A lack of functionality is the point. You don't want a full CAS or Internet search results available, or many students will just take the easy route and not learn anything.
replyNeither teachers nor school districts have the time or resources to audit every new tool someone wants to use, or to help students figure out how to use their preferred tool to do something - find something that works and just use that
It's a weird halfway house.
replyI had a cheap Casio fx calculator. It got me all the way through my exams in school and university. I had Mathematica at home.
While I can see that being very good on a TI-84 would help you complete exams faster and get better marks, is that a skill that we want students to learn? Being good on a fancy calculator is essentially useless in real life. In real life people use computers not fancy calculators.
IMO it's better to either allow only basic calculators, or to allow real mathematics software.
There’s no back room arrangement, beyond perhaps some amount of marketing from TI to math teachers. But nobody is getting a kickback to recommend the TI-84. Also, since so many people had to buy these things then stuck it in a drawer after a couple years, there’s a healthy supply of used ones on eBay and marketplace.
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