But this website still gets plenty of traffic.

So if you write about whatever’s on your mind in the Comments, I’m sure many of the faithful readers of Stop Homework will happily provide their advice, ideas, and suggestions.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
– Mahatma Gandhi

After four years and 530 posts, I’ve decided its time to retire the Stop Homework blog and turn the homework advocacy over to you, my readers. You should be able to find whatever sample materials you need in The Case Against Homework and/or the posts, especially those in Moms (and Dads) on a Mission, Students Speak Out, Teachers Speak Out, and Success Stories.

I can’t thank you enough for your support. I’ve enjoyed your emails, comments, stories, and guest blogs and I’ve learned so much from you. I want to particularly thank the small family foundation that provided such generous support and allowed me the freedom both to run this blog and advise untold numbers of parents, teachers, and school administrators on ways to advocate for policy changes.

Stop Homework will remain up on the web as a resource and, more importantly, as a place for you to communicate with each other. Starting tomorrow, there will be a new entry, Open Discussion, where you can do just that.

I hope you have a homework-free summer!

p.s. In case you’re wondering what I’m going to do. I’ve decided to return to one of my other passions, criminal justice.

The Toronto Homework Policy After Two Years:
One Parent’s Perspective
Part 2
by northTOmom

Before I attempt to answer the question, “why two years later am I complaining about my children’s homework?” I should note that many parents I’ve spoken to have indeed noticed a decrease in their children’s homework. But my experience—and that of other French immersion parents I’ve consulted—has been that teachers continue to assign homework inconsistent with the new policy.

Grade 4 – French Immersion
On curriculum night in September 2008, the Grade 4 teacher warned parents to expect a difficult year. She explained that the nature of “mid-immersion”—its compression compared to immersion programs starting in Kindergarten—made it necessary to work the children particularly hard. (There was scant mention of the new homework policy, no hint that the program might have to be adjusted in order to comply with it.)

She was not kidding. On a nightly basis, students were expected to review

copious notes from class, practice spelling words, complete math and grammar sheets, and study for tests (two per week). In addition, there were projects to be completed outside of class. Although my daughters loved learning in French and their grades remained strong, they were unaccustomed to a such a heavy workload. They began to show signs of stress (read, meltdowns) almost immediately. By Christmas, they were proclaiming their hatred for school; I prepared to pull them out of French immersion. After the holidays, homework eased up—marginally, but enough to convince me I would not be irreparably harming my daughters by keeping them in the program.

Grade 5 – French Immersion
Grade five was initially better. On curriculum night, the teacher professed her dislike of homework; as a parent herself, she understood how busy today’s children are. Yet this teacher is renowned within the school as a kind of project queen. Every year, her students (or their parents) produce extraordinary projects in science and social studies, which are displayed on designated days to the other students and teachers in the school. And sure enough, it was the projects—spaced inconsistently and piled on top of regular homework—that nearly did us in. Three of them were clumped together in the space of five weeks in the spring term when, as my daughter put it, kids have “had it with the torture of school.” To be fair, the teacher allocated class time to the projects, but often project time encroached on core subjects such as math and grammar, so more homework came home in those subjects. Moreover, class time was not allocated to the building of temples or eyeballs or machines; parents were responsible for supplying materials, and were expected to provide space and time at home for their children to complete all of the arts and crafts components. As a result, my daughters had little choice but to spend multiple weekends—including “days of significance” and holidays, such as Passover, Easter, Mother’s Day and Victoria Day—working on various elements of assigned projects.

Contradiction Between Policy and Practice
Frustrated and confused by the contradiction between the new policy and the homework we were experiencing, I decided to do a little investigating. I asked several people—the principal of my daughters’ school, the superintendent of our particular school district, and my local school Trustee—a simple question: Is the homework policy a set of voluntary guidelines, or is it binding? The answer, it turns out, is not simple. Howard Goodman, school Trustee for my area, summed up the confusion when he answered: “somewhere in between.” Both he and John Chasty, the area Superintendent, insisted that schools are expected to comply with the new policy, and that responsibility for implementation lies with principals and teachers. However, as Goodman reminded me in an email, the TDSB is “a highly decentralized organization which works hard to be responsive to . . . local conditions.” In other words, the board tolerates a certain latitude in the interpretation of its policies in order to empower schools and teachers to respond flexibly to the needs of students.

I began to wonder whether the TDSB counts French immersion—along with other enrichment programs such as gifted classes—as a local condition necessitating a “liberal” interpretation of the homework policy. Not so, according to Lyn Gaetz, principal of my daughters’ school. The new recommendations, Gaetz told me, were well received by teachers at the school. She explained that she meets with the teaching staff yearly to discuss the policy and to monitor its implementation. No program is exempt, but Gaetz did acknowledge the challenges the school has faced reducing homework in French immersion.

My sense from talking to teaching staff is that most of them—French-immersion teachers included—believe they are complying with the new policy. And returning to the document itself, I see how this belief is enabled by a discernible vagueness of wording. For example, in reference to the early elementary years, the policy notes the “strong connection between reading to or with elementary children every day . . . and student achievement” and goes on to encourage regular reading at home, among other family activities. One would be hard pressed to object to such a recommendation, but its lack of specificity allows for some bizarre interpretations. The teacher of a third-grader I know seems to have interpreted it as an endorsement of reading logs. As followers of stophomework are well aware, reading logs are a discredited form of homework which often instill in children a loathing rather than a love of reading. Yet so convinced is this teacher of the value of reading logs that she instructs her students to complete them during major holidays, such as Christmas, a demand clearly in conflict with the new policy.

