A related concern: Is the homework a relevant way to show mastery that represents a worthwhile investment of time? A middle school biology teacher I know assigns students to make a large model of the human body, using mostly trash from around the house.In addition, do students really need to do 40 practice problems to show they’ve mastered the work, or would 15 do just about as well? A lot of it is busywork, and it should be banned. Is each piece of homework really worthwhile, or is some of it being assigned out of habit or a feeling that this is what the teacher is supposed to do? It’s one thing for students to practice a new math skill or puzzle out some problems, another to be assigned busywork that doesn’t add to skills or knowledge.Especially as the state embarks on the new curriculum tied to Common Core standards, which are supposed to be more about thinking, explaining and writing than rote or mechanistic schoolwork, principals should be required to do a thorough examination of the homework their teachers are assigning. Schools like to talk about reducing the homework load but seldom appear to do much about it. Teachers too often seem to think half an hour of homework means what they can accomplish in 30 minutes, not what a 9-year-old is capable of doing. Little hands are much slower at printing and writing. They don’t take into account the fatigue and frustration that slow young children. But parents report widely that elementary teachers also have some unrealistic ideas of how long the homework takes - in the opposite direction. But it’s also clear that a lot of kids are doing a lot of outside schoolwork - and in some cases, far too much.Įlementary school teachers, obviously, set their sights a lot lower, assigning what they thought of as about half an hour of work per day, according to the poll. Perhaps the teachers were overreporting for the University of Phoenix School of Education poll, or perhaps they aren’t aware of the extent to which high school students are able to work the system and minimize the time investment. I have my doubts that the average teen actually spends that much time on homework.
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