Stop Homework

About a month ago, I posted a piece by Fred Baum­garten, the father of two daugh­ters in pub­lic school in Sharon, Con­necti­cut, who had been talk­ing to the other par­ents in his daughter’s fifth-grade class about home­work. I recently checked to see what kind of progress he’s making.

He writes all about it on his blog, home­work headaches.

Should Home­work be Reduced – 13 sup­port; 3 opposed; 1 unde­cided; 4 no response
by Fred Baumgarten

As of today, out of 21 fifth grade fam­i­lies in our school, 12 have indi­cated their sup­port of my efforts to reduce and improve home­work; 3 are opposed (2 of them strongly; one just responded to another recent e-mail thus: “We do not sup­port your move­ment. I thought lack of our response would have given you some indi­ca­tion”); 1 is pro­vi­sion­ally sup­port­ive but still research­ing it; and 5 have not responded to e-mails and phone messages.

In my lat­est e-mail I invited those par­ents who are sup­port­ive or who had not responded to join me at a meet­ing with the prin­ci­pal. None have responded pos­i­tively to the invitation.

Nev­er­the­less, I have gone ahead and sched­uled a meet­ing with the prin­ci­pal. Given that more than half of the fam­i­lies are in sup­port, and greater than 75% of those who responded are in sup­port, I feel I have a pretty strong case for proceeding.

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I recently started a group on face­book (please join) where I heard from April Pea­cock, a mother of a third grader from Penn­syl­va­nia. She was look­ing for advice on how to respond to her son’s teacher, who had sent home a high stakes test­ing prac­tice book­let, with instruc­tions to the par­ents on how to review with their children.

High Stakes Test­ing Isn’t Ben­e­fi­cial
by April Peacock

Yes­ter­day, I received a packet from my third grade son. The front let­ter says the following:

Dear Par­ent Helpers,
Attached is this week’s PSSA Prac­tice Packet to review with your child. As always your help and assis­tance in your child’s edu­ca­tion is so impor­tant. This is one way you can help show them what they are doing in school is important.

Remem­ber to review the packet with your child. Make sure they read the story and ques­tions care­fully before try­ing to fig­ure out the answers. A lit­tle each night works well. The answer key is included for your ref­er­ence. Research has shown (Ash­baugh, 2009) that when par­ents prac­tice with their chil­dren in high stakes test­ing, stu­dents do much better.

Please fill out and return the paper below to your child’s teacher on 2/1. Do not return the packet.
Third Grade Teachers

Week # 1
Student’s Name
Time spent on this packet with stu­dent _______________ mins per day.
Were you able to fin­ish the packet? Y N
Please list any­thing that your child did not under­stand, so that we can review it in the classroom.

Here is my dilemma: I’m glad that they make the mate­r­ial avail­able to us, but I don’t feel that “high stakes test­ing” is ben­e­fi­cial and I resent that I am required to fill out a form stat­ing exact­ing how long I prac­ticed with my child. I dis­like them telling me how to spend my time.

Does any­one have an good responses to this? I would like to send in a short let­ter with ref­er­ences, etc., but I don’t want to sound upset. Basi­cally, I want my let­ter to be just as PC as theirs. My Case Against Home­work book is packed away because we just moved.

Today’s post is by Laura, an intel­lec­tual prop­erty and rein­sur­ance attor­ney in Chicago with three chil­dren rang­ing in age from 5 years to 4.5 months. A long his­tory of LD and ADD makes effec­tive edu­ca­tion one of her hot but­ton issues. She wrote a lengthy let­ter to her daughter’s kinder­garten teacher explain­ing her posi­tion on homework.

Home­work is Detri­men­tal to Long Term Suc­cess
by Laura

Dear Kinder­garten Teacher,

I am writ­ing regard­ing the progress report we received for Libby this past week, specif­i­cally the home assign­ments to her. The pri­mary pur­pose of this let­ter is to out­line our posi­tion regard­ing home assign­ments for our five year old. We expect this let­ter should be included in her school records. Prin­ci­pal _____ is copied on this let­ter; please feel free to pro­vide it to any admin­is­tra­tor who has a valid rea­son to read it.