Another troubling area of vagueness is the section on homework in the later elementary years. Time guidelines for these pivotal grades (3-6) are conspicuous by their absence. And the one directive specified—namely,“Homework may begin to take the form of independent work”—is so vague it barely counts as a directive at all. I suspect it is commonly interpreted to mean projects, since projects are considered a more creative, engaging form of homework than, say, drill work. This may be true, although, as most parents know, many projects are comprised of arts and crafts-type busywork. Even the most educationally valid projects are labour-intensive, especially when they are assigned as group endeavours, which adds an element of scheduling chaos to the mix. And when projects are used as the principle means of covering the curriculum, as they seemed to be for much of the spring term in my daughters’ class . . . well, before you know it you have temples collapsing and tearful children rebuilding them in dark basements on brilliant spring afternoons.

Conclusion
Which leads back to the initial question: what went wrong? Has the Toronto policy failed to achieve true homework reform? One could argue that my experience with French immersion is atypical, and that it renders invalid any answer I might offer to such a question. But one could also reasonably view French immersion as a kind of microcosm of elementary education in Ontario, a system characterized by an over-stuffed curriculum (the phrase “mile wide and inch deep” comes to mind) and an over-reliance on standardized tests as a measure of quality. In French immersion, as elsewhere in the system, homework overload and curriculum are inextricably intertwined. To paraphrase guest blogger Fred Baumgarten, who has written about this interconnection on his blog Homework Headaches, when you pull at the thread of one, you inevitably catch the other, and the whole overwrought educational fabric threatens to unravel.

But issues of curriculum are beyond the scope of this post. With respect to the homework policy itself, ambiguous language and inconsistent enforcement notwithstanding, I regard the April 2008 revisions as a huge step in the right direction. I applaud Frank Bruni for instigating them.The TDSB also deserves credit for taking the issue of homework overload seriously enough to review the research and change the policy. However, the last two years have taught me some crucial lessons. Policies—even well-meaning, progressive ones—must be seen as works in progress, in continual need of re-evaluation. More importantly, I have learned that passivity—my own in particular—is part of the problem. A change in practice does not flow seamlessly from a change in policy. It is up to all of us to remain vigilant and advocate for the the ultimate stakeholders in any educational system: children.

The Toronto Homework Policy After Two Years:
One Parent’s Perspective
Part 1
by northTOmom

On a recent Saturday morning, my 10-year-old daughter emerged from the basement on the verge of tears: “The temple’s collapsed,” she announced. Though it sounded dire, she was speaking not of an actual building, but of the model of an ancient Greek temple she and a classmate had constructed out of cardboard the previous week. They had piled on the white paint, and the structure had simply buckled under the weight. Later that day I glanced out the window to see my two daughters turning cartwheels on the back lawn while my husband diligently sawed wooden cylinders into pillars for the new temple. It was a brilliant spring day, and soon my husband would finish his task and call my reluctant daughter in out of the sunshine to start rebuilding the temple. What is wrong with this picture?

From the perspective of a homework skeptic, many things: arts and crafts busywork, weekend homework, parental involvement. But the main problem is that I live in Toronto, and my children attend public school in a board which in 2008 enacted one of the most progressive, “family friendly” homework policies in North America. So what happened?

When I read the news in early 2008 that the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) was re-evaluating its homework policy, my heart did a little happy dance. At the time, my twin daughters were in third grade. Although we had not yet experienced homework overload, the prospect of a reformed homework policy thrilled me because the following year my daughters were due to enter mid-elementary French immersion, a program renowned for its heavy workload both inside and outside the classroom. Suddenly there was hope that French immersion would provide a qualitatively (as opposed to quantitatively) different experience for my daughters, with enrichment enabled not by means of extra work, but simply through learning the curriculum in a second language.

The TDSB—the largest school board in Canada, serving approximately 250,000 students—appeared to have done its homework, so to speak, on homework. Spurred on by parent Frank Bruni and sympathetic Trustee, Josh Matlow, the board reviewed and eventually rewrote its homework policy, approving a new family-friendly version on April 16, 2008. The new policy re-defines “effective” homework, promotes “differentiated” assignments and removes punitive consequences for incomplete work. It virtually eliminates homework in the early elementary years, and mandates substantial decreases for all other grades. But perhaps the most progressive feature of the Toronto policy is its recognition of the deleterious effect of homework on family life. It stipulates that homework should not be assigned on scheduled holidays or “days of significance,” and that “time spent on homework should be balanced with the importance of personal and family wellness”

My excitement back in 2008 was not unfounded: this was a good policy.

So why two years later am I complaining about my children’s homework?

Read more tomorrow

If your children have received summer homework assignments, or are about to, why not nip the problem in the bud?

