Stop Homework

I just learned from Chris­tine Hen­dricks, the prin­ci­pal of Grant Ele­men­tary School in Glen­rock, Wyoming, that her school, which imple­mented a no-homework prac­tice in Sep­tem­ber, is going to con­tinue its prac­tice for the fore­see­able future. After a trial run, and sur­vey­ing the par­ents, Hen­dricks shared her find­ings with the School Board. Among other things, the sur­vey found that chil­dren had more time to play, sleep, read, and eat din­ner with their fam­i­lies and spent less time watch­ing TV. Chil­dren also had an improved atti­tude towards going to school and par­ents found them­selves in fewer con­flicts with their children.

Here’s the School’s report on its no-homework prac­tice:

Home­work Sur­vey Sum­mary
Grant Ele­men­tary School

After much thought and col­lab­o­ra­tion from the staff, Grant Ele­men­tary decided to take a bold step. We decided to imple­ment the No Home­work prac­tice. A let­ter was drafted and sent home to par­ents explain­ing our deci­sion. Here’s the let­ter.

Dur­ing Parent/Teacher con­fer­ences, we asked par­ents to com­plete a sur­vey con­cern­ing our newly imple­mented prac­tice. A total of 72 par­ents responded. The results are as follows:

A.) 59 sur­veys were returned that par­ents liked the No Home­work prac­tices this year.

Of these 59 sur­veys the fol­low­ing num­bers indi­cate par­ents felt an increase or improve­ment by not hav­ing homework.

• 45 sur­veys reported an increase played out­side
• 41 sur­veys reported increase din­ner with the fam­ily
• 36 sur­veys reported increase going to bed early
• 22 sur­veys reported improve­ments lim­ited tele­vi­sion, video and com­puter time
• 49 sur­veys reported increase read­ing at home
• 40 sur­veys reported less con­flicts with your child
• 43 sur­veys reported improve­ment bet­ter atti­tude towards school

B.) 13 sur­veys were returned that par­ents do not like our home­work practices.

Even though these sur­veys don’t like our home­work prac­tices they still reported there was an increase or improve­ment in the following:

• 2 sur­veys reported an increase played out­side
• 2 sur­veys reported increase din­ner with the fam­ily
• 3 sur­veys reported increase going to bed early
• 2 sur­veys reported improve­ments lim­ited tele­vi­sion, video and com­puter time
• 3 sur­veys reported increase read­ing at home
• 6 sur­veys reported less con­flicts with your child
• 2 sur­veys reported improve­ment bet­ter atti­tude towards school

Due to the over­whelm­ing pos­i­tive feed­back from the sur­veys, the gen­eral con­sen­sus feels that the no home­work pol­icy seem to be work­ing well in pro­mot­ing pos­i­tive fam­ily time in the evenings. Chil­dren are read­ing more and have a bet­ter atti­tude towards school. Home­work is still pro­vided for those stu­dents who are mak­ing choices in the class­room to not com­plete work or if par­ents are request­ing it. One con­cern was that home­work helps par­ents know what is going on in the class­room, a pos­si­ble solu­tion might be a weekly or monthly newslet­ter home to par­ents. Over­all the con­sen­sus from the sur­veys was very pos­i­tive. We will con­tinue to imple­ment the No Home­work prac­tice and mon­i­tor the suc­cess of our practice.

Posted in category Resources, Success Stories on November 14, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Permanent Link | 10 Comments »