http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/07/gaithersburg-elementary-s_n_1865859.html

Quote :

Gaithersburg Elementary School In Maryland Gets Rid Of Homework In Favor Of Reading Time
Posted: 09/07/2012 5:42 pm Updated: 09/07/2012 5:42 pm



Instead of assigning homework, teachers at Gaithersburg Elementary School in Maryland are asking students to spend 30 minutes a night reading, Fox 5 reports.

After conducting a review of work students were sent home with, Principal Stephanie Brant and her staff concluded the majority of assignments were worksheets that did not relate to what students were studying in the classroom.

“It was just: we were giving students something because we felt we had to give them something,” Brant told the station.

The principal, who joined the school’s staff two years ago, procured permission from the school district to abolish homework in favor of reading time.

Most parents support the no-homework policy. Luz Gomez, whose son is a third-grader at the school, told Fox 5: "When [my son] comes home, he has relaxing time. And I think kids need that relaxing time."

The Washington Examiner reports that elsewhere, in Vienna, Va., Cunningham Park Elementary School instituted a “Homework Bill of Rights” that prevents teachers from grading homework and assigning it over weekends or holidays.

"Who are we as educators to dictate how families spend their private time?" Principal Rebecca Baenig asked in a presentation to the Fairfax County Public School Board.

According to the Examiner, South Lakes High School in Reston, Va., will implement a similar bill of rights this year that, among other things, prohibits homework from counting for more than 10 percent of a student’s grade. The policy echoes one that was rolled out last June by the Los Angeles Unified School District, the country's second largest school system.

Brant’s experiment at Gaithersburg has so far seen mixed results. The Examiner reports that the percentage of third graders passing the Maryland School Assessment reading test declined from 76 percent to 64 percent this spring. Meanwhile, the fourth-grade pass rate remained the same, while fifth graders scored at 84 percent proficiency, up from 81 percent the year before.

Still, the scores are impressive given 70 percent of Gaithersburg’s students come from non-English speaking households and 82 percent qualify for free or subsidized lunch, according to Fox 5.

I can't say that I give a damn about homework, and I do know that it's become a joke, MAYBE the school will issue it, MAYBE they won't, MAYBE the kids will do it, it doesn't matter if they do or not, only on rare occasions are they told if they don't do their worksheets they will flunk their classes. But as far back as I've seen kids' bring home their homework, it IS just busy work that most of the time they can't even do anyway because they have been taught they don't need to read the text books in the first place, assuming they even GET text books. At least if they were just issued reading time they would be getting SOME progress made.

Also, I can't help flashing on Amelia Earhart, who when she was in high school, started a petition to get her English teacher removed because she didn't believe she was qualified for her job. The petition was turned down but she WAS offered the chance to opt out of English class and instead read in the school's library during that time, and she accomplished 3 times as much work doing that as she would've if she'd stayed in the class.

30 minutes of reading is still homework, so I don't see how any of this is called no-homework. I see the benefits of homework and I think good educators can use homework to gauge how involved parents are in their child's studies.

But I have been the kid with a stack of homework with out of touch parents and sitting in my room crying all the time because I just wanted to figure it all out. For the most part, my elementary teachers were all shit and when I came in with it completed, but all wrong, they didn't do anything. So, in my case, no homework would have been the best thing for me because I would have been less defeated when thinking of studies and may have drawn more from the actual lessons.

Terrific, I never did homework, but I loved to read so that would have suited me wonderfully well. Home work here has gotten out of control, little kids are getting 1 to 3 hours of the stuff. I advocate using common sense and teaching the kids in school not at home!

I'm all for encouraging kids to read and just assigning busy work to be done outside of class doesn't sound very productive but this sounds like a great way for our youth to fall even further behind the rest of the world in math and science. Homework should be reinforcement for what was covered during class.

Sigh..............................

Alan Smithee wrote:

I'm all for encouraging kids to read and just assigning busy work to be done outside of class doesn't sound very productive but this sounds like a great way for our youth to fall even further behind the rest of the world in math and science. Homework should be reinforcement for what was covered during class.

This generation is fucking doomed. Seriously.

Seriously.