Here’s what you can do:

1. Call your school’s principal. If you’re in a state with guidelines like New York’s, ask your principal whether your school will be following the guidelines. If s/he’s unaware of them, offer to send a copy. Tell the principal what the guidelines say. It’s pretty difficult for a school not to follow the guidelines once a parent’s asked about them. After all, the guidelines were issued in response to litigation, and non-compliance leaves the school open to wrath, scrutiny, lawsuits. Get several of your friends to call the school principal as well. There’s power in numbers.

2. If you discovered that your school doesn’t have any rules about summer homework, open up a discussion on the topic now. If you wait until your child brings home an assignment it’s too late. (Of course, you don’t have to make your child do the assignment. And how many children, especially those in elementary school, would actually do an assignment if they didn’t have parental help? Let the school see what happens when parents resist.)

3. Get together with a few of your friends and ask the principal or department head for a meeting. Tell them how summer assignments affect your family. Read a little about the problems with assigned reading so that you can make strong arguments:

* An article on summer reading in USA Today, cites a recent study by Richard Allington, a researcher and author of many books on literacy. Allington and colleagues selected students in 17 high-poverty elementary schools in Florida and, for three consecutive years, gave each child 12 books, from a list the students provided, on the last day of school. No assignment came along with the books–no reading log, no essay, not even an order to read them. Three years later, researchers found that those students who received books had “significantly higher” reading scores and read more on their own each summer than the 478 who didn’t get books. (I’m sure that any school that gave students books from a list of their own choosing would see the same results–students who like to read more and, as a result, students with better comprehension, better written and analytical skills and yes, even higher standardized test scores.)

* This op-ed by my co-author and me published in The New York Times four years ago. I think it’s still relevant.

* An article on reading books you like from The New York Times.

Given the pressures most students face during the school year from high-stakes testing, homework, and extracurricular activities, summer should be seen as a time to explore passions, get outside, read for pleasure, hang out with friends, work a summer job (if one can be found), become a little more independent, etc. These are where students learn to problem solve, be responsible, make good use of their time, in short the kinds of learning experiences most students don’t have time for during the school year. And these life skills are ones that will serve them well in the future, undoubtedly more than most of what they learn in school.

In sum, gather a few of your friends and talk to the people who assign homework at your school. Explain why summer homework doesn’t work in your family and why you’re opposed to it. And let me know what happens.

Yesterday, I suggested finding out your school, district, or state guidelines on summer homework. A few months ago, I followed the very steps I suggested yesterday for my own state (New York) and I discovered that in May, 2009, the New York State Board of Education sent a memorandum to all District Superintendents, all Principals, and all Chairs of the English Language Arts Departments throughout the state. Titled, “Guidance on Locally Required Summer Reading Assignments,” the memo set forth guidance and suggestions for developing acceptable required summer reading assignments.

Here’s what the guidelines state:

Where a district/school chooses to require a summer reading assignment, it must comply with the following:

* If books are to be used as part of a mandatory assignment, a school district must ensure that they are reasonably available to all students at no cost. Although a school district may indicate that books may be purchased, students cannot be required to purchase any books.

* Class grades should reflect work done under a teacher’s direction and supervision. There must be sufficient opportunity for students to obtain teacher guidance and instruction before completing a graded assignment.

There are several other requirements including that if students are unable to reach teachers by phone, by email, or in person, then students should be permitted to complete the assignment upon returning to school.

You can read the guidelines here.

Tomorrow: How to get schools to follow the guidelines.

Before you resign yourself to summer homework, though, make sure that your school is complying with all policies and guidelines.

Take a few minutes and check your school’s policy. You might be surprised to find that it forbids summer homework. If it does, just give your school principal a friendly call and remind her/him of the policy. But if your school policy doesn’t prohibit summer homework, don’t stop there. Be sure to check the district and state guidelines as well.

This is how you check the state guidelines:

Google your state name and Board of Education. When you get to your state’s website, put “summer homework” into the search box. If you don’t come up with anything, call the contact number and ask whether there are statewide guidelines on summer homework. If the person who answers the phone tells you that s/he doesn’t know, don’t give up. Ask who might be able to help you and ask to be transferred. If need be, go all the way to the Commissioner. All told, you won’t spend more than 5-10 minutes.

TOMORROW: What I discovered when I followed the above advice.

a whole summer ahead to cross off the calendar, day by day. …[H]e saw his hands jump everywhere, pluck sour apples, peaches, and midnight plums. He would be clothed in trees and bushes and rivers…. He would bake, happily, with ten thousand chickens, in Grandma’s kitchen.

After 4 years of running Stop Homework and talking to thousands of parents and children across the country, I know that summers no longer promise those complete and absolute carefree joys. Instead, most students across the United States will have homework hanging over their heads the entire summer.

It won’t surprise anyone here to know that I am adamantly opposed to summer homework. While I am a big fan of reading, those assigned summer homework books don’t usually appeal to most students, and they end up discouraging reading rather than promoting it.

Here are just a few of the other reasons I hate summer homework:

* students should have a chance to choose what they read
* if students were allowed to read books of their own choosing, they would read more
* students report that those summer assignments are collected but never looked at or discussed
* if students actually learned the material during the school year in a meaningful way, then there wouldn’t be “summer backslide,” one of the ostensible reasons for summer homework

Check back tomorrow and the rest of the week for some ideas on ways to advocate for an end to summer homework. And in the meantime, post your opinion on summer homework in the Comments.

