Stop Homework

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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(I’ll be back after Win­ter Break, on Feb­ru­ary 22.)

I highly rec­om­mend Linda Darling-Hammond’s new book, The Flat World and Edu­ca­tion: How America’s Com­mit­ment to Equity Will Deter­mine Our Future. As Howard Gard­ner states in his blurb, “Any­one who desires a quan­tum leap in the edu­ca­tional achieve­ments of Amer­i­can stu­dents – as opposed to the ‘quick fix’ – must address the issues raised in this care­fully argued and well-documented work.”

The book is incred­i­bly detailed and researched and shows pre­cisely why edu­ca­tion needs to be over­hauled if it is to meet the needs of stu­dents and soci­ety. I par­tic­u­larly loved the chap­ter where Darling-Hammond looks at the ways in which Fin­land, Korea, and Sin­ga­pore over­hauled their schools and how their stu­dents have “cat­a­pulted from the bot­tom to the top of inter­na­tional rank­ings in stu­dent achieve­ment and attain­ment, grad­u­at­ing more than 90 per­cent of their young peo­ple from high school and send­ing large majori­ties through col­lege as well, far more than in the much wealth­ier United States.” (Page 192.)

All three sys­tems have:

*funded schools ade­quately and equitably

*elim­i­nated exam­i­na­tion sys­tems that had pre­vi­ous tracked stu­dents for mid­dle schools and restricted access to high schools

* revised national stan­dards and cur­ricu­lum to focus learn­ing goals on higher-order think­ing, inquiry, and inno­va­tion, as well as the inte­gra­tion of tech­nol­ogy through­out the curriculum

*devel­oped national teach­ing poli­cies that built and sub­si­dized strong teacher edu­ca­tion programs

*sup­ported ongo­ing teacher earn­ing by ensur­ing men­tor­ing for begin­ning teach­ers and pro­vid­ing 15 – 25 hours a week where teach­ers plan col­lab­o­ra­tively and engage in analy­ses of stu­dent learning

*pur­sued con­sis­tent, long-term reforms (Pages 192 – 193.)

Is Arne Dun­can reading?

In the Com­ments to I Hate Read­ing Logs, a mid­dle school spe­cial edu­ca­tion teacher wrote about the dif­fi­cul­ties teach­ers face. She calls her­self Anon­my­ous 2010, and I sug­gest search­ing for her many com­ments on that thread. Here’s her first:

Com­ment to I Hate Read­ing Logs
by Anony­mous 2010

I am an edu­ca­tor, and while I agree with some com­ments made by both par­ties on this web site, I truth­fully feel that if a par­ent has tremen­dous issues with pub­lic edu­ca­tion, they should sim­ply edu­cate their chil­dren at home. That com­ment is not meant to be mean or harsh. I cur­rently teach mid­dle school spe­cial edu­ca­tion, but I plan on stay­ing at home with my chil­dren through their ele­men­tary school years. I don’t have any chil­dren yet (I’m 26,) but I know that pub­lic school can only pro­vide so much indi­vid­ual atten­tion towards each child in one day. If I want my child to have the oppor­tunity to play, explore, be cre­ative, and have time to truly investi­gate all the ques­tions they have about the world, I will have to make it my job to stay home and pro­vide that sort of edu­ca­tion to them.

The sys­tem has changed tremen­dously since I was in ele­men­tary school.
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I was heart­ened to read the Com­ment posted by a teacher in response to the piece I ran two weeks ago, The Trou­ble With Kinder­garten.

I want you all to know that there are cor­ners of hope for early child­hood edu­ca­tion. I teach kinder­garten at a char­ter school in San Diego CA: the San Diego Coop­er­a­tive Char­ter. We believe that chil­dren learn best through a part­ner­ship between par­ents and educa­tors. My stu­dents learn through play and explo­ration, as chil­dren were designed to do. My job is to know each of them well enough to be able to struc­ture learn­ing expe­ri­ences that will best meet their needs. Just as in the main stream kinder­gartens I’ve expe­ri­enced, some of them read and write at the end of the school year, and some of them do not, but they all love school, have learned to nego­ti­ate and get along with their class­mates, and are excited about learn­ing. Our cur­ricu­lum is the CA state stan­dards, but our day is filled with blocks, guinea pigs, singing, gar­den­ing, clay, rain­forests, outer space, dress up, swings, sto­ries, draw­ing, and questions.

Our school, which serves chil­dren in grades K through 8th, was started by par­ents and edu­ca­tors who saw how chil­dren were being short changed by the typ­i­cal pub­lic schools. It was hard work, but oh so ful­fill­ing. If you want a bet­ter learn­ing expe­ri­ence for your child, and ALL the chil­dren, find out what you can do to cre­ate alter­na­tives. You’ll be glad you did.

I love Don­a­lyn Miller’s blog, The Book Whis­perer, as well as her book with the same name.

Her most recent post, Best Book Awards for Teach­ing to the Test, satir­i­cally offers an award to the writer whose book most effec­tively will help teach­ers pre­pare their stu­dents for tests:

Best Book Awards for Teach­ing to the Test

The Roots and Stems Award: Throw away your dic­tio­nary and con­sider using the SAT vocab­u­lary lists as your guide. The more obscure words you use in your book, the bet­ter. After all, words like “icon­o­clast” and “ven­er­a­ble” are hard to find in con­text at school.

The Venn Award: Can stu­dents com­pare and con­trast the char­ac­ters in your book using a graphic orga­nizer? Will your plot fit nicely on a pyra­mid? If my stu­dents can record every­thing they need to remem­ber about your book onto one work­sheet, you are a fron­trun­ner for this award.

The Field Trip Award: Can I use your book to show my stu­dents what a zoo, museum, or con­cert hall really looks like? How about recess? With bud­get cuts and a focus on standards-based cur­ricu­lum, the only way my stu­dents might have these expe­ri­ences is if you write about them.

The Mar­gin­a­lia Award: If my stu­dents can write reams of anno­ta­tion while read­ing your book, this is the award for you. Talk to your pub­lisher and ask them to widen the mar­gins. Two inches – the width of a small Post-It note– would be best.

The Dio­rama Award: Open House is just around the cor­ner, and I need some­thing to hang on the walls. Besides, know­ing that a project is due is the only thing that moti­vates my stu­dents to read. Does your book lend itself to a wanted poster, cereal box, or paper bag report? If I can inte­grate tech­nol­ogy by assign­ing a power point project, I will use your book every year. Since all we do in class is drill on test-taking skills, stu­dents will have to com­plete this project at home. Con­sider includ­ing instruc­tions for parents.

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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