Stop Homework

(This is the lat­est in a series of inter­views I’ve con­ducted with edu­ca­tors and activists around the coun­try who are on my radar as peo­ple who are doing their best to change pol­icy and prac­tice in their communities.)

Alan Shus­ter­man, who lives in Chevy Chase, Mary­land with his wife and three chil­dren, is the founder of School for Tomor­row (SFT), an inde­pen­dent non­profit sec­ondary school (grades 6 – 12) located in Rockville, Mary­land which opened this Fall with 18 stu­dents, 3 full-time teach­ers and 6 part-time teach­ers. Its web­site describes the school as a “one-of-a-kind, cut­ting edge, student-centered edu­ca­tion model designed in and fit for the 21st century.”

I was intrigued by that descrip­tion, and by the fact that the school stated up front that research shows lit­tle value to home­work, so I inter­viewed him to find out more about SFT and his inspi­ra­tion for start­ing it.

Inter­view with Alan Shus­ter­man
by Sara Bennett

Can you tell me a lit­tle bit about your back­ground and why you decided to start a school?
I was a pub­lic school kid, always a good stu­dent but never par­tic­u­larly engaged in school. I was able to get As despite myself. Grow­ing up I loved hang­ing out with kids younger than me, I set up school for my younger sis­ter and taught her how to read, and I always had the teach­ing bug.

But because I was a good stu­dent, I ended up at the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia, and becom­ing a teacher was never on the hori­zon. Back then, before Teach for Amer­ica, it wasn’t cul­tur­ally accept­able for some­one grad­u­at­ing from an Ivy League school to go into teach­ing. So, instead, I went to Har­vard Law School. As his­tory would have it, Barack Obama was in my class at Har­vard; as luck would have it, I didn’t befriend him.

Every lit­tle aspect of my life story has informed my phi­los­o­phy of edu­ca­tion, includ­ing hav­ing gone to Penn and Har­vard and see­ing first­hand what the best and bright­est sec­ondary school grad­u­ates are like and do. Of course this is an over-generalization, but, in gen­eral, the stu­dents who suc­ceed in high school arrive to col­lege narrow-minded, con­formist, and sup­port­ers of the sta­tus quo. That Pres­i­dent Obama, for one, has turned out to be a rather con­ven­tional politi­cian, espe­cially with respect to edu­ca­tion, has not sur­prised me, given his edu­ca­tional pedigree.

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(Happy Thanks­giv­ing)

Last June, I ran a series of inter­views I had con­ducted with activists and edu­ca­tors who were on my radar as peo­ple try­ing to do some­thing to change pol­icy and prac­tice in their com­mu­ni­ties. Today, I’m run­ning an inter­view I con­ducted with one of the most inter­est­ing school heads I’ve ever encoun­tered, Dominic Ran­dolph, who is in his third year as Head of Riverdale Coun­try School, an inde­pen­dent K-12 school in New York City. Before that, he was the assis­tant head­mas­ter at a four-year co-educational board­ing school. Randolph’s wife is also an edu­ca­tor; their daugh­ter is a junior in col­lege. Randolph’s blog, is always fas­ci­nat­ing and full of inter­est­ing ref­er­ences and ideas.

Inter­view with Dominic Ran­dolph
by Sara Bennett

“Schools tend to be high stress but not intel­lec­tu­ally chal­leng­ing. We need to under­stand this gen­er­a­tion of stu­dents and allow learn­ing to be meaningful.

–Dominic Ran­dolph, head of Riverdale Coun­try School, New York,

What are you think­ing about these days?
I’m inter­ested in how we keep schools focused on devel­op­ing peo­ple who are cre­ative and great crit­i­cal thinkers. You can’t be a good thinker if you have to con­stantly shift from one thing to the next. If a school were to be built around effec­tive think­ing, that school and its sched­ule might look very dif­fer­ent from the tra­di­tional mod­els we have.

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Today’s inter­view is with Kerry Dick­in­son, who has writ­ten many times for this blog includ­ing here, here, here, and here. Kerry, who has a M.A. in Read­ing, was a part-time teacher in Michi­gan before she had chil­dren. She now lives in Danville, Cal­i­for­nia, with her hus­band and 9th and 7th grade sons and is cur­rently in the process of becom­ing a licensed Cal­i­for­nia teacher. In 2007 – 2008, she helped con­vince her local school dis­trict to rewrite its home­work pol­icy. She just started her own blog.