Read the interview in Slate here.

You can also listen to Ravitch’s radio interview with Leonard Lopate here.

Pushing for Perfection–A Poor Choice in Parenting
The importance of allowing your children to be ordinary
by Joanne Kates
(from postcity.com)

I was talking the other day to a woman who described herself as “Type A, a bit of a control freak” and said that she knows this infuses her parenting style.

I admitted to her that I play for that team too, and that it hasn’t been so hot for my parenting. She seemed shocked.

She then asked me: “Would you do it differently if you had it to do over again?”

I said yes. Which I think made her want to throw up, but she gained control over herself and asked me for details.

I told her that my biggest parenting mistake was schools. In order not to get sued, I shan’t mention specific names, but I will confess to pushing both my kids to go to high-performance academically rigorous schools. Which neither of them liked. What a surprise.

My kids are both super bright (we all think that) so I thought they’d benefit from high academic standards.

At least that’s what I told myself. And other people.

Because of the stories I get to hear from kids, thanks to my privileged position as a camp director, I knew girls were participating in oral sex at age 13, and kids were starting soon after that to smoke pot and drink alcohol. I was so scared of my daughter being influenced to join that party that I pushed her to go to a highly academic school where I thought the social agenda would be less aggressive.

Boys are different. When his turn came I was worried that he wouldn’t work hard enough, pay enough attention to his studies.

That’s why he got the pressure to go to a high-octane school.

Hindsight being 20/20, I have the same regret with both kids and it concerns control. Both my kids would have been happier at regular high schools.

The best gift I could have given them would have been permission to be ordinary — and I couldn’t bring myself to do that.

Something about being a Me Generation parent — the narcissism and specialness of our own selves — made me not even able to see how much pressure I was putting on my kids.

That they were both bright enough to perform just fine in those environments is not relevant. What matters more is that I chose their paths. They did not.

We all pretended that they got to choose, but the pressure I exerted was so pervasive that they both knew better than to disappoint me.

So if I had it to do over again, I would make more space for my kids to follow their own stars.

I would acknowledge that my own worries about their lives today and their lives tomorrow are just that — my worries. And I would fight (myself) tooth and nail to refuse to give in to my worries when making decisions about my children’s lives.

I would trust them more, knowing that we had raised them with great love and good values, and that they would be all right.

I would understand that permeating their child-rearing with my anxieties was a disservice to them.

I would work harder to control my desire for them to be special, and what would help me with that would be knowing (once again, thanks to hindsight) that the best way to acknowledge kids’ specialness is to love, support and respect them. That’s special enough.

It wasn’t necessary for me to make them special by growing them into great students or gymnasts or hockey players. They were already special enough.
The part I missed was that who they were was plenty good enough. Absence of pressure was a gift I would have loved to give them — if I only knew then what I know now.

Beth Teitell’s article “Homework Hell” (May 2) provided an important, albeit anecdotal, view of how homework can negatively affect family life, but the topic of homework and the ways many schools routinely apply the requirement deserves fuller treatment. Teachers, administrators, parents, and reporters would do well to consider what’s driving blind acceptance of homework at all levels and whether current practices are beneficial or based on nothing but an enduring myth. – Peggy Field / Norwell

Peggy Field sent me the full letter she had written to the Globe:

To the Editor:

Beth Teitell’s article “Homework Hell” in the May 2 Boston Globe magazine provided an important, albeit anecdotal, view of how homework can negatively affect family life, but the topic of homework and the ways many schools apply the requirement as a matter of routine deserves a much fuller and more serious treatment.

Teitell’s piece seemed promising at first, illustrating the real rifts that can occur between parent and child when parents are put in the position of homework enforcer. However, the piece veered into a discussion of vague “parental anxiety” before concluding with an exhortation from Boston Teachers Union President Richard Stutman to parents to “keep your anxiety to yourself” when helping out.

Omitted is the possibility that parents can maintain a positive attitude toward school, teachers and learning, and continue to urge their children to work hard and do their best, while asking questions of their child’s teacher and school officials about homework policy.

Many important questions about the stated goals, educational validity and simple fairness of compelling students (and their families) to devote periods of at-home time to additional school work — particularly in elementary and middle school grades — are simply not being asked by those who should be asking such questions. Existing thorough and respectful examinations of the subject, not only by Alfie Kohn but also by Sara Bennett, Etta Kralovec, John Buell and Cathy Vaterott, are blithley ignored in lieu of complacently maintaining the status quo.

Few would argue that taking time outside of school to thoughtfully puzzle out a vexing calculus problem or computer program, or to read a novel or historical text at length, is a negative. But teachers, administrators, parents and education reporters would do well to take a step back and consider what is actually driving blind acceptance of homework simply as a matter of routine at all levels, and whether current practices are beneficial or even harmless, or if they are based on nothing but an enduring myth.

No Child Left Behind is strangling the life out of most schools…. If my future were determined by my performance on a standardized test I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee that.

Time Out From Testing is asking that everyone send a postcard on May 29th. You can write something like this:

Dear Michelle Obama:

We want the same education for our public school children that you provide for Malia and Sasha. Our child is not a test score.

