Great article and I completely agree. Anymore, it seems like homework is just as hard on the parents (not conceptually, but in terms of time and effort). I see the problem as teachers can’t get through all the material they want to (or are expected to) during a day and so they send it home for the parents to teach.

I totally support parents being involved in their children’s education, but get us involved in the right way. I’d much rather get an email or a note saying “Susie is having trouble understanding the concept of negative numbers. Could you please work on this paper with her? I’d like to make sure she can keep up with the rest of the class.” That kind of homework makes sense to me.

And speaking of ‘coloring’ assignments, could someone with a strong background in learning theory, please, please, please explain to me the educational value of a word-search. I want to throw-up every time one of my kids brings home a word-search. What am I missing? These things seem to appear in their book bags every few weeks!

And I totally agree that assigning homework by amount of time is ludicrous. To paraphrase Gloria Gery, why not just do it by the pound?

As for color, maybe for some, but let’s not have all students coloring a great huge poster with four math facts on it!

However, my daughter’s school is 100% project based learning. She and her classmates work together in teams on the project and at the beginning of the project (usually once a month they’ll start a new project), they are given all of the work needed (including 60% of most projects being individual “benchmarks”). They then develop a work schedule for the project with due dates and “benchmarks”. In fact, her homework ends up being more targeted and a lot more time consuming than her friends at the more traditional high school. There is much more problem solving involved and active learning. My son’s college class uses these same techniques. In both cases they have to have a certain level of self direction. Least you say that these are skills they can only develop when they are older, the two had a 4th grade teacher who used this style of teaching very successfully. Both my kids told me just last month that they can remember almost everything they learned in that class. While they had a lot of homework, it was not “busy work” as you describe it.

In New York state, teachers are REQUIRED to assign homework of a half hour for each grade level. In other words, 6th graders should have 3 hours of homework a night, 12 graders should have 6 hours. This means that most of the mandated homework ends up being totally worthless because it is assigned because it is mandated, not necessarily out of any educational objectives.

One last comment. As a child, I remembered my addition tables based on color. Don’t ask me how it worked, but it does for certain learners. I have seen it work with foreign language instruction. Of course, it doesn’t work when you have the parents doing the work!

I definitely agree with you that homework is getting out of control. As a prospective math teacher, however, I do see the value in some homework. There are certain things that students need to simply memorize and practice is the best way to do that. An hour a night however is a bit ridiculous. I think that 20 minutes a night is a reasonable expectation for students. I am a huge fan of projects though and I will substitute them for traditional homework whenever possible. I believe projects are able to develop a much deeper understanding of material and are usually more fun than traditional homework. Hopefully this will tap into that motivation factor that you mentioned.

I love that you brought up the Finnish system. The more I read about their education system, the bigger fan I become. Here is a great article I found that summarizes their success.

http://bertmaes.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/why-is-education-in-finland-that-good-10-reform-principles-behind-the-success/

I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that D is in middle school. *boggle*.

But then I got a giggle out of the mental image of you at parent-teacher night. Its one thing when the parents come to you with a complaint about too much homework, and another again when said parent can quote an entire body of scientific research showing why (some portion of) said homework is ineffective and counter-productive…

Good luck!