After years of teachers piling it on, there's a new movement to ... Abolish homework

By Vicki Haddock, San Francisco Chronicle Insight Staff Writer, October 8, 2006

High school teacher Phil Lyons has become a heretic: He refuses to assign homework. At Palo Alto's Gunn High School, where he teaches world history and advanced-placement economics, his no-homework policy leaves many new students anxious and their parents aghast, at least initially.

"At back-to-school night every hand goes up, and they bombard me with various versions of the same question -- 'What are you doing?' " Lyons says. "This year I pre-empted it by opening with an explanation of why homework is a failed approach, and why their kids will actually learn more without it."

He also noted that his students achieved a 94 percent pass rate on the advanced-placement test, one of the highest in the country -- and a success rate that has risen since he jettisoned homework assignments.

Like Lyons, a growing minority of educators and researchers are calling for an end to homework as we know it -- and some are out to abolish it altogether.

Vigorous scrutiny of the research, they argue, fails to demonstrate tangible benefits of homework, particularly for elementary students. What it does instead, they contend, is rob children of childhood, play havoc with family life and asphyxiate their natural curiosity. Learning becomes a mind-numbing grind rather than an engaging adventure.

In an era of more rigorous academic standards and vertebrae-straining backpacks, most American schools seem to be assigning more homework in earlier grades. For two decades, experts have propelled this trend with dire warnings that students in nations such as Japan are besting Americans because they diligently do more homework.

Even the youngest students have begun sweating over worksheets. In Prince George County, Md., a school superintendent famously suggested that preschools were frittering away time better spent on academics by having their little ones nap. In the Bay Area, tutoring companies began tailoring services to a new pool of clients who had just mastered tying shoelaces.

An AP-AOL Learning Services Poll released earlier this year showed that most parents and teachers say children are getting the "right amount" of homework -- an average of from 79 minutes per night in elementary school to 105 in high school. And those who were dissatisfied said they preferred not less but more.

The perceived failures of creative spelling and "there-is-no-right-or-wrong-answer" math have made Americans wary of any newfangled educational fad that seems to encourage slacking. No homework, indeed.

Yet a rebellion against homework is brewing.

"The preponderance of research clearly shows that homework for elementary students does not make a difference in student achievement. It is hard to believe that a strategy used so extensively has no foundation," principal David Ackerman of Oak Knoll Elementary in Menlo Park wrote in a letter to parents this autumn as he put the brakes on homework.

Two new books read like manifestos against what authors consider an avalanche of unproductive take-home assignments. Their titles lay their beliefs on the line: the research critique "The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing" by Alfie Kohn, and the more anecdotal "The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It" by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish.

At the same time, an international comparison by two Penn State professors has concluded that junior high students who scored highest in math tended to come from countries where teachers assign relatively little homework -- including Denmark, the Czech Republic and (take note) Japan. Conversely, the lowest-scoring students came from countries where teachers assign tons of homework, such as Iran, Thailand and Greece.

"It almost seems as though the more homework a nation's teachers assign, the worse the nation's students do," concluded researchers Gerald LeTendre and David Baker, who found Americans in the mid-range in the amount of homework assigned and in achievement.

Both sides in the homework wars tend to sling around the phrase "studies show" to bolster their arguments, but pity the poor parent or teacher who starts as an agnostic in search of answers. It's a daunting task, pitting dueling methodologies against sparring statistics.

"Researchers have been far from unanimous in their assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of homework as an instructional technique," summarized the Journal of Educational Psychology. "Their assessments ranged from homework having positive effects, no effects, or complex effects to the suggestion that the research was too sparse or poorly conducted" to say.

Case in point: the glowing assessment of math homework that sprang from a 1997 study by Julian Betts, professor of economics at UC San Diego. He concluded that schools would do more to improve student learning by assigning more homework than by pursuing more costly alternatives -- say, for example, lowering class size or hiring more experienced teachers. He even reported that time spent on homework "appears as effective as time spent in the classroom." In fact, Betts predicted that if teachers doubled the average amount of math homework in grades 7 to 11, it would advance students almost two full grade equivalents and ultimately boost their wages by 25 percent.

