Homework - The push for High Test Scores

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Current News : One Thread

I've wondered about this, I don't ever recall even having homework from 1st to about the 6th grade, yet my son since the first grade has had at least an hours worth of homework every school night, and he's a VERY bright kid... I can imagine the pressure on the slower learners (He read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy between 4th & 5th grade)

Too Much?

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Forty-five minutes every night, Monday to Thursday. That's the amount of homework that teacher Karen Alvarez requires of her first-graders. And no one is complaining.

"I have such high expectations for these children, and I let the parents know that," she said.

Alvarez, who teaches in a working-class neighborhood on the city's east side, said she has never gotten a complaint about giving too much homework.

That's rare these days. As schools across the nation work to raise standards -- and standardized test scores -- they're piling on the homework. High school students report more than three hours a night in some places. One University of Michigan study suggests that young children are seeing up to three times as much homework as children did 20 years ago.

Many parents argue that homework cuts into students' sleep and family time. School districts are reacting by imposing guidelines on both homework time and assignments.

"We were sending things home with youngsters that required someone with a graduate degree to help," said Kathleen Grove, assistant superintendent for instruction at Arlington, Virginia, Public Schools.

Handling the homework heap

After studying the issue for years, the district last spring set strict rules on homework: This fall, schools will be asked to give assignments that students can complete independently, and virtually no high school student will have more than three hours nightly. Schools also must keep computer labs open late if students need to use them.

Several teachers said local and state standardized tests have driven the rush to more homework.

"You know those test results are going to be printed in the paper, so you really feel obliged to make sure they've got that skill," said Suzanne Krewson, a fifth-grade teacher in Milford, New Jersey.

At the same time, they said, children are busier than ever, and parents are grateful to get even a short reprieve from homework.

"I think the good that it purports to do is really overrated," said John Buell, a former high school history teacher and college professor who co-authored the book "The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children and Limits Learning."

He said many students don't go home to a quiet house with the required reference materials or support.

Freed of the responsibilities of homework, Buell said, most families could give children the kinds of discipline that homework brings by assigning chores or other jobs, such as taking care of pets.

"Family time is increasingly cramped and limited as it is," he said. "It's a shame that it has to be spent supervising somebody else's agenda."

Debra Lucey Parker said her 17-year-old son, Sean, a senior in Mt. Desert Island, Maine, struggles to complete three to four hours of homework each night on top of an afterschool job.

"He feels overwhelmed, because he has so much to do," she said.

What's worse, the assignments aren't always clear, and he can't always get the help he needs, since Parker, a single mother, works full time.

"It's really heartbreaking," she said.

Homework history

The battle over homework is about as old as compulsory public schooling itself. As early as the mid-1800s, parents complained that children had too much homework -- but for a different reason: They were needed for labor at home.

By the 1880s, the issue gained national prominence. Buell's forthcoming book mentions the president of the Boston school board, Francis A. Walker, who complained of his children's math homework:

"Over and over again have I had to send my own children, in spite of their tears and remonstrances, to bed, long after the assigned tasks had ceased to have any educational value and had become the means of nervous exhaustion and agitation, highly prejudicial to body and to mind."

By 1930, there was even a Society for the Abolition of Homework, which argued that schoolwork should be done in school, under the watchful eye of "experts."

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Buell says, homework time declined. That ended in 1957, when the Russians launched Sputnik. In the space race that followed, Americans changed their attitudes toward schoolwork in general and homework in particular.

Suddenly, parents were hearing about a "crisis" in American education and reading magazine pieces that compared American schools unfavorably with those in Europe. More math homework in particular became the norm -- even as some observers suggested that children were too tired for the extra work.

The trend continues today with the push toward higher standardized test scores.

"In my classes, everyone's expected to do something every night, even on Fridays," said Barbara Keshishian, a high school math teacher in suburban New Milford, New Jersey. "They keep raising the bar higher and higher for our students."

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2001


Moderation questions? read the FAQ