Guest Blogger: An Unsuccessful Organizing Attempt by a Mother/School Psychologist

Today’s guest blogger is Nini Engel, a school psychologist for almost twenty years in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area. Nini, a mother of three daughters, ages 18, 15, and 11, was appalled to find that her middle daughter’s new high school assigned upwards of 4 hours of homework per night.

An Unsucessful Attempt
Nini Engel, Ed.M

Last fall, my middle daughter started ninth grade at a private, preparatory high school. Within weeks, I was concerned that she was spending four to five hours, Monday through Thursday nights on homework. Sundays were also full of homework. When I contacted the principal last September, she responded quickly and wrote that the school’s policy of 30 minutes per class per night, added up to about four hours per night.

The school did have the ninth grade students log their time for two weeks. At parent teacher conferences in November, we were presented with the data. A pie chart showed that the average child spent three hours per night on homework. The “average” child also spent eight hours per night sleeping. When I countered that my child hadn’t had an eight-hour block of sleep on a weeknight for the past two months, they admitted that weekend sleep totals had been included in the data.Continue reading “Guest Blogger: An Unsuccessful Organizing Attempt by a Mother/School Psychologist”

Wyoming Elementary School Eliminates Homework

I just learned from the principal of Grant Elementary School in Glenrock, Wyoming, that her school is implementing a no homework practice. The school came to that decision after examining homework and having discussions with Kim Bevill of Brain Basics, who provided them with materials about homework. Kim, a dynamo, teaches social studies and psychology in a Colorado high school, owns and operate Gray Matters (whose goal is to “re-ignite learning in every classroom using brain-compatible curriculum to further academic achievement”), hosts a yearly conference entitled Brain Basics, and, most importantly, is a passionate advocate against homework. I have enjoyed many conversations with Kim this year.

Here’s the principal’s letter to the parents explaining the new policy:

Dear Parents,

Over the years we have seen that with the increased pressure in meeting AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress), homework has also increased. This increase may have come in response to the call for higher expectations, comparisons of American student performance with the children from European and Asian countries, and the pressures created with state testing programs such as PAWS.

With that being said, the research is unable to produce evidence that homework improves student performance. The research is telling us that if we want to improve attitudes, mental and physical health and academic performance, we as parents need to promote the following 5 things:

• Children need to play outside for at least an hour after the school day. They should be at the point where they are almost sweating.
• Dinner with your family every night or at least 4 times a week. This is shown to decrease eating disorders in females, decrease smoking and drug abuse rates in males and recent research suggests it teaches life-long good eating habits—more fruits and vegetables.
• Early to bed. Research suggests that children need 10-12 hours of sleep a day to be ready to learn.
• Limited television, video games and computer time, especially an hour before bed time.
• Reading time every evening. This is a great time for the whole family to sit and read together.

Continue reading “Wyoming Elementary School Eliminates Homework”

Los Angeles area K-6 Private School Eliminates Most Homework

A Jewish day school in Los Angeles, Temple Israel of Hollywood, has basically abolished homework for its K-6 students. According to an article in The LA Times, Eileen Horowitz, the head of the school, stated,

“It became apparent that some of what we were doing was silly. Why should our children spend time doing fill-in-the-blank assignments or writing spelling words five times?” She is confident that her students will acquire all the good study habits they’ll need from working on long-term projects inside and outside the classroom, from their daily reading and from other assignments they’ll still be required to do occasionally.

* * *

“Maybe they can build a treehouse or go for a bike ride around the neighborhood,” Horowitz said. “Let’s give them a chance to play. Let’s give them a chance to dream.”

Guest Blogger: Inspiration from a Parent

At the end of the last school year, Sharon Stochel, a parent from a Jewish day school in the New York area, was invited to give a short presentation on homework to her school principal, teachers, and staff. Throughout the school year, Sharon had approached the faculty about some of the problems with homework and the school took her concerns very seriously. At that same meeting, another parent gave a pro-homework presentation.

In the coming months, Sharon will let us know what the school decided to do with the information it learned at that meeting and whether any policy changes are implemented.

Parent Presentation on Homework
by Sharon Stochel

Thank you…for inviting me to discuss with you the ever increasing debate over an issue concerning today’s parents, teachers and children alike: homework. I applaud the school’s effort to re-evaluate and examine their current HW system.

During the past several years, numerous books have been published and articles written exploring the topic of HW as the concern and desire grow to keep up academically with our global economic competetitors, today’s demanding job market, and with top schools and universities. One of the most important facts I want to stress is that as of today, as explained by Alfie Kohn , the author of “The HW Myth”, is that “NO study has ever, EVER, demonstrated ANY academic benefits to doing homework for kids in elementary school and little, if any, value to kids in High School.” He goes on to say that ironically, “more and more homework is being piled on to younger and younger children when research supporting HW isn’t just dubious – it is non existent.”

Let’s take a moment to debunk just a couple of myths about HW.

Continue reading “Guest Blogger: Inspiration from a Parent”

From My Mailbox: Letter From an Eighth Grade Teacher Requesting Help

The other day I received the following email from a teacher in a private school in Toronto, Canada.

Teachers: She’s really looking for advice and support from you, so please help her out by posting a comment.

Dear Sara,
As a veteran English teacher, I totally concur with your views about homework. I do not assign daily homework, only longer term projects in which there is student choice and which serve as extensions to the curriculum – endeavors designed to take them out of the classroom and apply skills and knowledge.