Encourage the President to end the use of high stakes standardized tests!

Sincerely,
Name:
Address:
Signature

Mail to: First Lady Michelle Obama
White House,
Washington DC

Finally, let Time Out From Testing know that you sent a postcard so that it can have an accurate count of the postcards sent.

(A big thanks to FedUp Mom for taking the time to write and for her thought-provoking posts. If you want to write your own guest post, please email me.)

Such, Such Thursdays
by FedUp Mom
(part 5)

QUESTION #5 (Extra Credit):

(from Such, Such Were the Joys)

“There never was, I suppose, in the history of the world a time when the sheer vulgar fatness of wealth, without any kind of aristocratic elegance to redeem it, was so obtrusive as in those years before 1914… The extraordinary thing was the way in which everyone took it for granted that this oozing, bulging wealth of the English upper and upper-middle classes would last for ever, and was part of the order of things… How would St. Cyprian’s appear to me now, if I could go back, at my present age, and see it as it was in 1915 [when Orwell left the school]? … I should see them [the Headmaster and his wife] as a couple of silly, shallow, ineffectual people, eagerly clambering up a social ladder which any thinking person could see to be on the point of collapse.”

How does Orwell’s historical moment compare to our own? Is our social ladder on the point of collapse?

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The moment Orwell describes, of smug wealth on the verge of catastrophe, is of course very similar to our situation about two years ago, and similar to the situation in the US on the verge of the Great Depression. Now that we have embarked on another economic collapse, what changes can we expect to see to our schools?

It is clear that the public schools will soon be hurting badly. They were kept afloat for a while by federal stimulus money, but that will run out over the next couple of years. We will see programs being cut. I’ve heard through the grapevine that our local public elementary school is already experiencing overcrowded classrooms. The job market for new teachers is terrible.

At the same time, NCLB remains in place, and everyone is fixated on test scores. So less money will mean fewer “frills” like gifted ed, arts, and music . The grade-level tests, which were meant to function as a floor, have become the ceiling that nobody bothers to teach beyond.

As the recession continues to unravel our economy, the public schools will continue their descent. If we’re lucky, we’ll see some growth in alternative schooling, including homeschooling co-ops. Anyone who can manage it will send their kids to private schools.

What do you predict?

Read the piece here.

Among the findings:

* 89 percent said glancing at someone else’s answers during a test was cheating (87 percent said they’d done that at least once)

* 94 percent said providing answers to someone during a test was cheating (74 percent admitted doing so)

* 47 percent said that providing test questions to a fellow student who had yet to take a test was academically dishonest (nearly 70 percent admitted doing so)

* 23 percent said doing individual homework with a partner was dishonest (91 percent admitted doing so)

* 39 percent said writing a report based on the movie instead of reading the book wasn’t cheating (53 percent admitted doing so)

Read more here.

If only teachers in the U.S. would do the same….

Read the story here.

Such, Such Thursdays
by FedUp Mom
(part 4)

QUESTION #4:

(from Such, Such Were the Joys)

“That was the pattern of school life — a continuous triumph of the strong over the weak. Virtue consisted in winning: it consisted in being bigger, stronger, handsomer, richer, more popular, more elegant, more unscrupulous than other people … Life was hierarchical and whatever happened was right. There were the strong, who deserved to win and always did win, and there were the weak, who deserved to lose and always did lose, everlastingly.”

Has anything changed? Support your answer.

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The hierarchies of school happen on the micro level (the power trips within the individual school), and also on the macro level (the unequal status between schools.)

On the macro level, we will soon have a Supreme Court populated exclusively by graduates of Harvard and Yale law schools. England has a new Prime Minister educated at Eton and Oxford. The finishing schools of the rich and powerful keep doing their job.

On the micro level, Orwell nailed it. School is all about hierarchy, power, and control. Homework is a continual reminder of who has power over whom, and a way for school to exert control, not just over the students in the classroom, but over the entire family at home.

* Weekend and holiday homework shall not be assigned. New assignments given on the last school day of a school week may not be due on the first day of the next school week. The intent of this clause shall not be circumvented by assigning homework for a later due date when additional assignments are planned prior to the due date, and the accumulation of assignments exceeds the maximum amount of homework allowed by the policy, or requires some completion on the weekend. For example, homework should not be assigned on Friday which is due the following Tuesday when a teacher plans to assign additional new homework on Monday and when one homework day (in this case Monday) would not be sufficient to complete the homework assigned the previous Friday.

* Teachers are encouraged to develop an agreement with students about when it is appropriate for the student to cease working on the day’s homework (for example, it is taking too much time or the student is unable to complete the assignment independently).

* Consequences for lack of homework completion shall not include exclusion from recess.

* The family shall:
5. intervene and stop a child who has spent an excessive amount of time on the day’s homework;
6. not allow students to sacrifice sleep to complete homework;
7. communicate with the teacher(s) if the student is not consistently able to do the homework by him/herself or if challenges or questions arise. Families of older students should encourage the child to communicate with the teacher in order to foster independence and personal responsibility

Before the end of the school year, one of the parents on the committee will write here about how she got involved in organizing for a better policy and her experiences in doing so.

