Crazy in Suburbia: Trying to Take the Excess and Frustration Out of Homework

UPDATE: I've posted some links below to experts, web resources, and articles on homework, as well as to homework policies in other schools and districts in the East Bay and North America.

Over the past school year, a committee of teachers, parents and administrators in the Walnut Creek School District has been trying to wrestle with that great monster in American education: homework.  They have drafted a policy, which they will present to the school board to consider Monday night.

You can read it here. As the policy was being worked out, committee members heard some of those homework horror stories that elementary and middle school students—and their parents—are familiar with. Maybe you have some stories of your own.

I do.

And maybe they aren't all horror stories. Maybe your kids like homework.  Maybe you believe some or a lot of homework encourages good study habits and discipline, makes your kids smarter, more engaged, more likely to do well in high school, college, life ... 

Whatever you think, you can share them here in the comments section below, or you can attend Monday night's meeting and raise any final concerns before the board considers adopting the policy. The meeting is at 7 p.m. at the district office, 960 Ygnacio Valley Road. 

Back to the horror stories, which the proposed policy, one way or another, seeks to address. These are the stories I heard voiced at a meeting of parent representatives and teachers in March:

• Fifth graders doing four or five hours of homework a night.
• Third grades crying at the prospect of sitting down to complete dozes of repetitious long-division problems--even though they have already mastered the concept.
• Parents stressing about helping their kids finish the class project that's due the Tuesday after a three-day holiday.
• Kids getting marked down because they didn't apply enough artistic skill to drawing and coloring a map of ancient Greece.
• Fourth-graders and their parents feeling pressure to craft the most architecturally accurate and artistically beautiful replica of one of California's 21 missions.
• Concerns that teachers are assigning homework for concepts not yet covered in class or not checking homework to see where individual or groups of kids are struggling.
• Parents feeling like they have to teach kids concepts—either because the teacher didn't cover it in class (yes, it happens); their child left school unclear on it; or their child was goofing off and not paying attention.

The draft policy seeks to address these issues by saying that homework should:

• Be "meaningful and purposeful."
• Reinforce concepts that have already been taught in class.
• Not be assigned on the weekends or holidays.

Moreover, the draft says that students should leave school with a clear idea of the purpose of the assignment, and the assignment should be an extension of what happens in the classroom. 

As for teachers? They should work together by grades and departments to make sure that they are assigning similar amounts and types of homework, coordinating deadlines for major projects, and "differentiating" when appropriate.

Meanwhile, parents are "encouraged" to work cooperatively with the school and to not do their children's assignments for them—including, I suppose, those fourth-grade mission projects.

Notably, the policy also sets out some guidelines for the amount of time students should spend on homework, depending on their grade. All the times listed include reading:

• Grades K-1: 0 to 20 minutes
• Grades 2-3: 15 to 30 minutes
• Grades 4-5: 30 to 60 minutes
• Grade 6: 45 to 60 minutes
• Grade 7: 60 to 75 minutes
• Grade 8: 60 to 90 minutes

For the middle school grades, these times above apply to the total for all subjects. However, the policy says, "high school level subjects" such as algebra and band may require additional minutes.

There are also recommendations about letting students turn in work late "within a reasonable timeframe," making homework just a small percentage of a student's'grade, and considering how much value an "F" will have in a final student's grade.

* * *

The homework topic intrigues me, and not just because it affects the daily life of my son and our family during the school year.

I call homework "the great monster of American education" because the debate over it touches on much larger societal issues about education, learning, parenting, and the definition of academic and personal success.

As I've written previously, these philosophical differences create tensions between parents and teachers and between parents themselves. Between parents, there are those who say they want their kids challenged and don't mind even K-3 teachers assigning homework over the weekends. They say that being a good parent means being involved in your kids' education. Then there are those who say they are involved, but that schools should not dictate how involved parents will be, or how parents will structure the free time of their children.

A couple years ago, I was intrigued enough about the monster of homework to become acqauinted with some of the books and studies that are often cited in the debate.

One basic question that I don't think anyone can answer definitively--including the big national experts on the topic--is whether homework boosts student learning, specifically when you're talking about kids younger than high school age. 

People have their own stories, but the last time I checked the literature, there wasn't a lot of hard evidence that homework yields improved achievement among younger students--and that's according to Harris Cooper, a Duke University professor who is considered one of America's foremost homework experts.

Cooper is best known for the "10-minute rule" that says that kids should do 10 minutes of homework per grade each night. It appears that the authors of Walnut Creek's homework policy tried to adopt some variation on Cooper's rule.

Cooper completed a landmark metareview of some 60 studies in 2006. This metareview found "some correlation between homework and achievement in the upper grades, but little effect on students from elementary school to seventh grade," according to a September 2008 Diablo magazine report. This is a story I assigned and edited during my time as an editor there.

While acknowledging that the connection between homework and student achievement in the lower grades is unknown, Cooper echoed a view I've heard from many parents and teachers, including some of my son's teachers.

It is that homework in the younger grades teaches kids study skills; it prepares them to do homework in high school an college.

Under this argument, K-5 kids are doing homework to learn how to do homework.

It sounds like this is the belief about homework's value that is largely guiding this proposed homework policy for the Walnut Creek School District. This draft policy would have the school board saying that "homework directly influences students' ability to meet the district's academic standards and contributes toward building responsibility, self-discipline and life-long learning habits."

The draft policy expresses the view--or the faith--that the "routine" of homework will boost achievement in the district's K-8 students. 

Maybe this routine does boost achievement--and learning. We have to hope it does if we're having kids do the homework.

Check here for a guide to experts and other articles on homework. It's on the website for Diablo magazine's September 2008 issue, and I helped compile it.

Check here for homework policies in other schools and districts in the East Bay and in North America. Again, it's on the Diablo magazine website, accompanying a special 2008 report, "Homework: How Much is Too Much?" 

Here are some links to Diablo magazine's special 2008 report "Homework: How Much is Too Much?", which I edited and helped research. The links below take you to:

• A resource guide to suggested books by top homework experts, homework web resources, and articles on homework
• Homework policies in other schools and districts in the East Bay and in North America.

Homework on Homework