storage “just in case”. (USA west coast classrooms)

The main issue is that Chromebooks, especially ones used for public schools, are largely “built to cost”, and are locked down with frustrating amounts of bloatware and software/network restrictions, and are usually beaten to shit by the previous year’s student body (about 40% of the chromebooks I looked at had to be sent to “reclamation” because they were not worth repairing nor were usable for spare parts).

When I was going to high school, I bought a second hand chromebook off eBay and installed a Linux distro (forget which one now), and it was an amazing experience, with a much easier time accessing materials and completing assignments compared to my peers. These machines really can be great, but if left to the school’s requirements for being “locked down”, and handled by careless people, they’re guaranteed to suck.

Backpack for me was a lot lighter in high school than middle school tho XD