At the other end of the spectrum, when two Harvard scientists tracked how well students were doing in university science classes and attempted to correlate that to the amount of homework they did in high school, they concluded that homework alone made no difference.

Proponents cite evidence suggesting that homework instills responsibility, and they note that learning would proceed at a sluggish pace if classtime were consumed with students reading novels, memorizing vocabuary or writing research papers -- assignments better accomplished at home.

Opponents counter with evidence that homeworks' dictatorial nature undercuts responsibility, generates family conflict, and takes away time for creative play and natural learning.

The experts can't even agree on whether the quantity of assigned homework has increased, decreased or stayed the same in recent years.

The most widely regarded analysis of the effect of homework has been done by Harris Cooper of Duke University, who synthesized dozens of studies over time. He just published his most recent conclusions, based on updated research. The six studies he deemed most reliable, which compared similar students who were assigned homework with those assigned no homework, found that in the short-term, homework boosted scores on unit tests of the material, whether it was second-graders learning number placement or high school seniors studying Shakespeare.

No great surprise there -- but does it stick over time? Do students with homework achieve better overall mastery of the subject down the road?

In 12 other larger studies that linked the amount of homework to how well students perform on national academic tests -- taking into account other factors that might influence the connection -- he reports that 11 found a positive link between time spent on homework and long-term achievement.

Among research without such tight adjustments for other factors, more than 70 percent found that homework seemed to have a positive effect, but age made a huge difference. In fact, the benefit was twice as large for high school students than it was for junior high students, and twice as large again for junior high students than for elementary school students.

But at a tipping point, too much homework actually seemed to have a negative effect.

"We're waiting for the absolutely perfect study in which kids are randomly assigned to do or not do homework for their entire academic careers, and then we'll see for sure who did best -- but don't hold your breath for that one," Harris said.

Until then, he's sticking by his old recommendation -- used by many schools in the Bay Area and across the country -- that teachers assign up to 10 minutes per night per grade. In other words, a fourth-grader should be doing about 40 minutes per night and a 12th-grader about two hours.

Homework hasn't always been a given. It emerged in the national consciousness in the late 1800s, as more Americans continued school past the eighth grade. Even in its infancy, homework was controversial, as Steve Schlossman and Brian Gill showed in the American Journal of Education.

The practice was simply "barbarous," declared Ladies Home Journal editor Edward Bok in a 1900 editorial, "A National Crime at the Feet of American Parents." Shortly thereafter, California advocates persuaded the state to ban homework for students under the age of 15 and restrict it for older ones. Their argument: better to let them play in the sunshine.

By the 1930s, reformers were publicly likening homework to child labor. The American Child Health Association tagged both as leading killers of children who had contracted tuberculosis and heart disease.

But at every historical moment when criticism of homework began to approach a crescendo, a national crisis roused the public to support it. In 1957 it was the Soviet launch of the satellite Sputnik. In 1983 it was the release of the report "A Nation at Risk."

And of course, much of the debate over the existence and quantity of homework ignores the obvious question: quality. Not all assignments are created equal -- some are busy work, others inspired.

At this point, the only common ground is that everybody seems to agree on the value of reading at home for pleasure, whether the reader is in first grade or high school.

Of course, what works for the academically high-octane students at Gunn High, in the shadow of Stanford University, may not work elsewhere. It's a point Lyons concedes, although he reasons that disadvantaged students juggling jobs are even less likely to do -- much less benefit from -- homework.

"It all comes down to whether adults trust us to learn," said Gunn senior Akila Subramanian. "Having no homework lets you find your own motivation."

It sounds good -- and yet invites the inevitable question: What if that doesn't work?

Should students write obituaries for themselves?

By Lisa Schencker, Bakersfield Californian, October 25, 2006

Natalie Chamblee doesn't want her 13-year-old stepdaughter thinking about death.

So she was shocked when she described her latest class assignment: writing her own obituary.

"They're making them think about stuff they shouldn't be thinking about at 13 years old," Chamblee said.

Meanwhile, the principal of the eighth-grader's school, Buttonwillow Elementary, said the assignment wasn't about death. Principal Penny Madrid said the assignment was intended to help students set goals for their lives and write creatively.

