GreatSchools Posts Several Articles on Homework

The website, Great Schools, just published a series of articles on homework, including an interview with me.

When I was doing research for my book, I found that everyone, including the National PTA and the National Education Association referred to the 10-minute rule, but I never did discover its origin. But in reading the pieces on GreatSchools, I discovered that so-called homework guru, Harris Cooper, made it up out of whole cloth:

So how can you know if your child is doing the right amount? Who came up with that 10-minutes-per-grade rule that’s become the accepted norm? (And if that is the magic number, why is my neighbor’s 8-year-old daughter doing two-plus hours a night?)

The oft-bandied rule on homework quantity — 10 minutes a night per grade (starting from between 10 to 20 minutes in first grade) — is ubiquitous. Indeed, go to the National Education Association’s website or the national Parent Teacher Association’s website, and 10 minutes per grade is the recommended amount for first through 12th grade.

But where did it come from? “The source [of that figure] was a teacher who walked up to me after a workshop I did about 25 years ago,” says Cooper. “I’d put up a chart showing middle school kids who reported doing an hour to an hour and a half were doing just as well as high schoolers doing two hours a night. The teacher said, ‘That sounds like the 10-minute rule.’” He adds with a laugh, “I stole the idea.”

Heritage Academy Christian School’s Homework Policy

I was thrilled to see that the Heritage Academy Christian School in Los Altos, California, suggests that their parents read this blog and highlights some of my posts. The School’s homework policy states:

HOMEWORK POLICY

Elementary school children need family time and play time at home. In the upper grades, homework may include nightly reading, necessary review, preparing for the next day’s discussion, project work, or studying for a test. In the lower grades homework may include reading, studying for a spelling test, or finishing a math page.
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Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen Calls for End to Homework in Elementary School

(Welcome back and thank you so very much for your generous donations to Stop Homework)

Over a decade ago, the economist and Nobel Prize winner, Amartya Sen, formed the Partichi trust to examine the issues of primary education and health in India. Last month, he released the Partichi Education Report II, which recommended ending homework in elementary school and focusing on reading, writing, and arithmetic during school hours. The report also stressed the importance of recognizing and addressing the role of class barriers in educational under-achievement.

According to thehindu.com,

Prof. Sen said: “A somewhat counter-productive overloaded curriculum, incomplete education during school hours and necessity of homework are the reasons that there is a perceived necessity of private tuition since the parents try to supplement at home the education which could not be completed in school.”

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New Feature–Stop Homework Urtak

(I’ll be back in 2010. Have a wonderful holiday and please don’t forget to put Stop Homework on your holiday giving list. It’s really important for the future of this project. Read how to give a donation here.)

I have just added a nifty feature called Urtak to my sidebar. It’s a collaborative polling tool, where anyone can ask questions (yes or no questions only) and then immediately see the results. Check it out, add your own questions, and find out a little more about the readers of Stop Homework. And, while you’re at it, take a look at the general interest urtak.

Middle School in Missouri Tries No Homework Policy

According to an article in South East Missourian, a middle school in Bloomfield, Missouri, is trying out a no homework policy. After the principal noticed that poor grades were a result of either low homework scores or failure to turn in homework assignments, she decided to see whether a change in policy, allowing for less lecture time, more hands-on teaching, and no homework, would improve student success.

According to the School District Superintendent, if students receive instruction and then do 8-10 problems and still don’t get it, doing 10 more problems won’t help. “At the point we need to re-teach,” he said, “more help at the classroom level will really benefit those students who don’t finish their work at home.”

More from Suburban Chicago

In October, I posted a piece by Mary Sullivan, a freelancer writer and mother to two fifth graders and a seventh grader in suburban Chicago. She has her own webpage, Too Much Homework, where she recently wrote about opting out of homework after she read the stories that I had written about a family in Calgary, Canada, who opted out of homework.

Mary wrote to Harris Cooper–sometimes called “homework guru” and the person I hold responsible for 10-minutes of homework per grade per night even though his own research doesn’t show any correlation in the early grades to homework. Cooper told her:

I have no objection to this policy. I tell parents that if they have done their homework (e.g., provided a proper studying environment, seen to it that their child was doing homework diligently so any problems were with the amount or quality of assignments and not with study habits) and assignments are still a problem in their household they should approach the teacher about reductions.