Inter­view with Kerry Dick­in­son
by Sara Bennett

“I encour­age par­ents to be respect­fully vocal”

–Kerry Dick­in­son, par­ent, Danville, California

What prompted you to try to change home­work pol­icy in your com­mu­nity?
Last year, when my older son started eighth grade, he had a really bad expe­ri­ence with an alge­bra class and he started say­ing he hated mid­dle school. He had always had a great out­look on life and had always loved school, so I felt sad that he was sud­denly say­ing he hated it. I started look­ing back on his school­ing, and I real­ized that each year he liked it less and less. At the same time, I had a sixth grader who had been strug­gling since sec­ond grade with tests, school and home­work. I focused on home­work because I was sick of help­ing them with their projects and feel­ing like the home­work wasn’t turn­ing them on to school but, in fact, was hav­ing the oppo­site effect.

What did you do?
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Today’s inter­vie­wee is Paul Richards, who is in his fifth year as prin­ci­pal of Need­ham High School in Need­ham, Mass­a­chu­setts. Dur­ing his tenure, he has stud­ied and sur­veyed stu­dent stress and tried a vari­ety of mea­sures aimed at reduc­ing it. The father of a kinder­gart­ner and first grader, Richards is leav­ing Need­ham high at the end of the 2008 – 2009 school year to become the high school prin­ci­pal at the Amer­i­can School in Lon­don. (Take a look at the school’s web site where you can read the Need­ham Stress Reduc­tion Committee’s mate­ri­als. They have com­piled a very com­pre­hen­sive resource list.)

Inter­view with Paul Richards, Prin­ci­pal of Need­ham High
by Sara Bennett

” Schools need to look at their own practices.They need to edu­cate teach­ers, par­ents and stu­dents on the cul­ture of stress.”

–Paul Richards, prin­ci­pal, Need­ham High, Need­ham, Massachusetts

Is stress really a prob­lem for high school stu­dents?
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Today’s inter­view is with Anthony, who has been teach­ing for five years at a New York City pub­lic school where he is a fourth-grade teacher. He holds a B.A. in Psy­chol­ogy and a Mas­ters in Child­hood Edu­ca­tion from New York Uni­ver­sity. This year, he was accepted into Teach­ers Net­work Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, a “pro­fes­sional com­mu­nity of teach­ers and edu­ca­tors work­ing together to improve stu­dent achieve­ment.” The Insti­tute advo­cates for changes in pol­icy and gives teach­ers an active voice in policy-making deci­sions. His research project for the Insti­tute is home­work in ele­men­tary school.

Later this month, he is sit­ting down with the admin­is­tra­tion at his school to look to develop a mean­ing­ful pol­icy. So far, they have all agreed that the research does not sup­port a pol­icy that focuses on ‘time in each sub­ject’ per night. “We want to lessen the load and cre­ate more teacher inde­pen­dence in decision-making regard­ing homework.”

Inter­view with Anthony
by Sara Bennett

“As a teacher, there’s a ten­sion between what I want to do and what I’m sup­posed to do. I have to take small steps before I can take big ones. I have to go through the chan­nels, go about it the right way.”

–Anthony, New York City fourth grade teacher

Why did you decide to research home­work?
I teach in a very diverse school with a wide range of eth­nic­i­ties and fam­ily eco­nomic sta­tuses. Most of my stu­dents qual­ify for free lunch. Home­work in ele­men­tary grades was a no-brainer of a topic for me. I hear so much about home­work: sto­ries from my par­ents of kids up too late, guide­lines for how much to give each night from “above”, my “higher achiev­ing” stu­dents ask­ing me “why” they have to do home­work, the lack of qual­ity of the assign­ments, the time to check it tak­ing away from my time in prepar­ing bet­ter lessons, and mostly to me, how I’m not see­ing its pos­i­tive effects.

What are your school’s guide­lines on home­work?
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Today’s inter­vie­wee, Mike Fal­ick, a lawyer, is a cur­rent mem­ber and past-president of the Spring Branch Inde­pen­dent School Board of Trustees in Texas. Fal­ick, who grew up in this 32,000-student dis­trict in Hous­ton, moved back when he had his own chil­dren (now in 9th and 6th grades) so they could go to the same schools he went to. Falick’s wife also grew up in the Dis­trict. His blog was the 2008 weblog awards win­ner for best edu­ca­tion blog.