It's an assignment teachers nationwide have been handing out for years.

The question: Should students be asked to write their own obituaries?

A morbid task

Chamblee thinks such an assignment has no place in school.

Death is a touchy topic for her and her step-daughter, Kristal Chamblee. Kristal, she said, spent nearly a month in the hospital during sixth grade. Since then, she's undergone several surgeries for an esophagus condition.

"She's not a kid who should be talking about death," Chamblee said. "It's a sensitive subject for Kristal or for any kid to talk about."

Chamblee said she doesn't see how such a lesson helps students academically. Instead, she believes it frightens them.

"I'm older than her, and I don't want to think about that now," Chamblee said.

Barbara Milam, whose grandson goes to school with Kristal, also said obituaries have no place in a junior high classroom.

"I just don't believe I would want them to be put through that at that age," said Milam, a friend of Chamblee's.

Kristal said the assignment seemed odd to her. She said she only did it to avoid getting a poor grade.

"I'm 13 and I don't want to think about dying for a long time," Kristal said.

Creative writing

Kristal's eighth-grade teacher, Jaima Churchwell, said the assignment was not graded. Instead, students received credit for doing it.

She said she never dreamed it would cause controversy.

"I asked the kids, 'How do you want to be remembered?' 'What kinds of things do you want to do in your lives?'" Churchwell said. "It was more of a goal-setting assignment."

Churchwell said she did a similar assignment when she was in junior high, and she enjoyed it.

In fact, the assignment is nothing new. It's simply a way to get students thinking about their futures in a creative way, several other educators said Wednesday.

Katie Kleier, who is now director of staff development for the Kern High School District, said she used to ask her ninth-graders to write obituaries when she was an English teacher.

It's was part of a lesson on autobiographies, she said.

"They got to dream about what they wanted to be," Kleier said.

Kern High project specialist Jan Clark, who taught English for 17 years, said she sometimes took the assignment even further, having students write wills and epitaphs.

Clark said it's all about framing the assignment in a positive way -- asking students to reflect on their goals rather than their deaths.

"The intent is not to scare them or make them worry," Clark said. "The intent is to make them think about the whole of their lives."

Both she and Kleier said as long as teachers offer alternative assignments, they don't see a problem with asking students to write obituaries.

Churchwell said she would have given alternative assignments to students who were uncomfortable with the obituaries, but no one expressed a problem with the task.

Kristal disagrees, saying she and several other students asked what would happen if they didn't want to do the assignment. She said they were told they would get no credit.

Churchwell said those students weren't seeking an alternative assignment. She said they didn't want any assignment.

Though the teacher and student disagree on what exactly went on that day, at least one thing is for sure. Churchwell said she'll probably never assign obituaries again.

"I think this has been so blown out of proportion," Churchwell said.

Additional Resources (Links May Disappear)

By Sandy Banks, Los Angeles Times, September 29 2007

I was cooking dinner when the telephone rang and an unfamiliar number showed up on the caller ID.

It was TeleParent, a recorded computer voice from my youngest daughter's school letting me know that "Your child. . . has a test tomorrow in third period."

I hung up not knowing quite what to do. I poked my head in my daughter's room, where she was sitting hunched over on the floor, surrounded by textbooks, highlighters and index cards.

"You have to study," I told her, yelling over the music blaring from the computer. "You have a test in third period tomorrow." I felt for a moment like uber-mom, unexpectedly omnipotent.

My daughter looked up and rolled her eyes. "What do you think I'm doing," she said sarcastically, gesturing to notes scattered around her. "I know I have a test tomorrow."

Of course she does. The "child" in question is almost 17, a junior in high school, taking Advanced Placement classes. Old enough to drive herself to school. And she needs Mom to tell her she's got a test tomorrow?

They are ubiquitous at schools today, these e-monitoring notification systems: TeleParent, Parent Portal, Edline, Parent Connect. It's not just for little kids still getting the hang of homework routines. It's used widely for high school students -- and their parents.

Want to know when your sophomore's book report is due? You can find out on yourhomework.com. Worried that your senior's been showing up late to first period math? Sign up for Parent Connect and you can monitor attendance in every class. Wonder if your 11th-grader missed a homework assignment? Expect a phone call from TeleParent.