I under­stand assign­ing home­work at all grade lev­els is Chicago Pub­lic School pol­icy; how­ever, I strongly believe that home­work at the kinder­garten level, absent spe­cific defi­cien­cies, is detri­men­tal to long term edu­ca­tional suc­cess. A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of lon­gi­tu­di­nal stud­ies show home­work, espe­cially in the younger years, increases fam­ily strife, increases the child’s stress level and does not pro­vide a last­ing gain in test scores. I agree that the lessons learned in the class­room should be rein­forced at home, but I believe we do that ade­quately by show­ing how what was learned in the class­room is used in real life and in fact home­work inter­feres with our abil­ity to do that.
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Last year, I posted a piece by a par­ent of a mid­dle schooler in Mass­a­chu­setts, who had asked, to no avail, that her child be allowed to opt out of the Renais­sance Learning’s Accel­er­ated Reader program.

Today, she pro­vides an update.

Our School’s Use of the Renais­sance Learning’s Accel­er­ated Read­ing Prod­uct Has a Detri­men­tal Effect on Our Children’s Desire to Read
by a Mid­dle School Parent

Our mid­dle school uses Renais­sance Learning’s Accel­er­ated Reader quiz prod­uct to ver­ify that stu­dents are read­ing books at home. Scores on the 10 – 20 ques­tion fact-recall quizzes are then applied directly to stu­dents’ English/Language Arts grades.

AR is widely used in schools in the U.S. and around the world, often in con­junc­tion with prize incen­tives and awards to “top read­ers.” Some schools, like ours, use it as part of a read­ing grade for stu­dents’ “free read­ing” at home – which is sep­a­rate from in-class read­ing and lit­er­a­ture instruc­tion – despite the company’s clear state­ment in its sup­port­ing mate­r­ial that quiz scores are not meant to be read­ing grades. I am shar­ing this here because I know we are not the only par­ents who are con­cerned about the unin­tended con­se­quences of this and sim­i­lar well inten­tioned but poten­tially dam­ag­ing require­ments that turn children’s at-home plea­sure read­ing into a chore.

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Torri Chap­pell, a teacher and mother from San Anselmo, Cal­i­for­nia, has writ­ten here before about her expe­ri­ences advo­cat­ing for home­work reform. When some­thing strikes Torri as being wrong, she doesn’t hes­i­tate to speak up, either in let­ter or in person.

Recently, when her School Dis­trict had a meet­ing to talk about the school facil­ity, Torri was on hand to talk about the impor­tance of not only where chil­dren learn, but also what they learn.

What and How our Chil­dren Learn is More Impor­tant than Where They Learn
by Torri Chappell

We have two facil­ity issues in Ross Val­ley result­ing from abundance…an abun­dance of chil­dren and an abun­dance of assessments.

The first facil­ity issue is regard­ing the facil­i­ties WHERE our chil­dren will learn. We have an abun­dance of students.

The sec­ond facil­ity issue is regard­ing the district’s facil­ity in mak­ing unin­formed deci­sions about WHAT and HOW our chil­dren learn.
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Diana Toma is an artist and the mother of a pre-schooler and a second-grader who attends a pub­lic school in Atlanta, Geor­gia – a school which encour­ages par­ents to vol­un­teer at least 10 hours a year. Before they moved to Atlanta, her daugh­ter had attended an alter­na­tive school in Brook­lyn, New York, where there was no cur­ricu­lum, home­work, or grades and where the focus was on play. Diana, who hails from Roma­nia, writes here about her expe­ri­ences talk­ing with her new daughter’s teacher about home­work and education.

When Par­ents and Teach­ers Work Together, Our Lives are Eas­ier
by Diana Toma

When I went to meet my daughter’s teacher at the new school, I have to admit I was going with some pre­con­ceived ideas. Every­body at the Brook­lyn alter­na­tive school had told me that pub­lic schools are to be avoided like some sort of “edu­ca­tional hell on earth.” I was scared to have those opin­ion con­firmed. Plus I was afraid that the teacher would judge me because my daugh­ter was “behind” in many of the skills that the pub­lic school stu­dents in Geor­gia had.

When I sat down with her and had a con­ver­sa­tion, I was pleas­antly sur­prised that she was will­ing and ready to lis­ten to what I had to say. I told her where my daugh­ter is com­ing from. The teacher told me that she hadn’t ever had any con­tact with alter­na­tive schools, and she asked me ques­tions about it and lis­tened care­fully to what I had to say. I quickly got that she was really inter­ested in who my daugh­ter is and what meth­ods would work or not with her. After all, that is all I could ever wish from any teacher!