So here’s the problem. Parents in our school are demanding more homework. Our principal is leaning on us to assign more homework, according to the ridiculous formula of 10 minutes per grade level, i.e. grade 8 should be doing 80 minutes per night. It’s like these kids have to be putting in a set amount of time chained to their desks. By the way, our school runs from 8:45 to 4:10 – a very long day.

I refuse to assign hateful content questions and word lists to fill this arbitrary homework quota.

Monday on our curriculum night, when I do my spiel before the parents, I am ready to try to educate them on the homework issue. Any ideas?

Welcome Back to Stophomework.com

Welcome back to Stop Homework. I’ve enjoyed the respite from blogging, just as many of you have enjoyed a homework-free summer.

Over the summer, I received a grant from a non-profit foundation to help fund my stop homework project. This is fantastic news, because it allows me to devote more time to helping all of you change homework policy and practice.

Also, the paperback version of The Case Against Homework arrived in bookstores last week. This is also great news, because the book is now more affordable.

And one more piece of good news: Washington Post reporter, Jay Mathews, who calls himself “Mr. Homework,” wrote an article in early August calling for an end to homework for elementary school students. Considering that earlier last year Mathews denounced the message of The Case Against Homework, it was exciting to see him change his mind. Let’s hope other pro-homework people change their minds as well.

On Vacation for the Summer

I am taking a vacation from blogging until September, but please remember to come back then.

I started this site last August with the hopes of keeping up a dialogue on the problems with homework. Since then, I’ve heard from hundreds, or possibly thousands, of parents, students, educators, and mental health professionals. I want to particularly thank those who have taken the time to post comments and share their experiences and the many guest bloggers who have gone even a step further.

In the fall, I plan to have a page on the website of sample letters you have sent to your children’s schools and teachers. So please send me anything you’re willing to have me post. I’ll be happy to keep your identity anonymous. And, if you have any seen any changes in homework policy this year, please let me know about that as well, either by emailing me or posting a comment.

Finally, I just finished a book that I think every elementary school teacher and every English teacher should read: The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers. You might want to read it yourself and give a copy of it to your child’s teacher, along with The Case Against Homework. I can’t imagine teachers reading both those books and not revamping at least some of their homework practices.

Enjoy the summer.

Boing Boing Raves About The Case Against Homework

On the highly popular website, boingboing.net, Cory Doctorow gives a rave review to The Case Against Homework. He also discusses his own schooling:

I was lucky enough to attend excellent, publicly funded alternative schools through my educational career. We had homework, but we were also given a lot of time for free play, and a lot of free rein to choose our subjects and design our curriculum — I remember spending half of the fourth grade working my way through two or three math textbooks and the other half designing and writing a parody of MAD Magazine, to the exclusion of all other work. The next grade I followed the class for most of the semester, except when I didn’t. In high-school, I took a year off, moved to a little house in Mexico, and wrote stories. All of this stuff contributed more to my learning than any amount of worksheets and homework ever could have.

Coincidentally, I attended the same publicly funded alternative school–SEED in Toronto, Canada–albeit many years before Cory. And, like Cory, I attribute my nontraditional schooling (including the end of high school, college at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and law school at Rutgers, Newark), to my love of learning. All of those schools allowed students to figure out what they wanted to study, find mentors for themselves, and engage in independent study. I only wish today’s students were allowed that same time to engage in pursuits of their own choosing.

China Moves Away from Drilling and Testing

Here’s an interesting article from Education Week which discusses how educators in China are trying to move away from the rote memorization that has characterized much of the education system. “China’s government is…seeking to inject more American-style flexibility into its math and science curriculum, by placing less emphasis on exams and more focus on cultivating students’ creative and analytical skills, which school officials believe are lacking. Chinese teachers are being encouraged to move away from lectures, drills, and memorization in class, and to invite more discussion and student-led activity. Schools are adding more elective courses and independent research projects. Textbooks are being rewritten.”

Continue reading “China Moves Away from Drilling and Testing”

Guest Blogger: Story From the Trenches–Part 3

Here’s an update from Lisa Grady, the parent from southern California who writes about what she’s doing to try to change homework policy in her fourth-grader’s public school.

Organizing Other Parents (Continued)
by Lisa Grady

In my previous blogs, I have chronicled our group’s progress in reducing homework ( I would like to say eliminating but our group has varying degrees of support for this idea and let’s face it, striving to reduce the homework poses fewer obstacles initially). I last wrote about a written presentation we gave to the fourth grade teachers and the principal. While our offer to create a dialog on the issue of homework has yet to receive an answer, the homework has been reduced or at least shifted from home to class time. Actually, it dawns on me that we have received an answer in that we made our request in April and there are only three weeks left of school….

In addition to reducing the homework to more manageable levels, the school distributed a survey. You might be initially encouraged about this, as we were, until you actually see the survey and discover that you have to put your child’s name on the survey and then proceed to answer questions about whether you are required to sit next to your child during homework in order to ensure its completion or whether you feel your child’s teacher gives an appropriate amount of homework, etc. Another survey question was whether outside activities interfer with homework. Wouldn’t a more appropriate question be “Does homework interfere with your children’s other important activities? Hmmm, I can tell where this survey is going!

Continue reading “Guest Blogger: Story From the Trenches–Part 3”