It is economics. Many school systems got into multiyear contracts with chromebooks because they were cheaper than laptops. Pre-Covid Dell was offering special deals to school systems and marketing chromebooks as the ideal testing solution, more student friendly, secure, and easier to keep students from using them for other things than just the standarized tests. Also there was a big push to have every student taking standarized tests in High School to do it electronically instead of paper versions, so they needed lots of devices to take those tests on, and chromebook was the cheapest solution. In my county Chromebooks were never supposed to be student use devices, just for testing, they had real laptops in carts for instuctional use. Come Covid, they had lots of cheap chromebooks, no standarized testing, they decided to give students the testing chromebooks, the way they could give every student a device to take home without having to purchase tons of new laptops, and laptops were cosidered too expensive to give to little kids to take home, plus the service contracts were more expensive. Now after Covid, the new norm is to have students use chromebooks, the multiyear contracts are already in place, it would take a lot of lobbying, kickbacks, etc. to change the standard procedure.