Today's online educational tools include a computerized debit card for the cafeteria that conveniently lets parents load it with money, then allows them to ban the purchase of snack foods and sweets and dictate how many burritos their child can buy at once.

What's next? Webcams in each classroom, so you can see if your kid is napping in biology?

I understand why most parents take comfort in these online umbilical cords. A teacher at my daughter's school polled parents at back-to-school night this month and found that 90% liked her nightly recorded homework reminders.

I imagine I might have raised my hand too. . . but with my fingers crossed. What responsible parent wants to publicly say, "I don't want to know how my child is doing in your class."

Parent Connect lets registered parents log on and monitor their child's performance in every course. Our school's director, Brian Bauer, said about 1,500 of the school's 3,200 families have signed up.

The system is a carrot for motivated students, who can track their progress in class and plot their success. "And the stick of knowing that a parent can monitor his or her performance, conduct or attendance" daily online might keep less-engaged students on track, he said.

Finally, there is no excuse for parents to claim ignorance about how their child is doing in class. It's right there at the click of a mouse. And like it or not, TeleParent will call the house.

Teachers have mixed feelings. Most agree that online tools can help new students adjust to big, impersonal high schools, empower parents with information and help struggling students get and stay on track.

"Kids don't always make good judgments," said English teacher Christina Hoppe, who has seen attendance jump at her tutoring sessions since she began sending recorded messages home. "This gives parents more control, allows us to work together to solve problems."

But other teachers worry that the system is used mostly by "overachievers" -- the girl who can't sleep until she logs on at night to find out how she did on the chemistry quiz; the parents of a freshman boy worried that a single B will keep him out of the Ivy League.

Some parents check every day, even every period, and keep a running calculation of their kids' grades. A dip and they're frantically e-mailing teachers demanding conferences. "They're focused on the grades, not the learning," one teacher said.

I've never been a hands-off mother; for years, homework was my second job. I still have a kitchen cabinet filled with craft supplies for school projects.

But I'm trying to shed my role as homework monitor. I've launched two daughters into college and learned something from their rocky starts:

There's a fine line between concerned, supportive parent and over-involved helicopter mom.

And technology is luring parents across that line.

I've decided to decline the latest technological assists. I'm taking a pass from managing my daughter's academic life now that she's closing in on 18.

A year from now, I'll be legally banned from peering at her medical records, finding out her grades in college, checking on her savings account balance.

I can tell Mr. Bauer is disappointed I haven't signed up for Parent Connect. But it has the mildly uncomfortable taint of "Big Brother." And it feels like a ball and chain to me.

I'm sure I'd feel different with a different kid. In fact, I had one -- this same one -- a few years ago. My daughter and I endured years of battles over forgotten assignments, uneven test scores, undone homework in middle school. Her principal then gave me good advice: Back off.

I did.

And I learned there's a difference between coaching a teenager toward success and robbing her of a chance to learn to succeed independently. In this hyper-competitive world, it can be hard to unleash a teen, to recognize that the best learning happens through consequences, not hectoring.

I do want to know how my daughter is doing in school. But every quiz grade, in-class assignment and homework paper?

TMI, as my daughter says. Too. Much. Information.

Rethinking e-monitoring after progress report

A looming C on a midsemester assessment makes one mother take another look at computerized school programs that allow parents to track what's going on in the classroom<\h3>

By Sandy Banks, Los Angeles Times, October 2 2007

My daughter's midsemester report card makes her mother look pretty stupid.

Last week, I poked fun at computerized school programs that allow parents to go online and monitor their kids' homework assignments, class attendance, test scores, even what they ate for lunch. Technological umbilical cords, I called them, for hovering parents who won't let their teenagers grow up. I have refused to sign up for them.

The column ran on Saturday morning. That afternoon, my 11th-grader's progress report landed in the mailbox. Her grades were good, except for one -- in a class that she enjoys and I expected her to ace.

She was surprised. I was chastened. I should have been paying more attention.

The response to my Saturday column from readers was swift, strong and all over the map.

I was taken to task for everything from letting my daughter "prepare for a test with music blaring from her computer" to being too lazy, self-absorbed and/or naive to do what is necessary to ensure her success.