UPDATE
by Heidy Kellison
co-chair of Homework Committee
June 24, 2010

After nearly three years, a 144-page report, and four school board meetings later, the Davis Joint Unified School District has a new homework policy. The final draft received a 5-0 vote on the first official day of summer. The symbolism is fantastic! A great day for kids made even better for their health and all forms of their development.

Davis is a university town of 65,000 people, just 15 miles from California’s State Capitol. The University of California at Davis is one of the nation’s top research universities, so the demographics aren’t surprising: According to the California Department of Education, 93% of parents with school-aged children have attended college, with a full 60% having attended graduate school. Despite chronic state budget deficits, Davis voters continually pass parcel taxes and raise private funds to maintain healthy schools. Volunteerism is high, and serving on the Board of Education probably deserves hazard pay. It’s safe to say, Davis places a high value on education.

On the surface, Davis seems an unlikely place to call for a reduction in homework. After all, if we value education so much, what’s wrong with doing whatever it takes to get the grade? (A lot, as it turns out.)

I was lucky to co-chair a 12-person committee comprised of teachers, administrators, and parents (I’m a parent). We met for 14 months and developed recommendations where research and consensus intersect.

Is the policy everything I’d hoped for? No. Did anyone get everything they wanted? Absolutely not. But do I believe our process was sound and worthy of being duplicated in other school districts? You bet.

I’ve learned a lot, including the need to approach all stakeholders with an open heart and mind. I’ve acquired more patience, much knowledge, and a great deal of respect for people who invest their lives serving children–parents and professional educators alike.

I know there are bad parents, teachers and administrators, just as there are bad insurance agents, doctors, chefs…you name it. It makes no sense whatsoever to paint any profession with a broad brush, any more than it makes sense to perpetuate racial bias. When we stop pitting ourselves against each other, come to the table and release all our preconceived notions, we will finally serve kids well.

Many blessings to all who advocate for children.

Such, Such Thursdays
by FedUp Mom
(part 3)

QUESTION #3:

(from Such, Such Were the Joys)
3.) “Looking back, I realize that I then worked harder than I have ever done since, and yet at the time it never seemed possible to make quite the effort that was demanded of one…All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude — and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep…The conviction that it was not possible for me to be a success went deep enough to influence my actions till far into adult life.”

Would Orwell have fared better or worse in your local “gifted” program? Explain.

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FedUp Mom’s ANSWER:

I see echos of Orwell when I look at my daughter’s experience at our nominally high-performing public school. My daughter was singled out as bright because of her performance on various exams. Once the school figured out she was bright, they figured they could squeeze a lot of achievement out of her that would make the school look good. When I complained that she was becoming anxious and depressed, it made no difference.

For a sensitive child, as many gifted children are, the experience of constantly being judged “not good enough” is devastating. This is why I can’t agree with those who think that what gifted children need is harder classes, and that the experience of failure will somehow be good for them.

It is true that some gifted children don’t learn study skills, because everything the school hands them is so far below their actual level. This happened to me, actually. When I got to college, I took an intro Biology course that I enjoyed a lot. I attended every lecture with great interest. When our first test came back, I was astonished to discover that I had flunked it, big time (less than 20/100, I think.) I had the following conversation with the teacher:

Me: I don’t understand what happened! I was here for every lecture!

Teacher: Well, you need to take notes during the lecture, and read the chapter in the textbook. Then, the night before the test, you look back through your notes and review the chapter in the textbook.

Me: Really? Wow!

I honestly had no idea. I followed the teacher’s advice and got As from then on.

So it is true that letting a gifted child drift along, passing classes with no effort, is not doing them a favor. But the opposite strategy, putting gifted kids in “rigorous” classes so they are constantly struggling, does them no favors either.

A gifted child who works hard and does her best should be allowed to feel successful. School should be a pleasure for all children, but a gifted child in particular should experience real joy in learning. A school where the brightest kids are anxious, stressed out, sleep deprived, and terrified of failure is a school that has put its own reputation ahead of the students’ health.

Epitaph for a Young Teacher
by Anthony Mullen

Virginia

Monticello Grounds

Hamlet teaches much. The play taught me that the dead depend upon the living to tell their story. The dead, after all, first linger in our thoughts and prayers and then disappear inside old photograph albums. A few notable dead have monuments built to remind people that they once lived and loved and laughed. Some inscribe an epitaph on their tombstone, usually a brief piece of prose commemorating a significant legacy or achievement. Thomas Jefferson desired that his grave be marked by an obelisk inscribed with the three accomplishments for which he wished to be remembered, “…and not a word more.”

HERE WAS BURIED
THOMAS JEFFERSON
AUTHOR OF THE
DECLARATION
OF
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
OF THE
STATUTE OF VIRGINIA
FOR
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
AND FATHER OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

That’s it. The third president of the United States wished to be remembered for his intellect, belief in freedom of religion, and the founding of a great university. No mention of his vice presidency or presidency. The man did not want to be remembered as a politician. No wonder scholars are still probing his great mind.