Inter­view with Mike Fal­ick
by Sara Bennett

“I drive my 6th grade son and his friends to and from Boy Scouts. One of his friends said, “Homework’s killing me. I’m work­ing 3 hours a night. When are you going to get rid of it?”

–Mike Fal­ick, School Board Mem­ber, Spring Branch, Texas

Why did you get involved in the School Board?
I wanted to have a mean­ing­ful impact on school pol­icy. I had been on a num­ber of par­ent com­mit­tees over the years, and I had been pres­i­dent of the PTA coun­cil, but I knew the only way I’d have sys­temic impact was if I became a School Board mem­ber. I ran and lost in 2002 and ran again and won in 2004. I ran unop­posed and was reelected in 2007. There are 7 peo­ple on the Board.

What kind of posi­tions do you take?
I’m a school reformer, but I’m not a grenade thrower. I try to bring every­one
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Today’s inter­view is with Jodie Lei­decker, a native Ken­tuck­ian and a grad­u­ate of Berea Col­lege, the first inter­ra­cial and coed­u­ca­tional col­lege in the South. Lei­decker lives in Berea, Ken­tucky, with her hus­band and their two chil­dren, a 9th grader and her cur­rently home-schooled 10-year-old. She pushed her local ele­men­tary school to insti­tute daily recess and is now work­ing on a state-wide ini­tia­tive to do the same. She is also try­ing to get her local schools to reduce home­work loads.

Inter­view with Jodie Lei­decker
by Sara Bennett

“I made a vow that I wouldn’t stop until every kid in the state gets recess“
–Jodie Lei­decker, par­ent, Berea, Kentucky

How is it that ele­men­tary school­child­ren don’t get recess?
In 1990, Ken­tucky passed the Ken­tucky Edu­ca­tion Reform Act, which put a lot more pres­sure on teach­ers to meet test scores. As a way of get­ting in a lit­tle more aca­d­e­mics, a lot of schools elim­i­nated recess. My own daugh­ter didn’t get recess reg­u­larly in ele­men­tary school at all – maybe a dis­cre­tionary recess here and there, but there was no guar­an­tee. Ken­tucky isn’t the only state where kids don’t get recess. This is a prob­lem nation-wide.

How did you decide to chal­lenge this?
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Over the last few months, I’ve con­ducted inter­views with edu­ca­tors and activists around the coun­try who’ve been on my radar as peo­ple who are doing their best to change pol­icy and prac­tice in their com­mu­ni­ties. I’m going to run the inter­views this week.

To kick off this series, I’m thrilled to intro­duce Chris­tine Hen­dricks, the prin­ci­pal of a K-4 school in Glen­rock, Wyoming, which imple­mented a no-homework prac­tice in the Fall of 2007. Hen­dricks, who started out teach­ing 24 years ago and has been a prin­ci­pal for the past 12, is the sin­gle mother of a college-age daugh­ter, a 7th-grade son, and a fifth-grade daugh­ter. This com­ing Fall, she is mov­ing to a new school in Fort Collins, Col­orado, where the staff is “eager to learn more about her no-homework practices.”

Inter­view with Chris­tine Hen­dricks
by Sara Bennett

“So many of our stu­dents are com­ing to school in sur­vival mode, and I think, as a school, we need to help let kids be kids.”

–Chris­tine Hen­dricks, prin­ci­pal, Grant Ele­men­tary, Glen­rock, Wyoming

What moti­vated you to elim­i­nate home­work at your school?
We had been strug­gling with the con­cept of home­work for awhile. There was a lot of con­flict between teach­ers and stu­dents and stu­dents and par­ents over home­work, we had par­ents ask­ing for home­work clubs, and I’d expe­ri­enced the prob­lem first-hand with my son, who’d been fight­ing me for years on doing his homework.

In the Fall of 2007, Kim Bevill of Brain Basics in Col­orado came and did a work­shop and she talked about how the research shows that home­work doesn’t work. We went to a break and about 10 of my teach­ers came and said to me that we need to get rid of home­work. And we just decided to try it.

Did you have the sup­port of all of the teach­ers?
There are 25 teach­ers in my school, and most of them bought into it from
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