Category Archives: General

I won’t be posting again until September, but I will be answering email, so please feel free to write me with your questions, concerns, and requests for speaking engagements. If you’re looking for an end-of-the-year gift for your children’s teachers, consider giving The Case Against Homework. When teachers and administrators read it, they think about,Continue reading “Highlights of the School Year 2007-2008”

One of my favorite education bloggers, Donalyn Miller, has a recent post on the problems with the Reading First Program. In case you don’t make it all the way through this post, this is her conclusion: “We don’t need another reading program; we need to go back to the first reading program—connecting children with books.Continue reading ““Reading First” Puts Reading Last”

Both the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times ran articles this weekend on the amount of stress faced by high schoolers. The Wall Street Journal reported that 11th grade has become a nightmare year for students hoping to go to elite colleges. As to the homework of one 11th grader, it wrote: “AsContinue reading “Media Focuses on High School Stress”

Here’s an email I received from an adult who dropped out of school because of too much homework. The writer, now 35, told me he went on to get an associates degree, joined the military, worked as a flight attendant, and is now a contract worker, using skills he picked up in the military: IContinue reading “From My Mailbox: “I dropped out of school because of homework””

About a year ago, I posted a guest blog entry by Chris Elssasser, an associate professor of education at Pepperdine University, in which he analyzed how much time high school students really have and asked what students should give up for homework. A middle school teacher responded, writing that students have plenty of time forContinue reading “Middle School Teacher Says There’s Plenty of Time for Homework”