I walked away from the Jefferson family cemetery wondering if

a teacher will ever get the chance to have the following words inscribed on his or her grave:

HERE WAS BURIED
A TEACHER
AUTHOR OF THE
NATIONAL ACADEMIC STANDARDS
FOR THE BENEFIT
OF ALL CHILDREN

Such a simple yet profound epitaph would be the envy of all teachers, a monument as profound and beautiful as Jefferson’s granite obelisk. But such an inscription is highly improbable and, if written, would likely be vandalized by politicians or education bureaucrats who have left teachers out of designing a national curriculum.

Academic standards are a critical component of quality teaching and student learning, and the adoption of a uniform set of national standards could transform American education. No wonder this important issue is a popular topic of conversation whenever I speak at schools of education. Pre-service teachers often ask me if I have been involved in the drafting of academic standards on a national or state level. No and no. However, I do tell our nation’s future teachers that some day they may be part of the process of developing a common core of national standards, and that is why their generation of teachers must keep knocking on the doors of politicians, policy makers, and education “think tanks” and remind these influential people that a teacher’s voice is the only voice heard in a classroom.

And I tell our future teachers that whatever uniform set of academic standards eventually makes its way to their classroom door, the following core knowledge must be included:

Mission Statement

What I teach is not as important as whom I teach.

Math Standards

a2 + b2 = c2 is a useful math concept, but understanding that the sum of all a child’s yesterdays does not equal the value of just one tomorrow is critical core knowledge.

Geography Standards

The origin of the Nile River is a piece of practical information, but understanding that a child’s origin is not their destiny is critical core knowledge.

Reading Standards

Students should read sonnets, a beautiful form of poetry that derives its name from the Italian word sonetto, meaning “little song.” But the ability to read a child’ story and know that each and every student arrives at your classroom door with a unique and intriguing and incomplete story is critical core knowledge.

Writing Standards

A sentence must include a subject and a predicate, but knowing how to script confidence on the blank pages of a child’s story, how to edit the mistakes, and how to help write a happy ending is critical core knowledge.

Science Standards

What goes up must come down is a useful concept, but the ability to catch a falling student is critical core knowledge.

ART

How artists work and what tools do they use to create is concrete and useful information, but understanding that the hands of every artist were once held and guided by a teacher is critical core knowledge.

Civics

Knowing the three branches of government is useful knowledge, but understanding that the greatest institution for social change is a school and the greatest instrument of change is a teacher is critical core knowledge.

I hope one day my children or grandchildren will visit a monument to a teacher. A national historic landmark that reminds visitors that here lay the remains of a very important teacher who helped draft an essential and enduring common core of national standards.

And not a word more.

Engaging students through curiosity
By Josh Brody
director, Sequoyah School, Pasadena, CA
from Pasadena Star News

I recently sat in on a parent-teacher conference led by a 6-year-old student. She was presenting her tree notebook.

She eagerly turned the page to a map of her school, pointed to a spot on the page and said, “Here is the patio, and there is the pepper tree, and that’s my favorite. The ash tree is over here by day care and it has lost all of its leaves. The tree by the library has leaves that look like fans, it’s a gingko tree, but the one at the park has bigger fan leaves.”

She turned to another page titled “Ash Tree.” The page contained a pressed leaf, a photograph, a bark rubbing, and the definition of the word “deciduous” was written in the corner. That page was one of seven similar pages about trees that were highlighted on her campus map.

While education reform over the last decade has focused on accountability and test scores, we may be overlooking one of the most critical aspects of learning: student engagement.

After years of curriculum, policies and incentives geared to raise test scores that narrowly measure and, indeed, define student achievement, we still have too many students in our schools bored, disengaged and dropping out.

In fact, less than half of the students in Los Angeles public schools who begin high school will graduate after four years.

There are many factors that lead to such an unacceptably high dropout rate, but one that is seldom discussed is whether or not students find school meaningful.

We must ask ourselves the question: How can we better engage students in school?
The example above does not illustrate the accomplishment and engagement of an exceptional, supercharged student. Rather, it shows what genuine curiosity can do for any child when it comes to seeking and retaining knowledge.

More importantly, it shows the type of experience and level of engagement all students can and should have, if we are willing to explore methods beyond those more routinely used in classroom instruction.

The next section of the student’s book was titled “leaf rubbings.” She pointed to a rubbing of a Russian mulberry leaf and informed her parents, “This came from the tree we planted last year. Look, you can see the veins and the rib.”

She turned past photographs of trees at a local park to a letter addressed to her class from the office of the city park supervisor. She told her parents, “We tried to figure out how many different trees there were at the park. We weren’t sure so we had to ask the park supervisor. See, he said there were twenty-eight different kinds of trees at the park! He says there are 101 trees all together, but we haven’t counted them yet.”

One way that teachers have found to successfully engage students in school is by using the campus and the surrounding community as the context for teaching and learning.

This approach to education is called place-based education. Here at Sequoyah School, a teacher took advantage of the student’s natural curiosity about her surroundings to explore a particular topic.

In studying trees on campus and in the neighborhood, students had opportunities to apply knowledge and terms they had learned about trees, watch trees over time and observe the cycle of change, and compose maps and surveys of local trees.

They collected and pressed leaves for art projects, practiced speaking Spanish by talking about the colors of the leaves, and wrote creatively by telling stories from the trees’ perspectives.