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Fred Baum­garten, the father of two daugh­ters in pub­lic school in Sharon, Con­necti­cut, began talk­ing to other par­ents in his daughter’s fifth grade class about home­work after he read The Home­work Myth, by Alfie Kohn, a col­lege class­mate. Fred, who has a M.S. in Edu­ca­tion from Bank Street and is cur­rently a direc­tor of Foun­da­tion, Gov­ern­ment and Cor­po­rate Rela­tions at Sarah Lawrence Col­lege, has a blog, Home­work Headaches, where he recently posted the let­ter he wrote to the Fifth Grade par­ents at his daughter’s school. In addi­tion to read­ing his let­ter, you should visit his blog, where you can fol­low his orga­niz­ing attempts.

Dear Fifth Grade Fam­i­lies & Friends:
by Fred Baum­garten
Sharon, Connecticut

I’ve spo­ken with a num­ber of you indi­vid­u­ally in the last few months about prob­lems with fifth grade home­work that have had an impact on our fam­ily and on our daughter’s atti­tudes toward school. Many of you have shared sim­i­lar stories.

Recently the Prin­ci­pal sent out a let­ter address­ing some of these con­cerns and reit­er­at­ing the school’s home­work poli­cies and atti­tudes, but this let­ter pro­poses no sub­stan­tive changes and fails to get at the heart of the problem.

There are really three home­work prob­lems, in my view:

(1) Quan­tity: Even if it’s true that our stu­dents are spend­ing an aver­age of an hour a day on home­work assign­ments, it would still be too much; it means that some days it takes a lot longer; it doesn’t take into account after­school activ­i­ties; and it takes away from time legit­i­mately spent in fam­ily activ­i­ties, relax­ing, reflect­ing, read­ing for fun, going out­doors, etc. Most of all there is the relent­less­ness of home­work – every night, and on week­ends too, which also relates to the sec­ond point, below.

(2) Con­tent: With very few excep­tions, fifth grade home­work assign­ments have been repet­i­tive, unen­gag­ing, and one-dimensional – lit­er­ally the same thing, night after night.
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Rosie Scrib­ble, a free­lance writer in the U.K. who spe­cial­izes in men­tal health issues and blogs about life with her 6 year old, wrote a won­der­ful piece about why she doesn’t make her daugh­ter do home­work. Many of the com­menters also wrote that they didn’t make their chil­dren do home­work, either. Now, if they could all inspire their friends and their friends’ friends, etc., home­work for young chil­dren would no longer exist (after all, most ele­men­tary school chil­dren require some kind of parental involve­ment to get their home­work done).

I Have Banned My Child from Doing Home­work
by Rosie Scribble

Some­times I get a bit hot under the col­lar, stamp my foot and decide that what­ever I have been told to do — I’m not doing it.

Then I won­der why my six-year-old daugh­ter does the same.

How­ever today, once again, I have decided there are a few things that our lit­tle fam­ily will not be doing, for one day at least.

Here’s the list:

I.J. [my daugh­ter] will not be doing any home­work
I.J. will not be watch­ing News­round
I.J. will not be look­ing at her school read­ing book
I will not be dis­cussing key­words and spellings with I.J.
I will not be test­ing her on her addi­tion and mul­ti­pli­ca­tion
I will not be help­ing her to prac­tise her alpha­bet
We will not be doing any­thing related in any way to edu­ca­tion
We shall only be doing fun things
Why?

Because a mother knows when her child is under stress, when she has had enough and is over-tired and over-sensitive, when being asked to watch the news will only add to her cur­rent anx­i­eties, when num­ber work at school is get­ting her down to the point where she can’t sleep at night, when the pres­sure to prac­tise her read­ing every night is get­ting her down, when it is all becom­ing too much.

A mother knows when her child needs a night off, a break from it all, and when a dose of fun takes pri­or­ity over homework.

So here’s what we will do instead:

We’ll close the cur­tains, turn off the lights and turn the front room into a cin­ema
We’ll watch a brand new DVD, pos­si­bly Cloudy with a chance of Meat­balls as rec­om­mended by A Mod­ern Mother
We’ll eat party food fol­lowed by choco­late cake
We’ll cud­dle up on the sofa
We’ll shut out the rest of the world
We’ll for­get about school
We’ll for­get about every­thing else
We’ll have some fun
And I’ll hope for a calmer more relaxed child tomorrow.

(Read the post and the accom­pa­ny­ing com­ments here.)