"I pity your kid," e-mailed one reader -- who described himself as a "father of three college-educated, successful adults . . . who were deprived of one thing growing up: the freedom to fail.

"Of course your daughter wants you to 'back off,' " he wrote. "But teenagers don't know what they need. They depend on you to set goals and make sure they meet them. That's real parental love."

Others applauded my hands-off approach. "We need less interference and more positive reinforcement of the trust and faith we put in our youth," wrote Veronica Cohn, a mother of three who always "knew exactly who was achieving and who was struggling."

But both parents speak in hindsight. Their kids are now grown and raising children of their own. Parents in the trenches of child-rearing are bound to have a different view.

They told me online monitoring is a boon for working parents, divorced parents and those whose children are less than forthcoming about what's going on in their classes.

"In today's society, where divorce and sharing children between households is on the rise, e-monitoring can be a valuable tool for the non-custodial parent," one reader wrote, in a response posted online. ". . . It keeps the [parent] connected to their kids, up-to-date on their progress and gives them an idea of what is going on in their lives."

Sheila Doan found San Marino's Parent Portal a great way to ease the transition into middle school for her sixth- and seventh-graders. "You go from elementary school, where you get weekly reports and the 'Friday folder,' to middle school and six classes a day and no way to keep up."

Several teachers said they worry that e-monitoring thwarts the shift of responsibility from parent to teen.

Spanish teacher Ezequiel Barragan said his school in Orange County offers School Loop, which can be programmed to send a 5 p.m. e-mail every day telling parents what homework has been assigned.

"Most of my students are old enough to drive. Many are old enough to vote. . . . In that spirit, it is ludicrous that my students' parents should be involved in this kind of hand-holding," he wrote in an e-mailed response to the column.

And although many teachers like its convenience and the link it creates with parents, others suggest it makes teaching less satisfying.

"Many of the tasks we are expected to perform for our students are ENABLING them as they have been enabled all their lives at home," wrote one Whittier high school teacher, who did not want me to use her name because "I do not need angry parents flooding my phone system."

Several like-minded parents shared stories like this: "My daughter, a freshman in high school, has always gotten A's without cracking a book," wrote Roe Leone. "She was stunned when she got a D in Spanish. I saw it coming and bit my lip until it bled. Nothing I could have said would have had the impact of actually receiving a D."

But then there was this, from a mother who believes her son owes his future to her ability to become his cyber-shadow: "My son just went off for his freshman year at college. . . . He was lazy, unmotivated, the classic slacker. It look a lot of checking up and hounding him [in high school] to keep him on track."

She logged on to her school's version of Parent Connect every day. When her son cut class, she took away his car. Missing homework got him grounded. Good grades earned him a later curfew. "It worked. I don't know that he really cared about the grades, but he did well enough to get into UCLA."

That's part of what makes it tough to decide just how much academic freedom to give our children -- our grand ambitions for their futures, the increasingly tough road to college, the competition for their attention from everything from MySpace to the outlandish antics of Britney Spears. Will a C in freshman biology translate to a rejection from Harvard four years later?

If I accept that times have changed and school is now a high-stakes endeavor, why is it so hard for me to gratefully accept something that promises me access to my child's academic life? Danny Zeibert of Parent Connect said that in high school, students use the service far more than parents. "It's another tool to help them do their best," he said.

Thinking of it like that, it's not so different from the calculator. Twenty years ago, there was much hand-wringing over its use in math classes. Kids would never learn their multiplication tables, percentages would remain a mystery.

Today, most math classes use calculators. SAT proctors allow their use on the college entrance exam. We've accepted that they allow us to escape tedious steps and calculate better, faster and more accurately.

Maybe Parent Connect and its online ilk are just one more step into a future that's already made things, like learning cursive, obsolete. Do kids really need to write the assignment from the blackboard into their planners? Must parents rely on garbled phone messages or notes stuffed in teachers' office mailboxes to figure out how their children are doing?

I'm still grappling with a basic question: What is the parent's responsibility, and what is the child's?

But now that we're heading toward a C in an important class, I don't feel so smug.

I'll be at school this morning, signing up to join the snoops online.