You can read the rest of what he had to say, other comments about opting out of homework, and post your own comments here.

How to Have a Homework-Reduced 2010

If you’re hoping that 2010 will be a better school year, homework-wise, why not give your child’s teacher a copy of The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It? If s/he reads it over the holiday break, s/he just might return with a new, informed, and changed attitude. At the same time, why not pick up a few extra copies and give them to those in charge of school policy?

And, if you’re thinking of making a year-end donation to a cause, please make a tax-deductible donation to Stop Homework by sending a check to:

Alliance for Childhood
P.O. Box 444
College Park, MD 20741

Be sure to earmark your check for “Stop Homework” in the memo line. If your donation is $100 or more, drop me a line with your address and I’ll send you a signed copy of The Case Against Homework.

Stop Homework is supported by a small grant from a private foundation. It’s crucial that the funder know that individuals like you support the work of Stop Homework and rely on it for advice, information, resources, support, etc. An outpouring of support from readers of this blog–no matter the size of the donation–would help ensure the longevity of this project. So even if you can send only a few dollars, please do so.

Even More from Fed-Up Mom

This is the sixth post by FedUp Mom, the mother of a fifth grader. FedUp Mom’s daughter used to attend a public school in suburban Philadelphia, but this year FedUp Mom moved her to a private Quaker school, hoping for a more relaxed environment. You can read her other posts here, here, here, here and here.

(If you want to write about your experiences for Stop Homework, please drop me a line.)

Gifted, schmifted
by FedUp Mom

Looking back at my daughter’s experience in the public school, I think her problems began when she got high scores on the standardized tests and was labelled “gifted”. I have become increasingly skeptical of the following oft-repeated slogans:

1.) “Gifted kids are bored because the work is too easy.” Not necessarily. Sometimes gifted kids are bored because the work is just too boring.

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Guest Blogger – School Without Grades in Jefferson County, Colorado

Today’s guest blogger, Rick Posner, was the assistant principal at the Open School in Jefferson County, Colorado, from 1999-2001, where he taught for 30 years. His new book, Lives of Passion, School of Hope: How One Public School Ignites a Lifelong Love of Learning, describes the school, which unlike most others, has no set curriculum or course of study and allows students to set their own goals and be self-directed learners. Posner looks at what happened to Open School alumni and shows how the graduates of this 39-year-old school went on to lead productive, interesting lives. The book is well worth reading; those of us who don’t live in Jefferson County, Colorado, are left to wonder why this type of school doesn’t exist in every community in the country. Be sure to visit Posner’s website.

Free At Last: Living Without Grades
By Rick Posner Ph.D.

Believe it or not, there is a public pre K-12 school in a very conservative school district in Colorado that has thrived without grades or credits for almost 40 years. Yes, it’s true. There are hundreds of alumni from the Jefferson County Open School (a public school that is open to anyone who lives in Colorado’s largest school district) who have become happy, well-rounded, productive adults without one single A, F or 12.5 unit designation on their school records. It may serve as a further surprise to learn that most of them have gone to college and done quite well in conventional, graded systems, and that, more startling, their college completion level is twice that of the national average.

Here’s what they say about the inhibiting aspects of grades and credits:

Grades and credits kill the inherent love and joy of learning that we are born with by making the process of learning competitive and impersonal. With grades there are always winners and losers, and the standards are

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The Young Brain

Over the summer, I read a wonderful op-ed in The New York Times, Your Baby Is Smarter Than You Think, by Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology at Berkeley. She explains why unstructured play and discovery is so important for babies and young children. She writes:

Babies and young children are designed to explore, and they should be encouraged to do so.

The learning that babies and young children do on their own, when they carefully watch an unexpected outcome and draw new conclusions from it, ceaselessly manipulate a new toy or imagine different ways that the world might be, is very different from schoolwork. Babies and young children can learn about the world around them through all sorts of real-world objects and safe replicas, from dolls to cardboard boxes to mixing bowls, and even toy cellphones and computers. Babies can learn a great deal just by exploring the ways bowls fit together or by imitating a parent talking on the phone.

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