After spending months learning about local trees, students took on the task of watering some of the school and nearby community garden fruit trees. According to the students, the young fruit trees need five gallons of water per week, one gallon per day, or, if you have a partner, they explain that you each pour half a gallon.

Since John Dewey, educators have made the case that learning that takes place in school is meaningless unless it connects to other parts of students’ lives.

Given the alarmingly high number of students who continue to drop out before graduating high school, students are sending a clear message that, indeed, schools are not meaningful to their lives.

It is time to move away from teaching and learning driven by curricula preparing students to succeed on standardized exams but failing when it comes to engaging students’ creativity and curiosity.

It is time to move toward more place-based and project-based learning that builds knowledge by taking advantage of children’s natural curiosity about and love for the world around them.

Today is the perfect time to let your children’s teachers/principals know how you feel about summer homework. It will give them time to think about it and time for you to have a discussion with them. You can use some of the information here as fodder for why a vacation is so important. Now is also a good time to find out what your school’s policy is on summer homework. (A few years ago, I co-authored an op-ed for The New York Times on summer homework. After the op-ed was published, I found out that the student who’d been assigned the most homework of all actually came from a school that had a policy against summer homework.)

Such, Such Thursdays
by FedUp Mom
(part 2)

QUESTION #2:

(from Such, Such Were the Joys)
“Indeed, it was universally taken for granted at St. Cyprian’s that unless you went to a ‘good’ public school (and only about fifteen schools came under this heading) you were ruined for life… Over a period of about two years, I do not think there was ever a day when ‘the exam’, as I called it, was quite out of my waking thoughts… For people like me, the ambitious middle class, the examination passers, only a bleak, laborious kind of success was possible.”

[Vocabulary: in British usage, “public” schools are so called because they are not open to the public. It’s pronounced “Chumley”.]

How does Orwell’s quest for a ‘good’ public school compare to today’s upper-middle-class quest for an Ivy League school? How is ‘the exam’, which got Orwell to Eton, similar to today’s SAT? Compare, contrast, and weep.

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FedUp Mom’s ANSWER:

The phrase “the ambitious middle class, the examination passers” knocks me out. If our school district had a sign over it, that’s what it should say (second choice: “abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”)

“A bleak, laborious kind of success” is what people in my neighborhood aspire to, and everyone wants to send their kids to the same few high-status universities. Some people get into the Ivy League by being born into the right family (does anyone believe that George W. Bush went to Yale because of his academic excellence?) Others get to the Ivy League because of the enormous resources their family can put towards getting them there (for instance, kids at elite private schools, who are carefully groomed, and the path cleared before them). But the kids in our district have to work like donkeys, and the competition is ferocious. The ironic thing is that if you really want your kid to go to the Ivy League, you’d be better off moving somewhere else and hoping your kid will get a break for “geographical diversity”.

Here’s an interesting post he’s written about the importance of playing without parental interference.

Playing Ball With No Adults Around
by Mike Lanza
posted originally here.

Many of my best childhood memories involve playing pickup games with no adults around. Yes, I played organized baseball – Little League, for instance – but those experiences simply don’t compare with pickup games with my neighborhood buddies.

I would argue that pickup ball is both more fun and better for children’s social and intellectual development. It’s also more inclusive, or egalitarian.

In this article, I’ll discuss each of these advantages of “pickup ball,” and then conclude by analyzing why it’s vanishing from American childhoods.

Social Development
Think about all the social tasks you had to perform in playing a pickup game that kids of today don’t have to for their organized sports games:

Decide What to Play: There’s no “schedule” of pickup games – they’re ad hoc by definition. So, children have to decide on the game, and that’s unavoidably a social process.

Recruit Players: Organized baseball takes a minimum of 18 players. It’s never the case that 18 kids just show up in a neighborhood looking for something to play. Depending on what game is played, two to six kids might be the minimum. In fact, most of the time, kids need to get creative to find enough kids to play to make a real game.

Decide Where to Play: When and who’s playing can affect where the kids decide to play. “Should we play in _____’s backyard? The street? The nearby school field that has a backstop?” More negotiations are in order here.

Improvise Rules: Which field the kids decide on and how many kids are playing usually necessitates improvised rules. “What’s a home run?” If each team has only three players in the field, perhaps the foul line should be moved. “How many bases can a runner advance on an overthrow?” “Can runners steal bases?” Kids need to decide on these and other rules each game, depending on circumstances.

Implement the Rules: “Was that a fair ball?” “Is s/he safe or out?” In pickup games, kids have to work out these issues on their own.
Decide How to Conclude the Game: Most pickup baseball games don’t end after nine innings, and pretty much all games that are timed in their organized forms (e.g. basketball, football) are not timed when no adult referees are around. Thus, kids have to decide when the game will end. Remember suggestions like these? – “The first team to 10 wins, win by two.” “Next inning’s the last.” Or, how about my favorite? – “Let’s play until we can’t see the ball anymore…”
Balancing the Desire to Win With Other Objectives: Certainly , winning has always been very important to all children in pickup games, but kids in pickup games must constantly calibrate their behavior to take into account other important objectives such as “being liked” or “being able to arrange another game tomorrow.” When kids themselves decide who’s safe and who’s out, or how hard to play when your team is already up by eight runs, they have a lot to consider. For instance, it’s pretty stupid to push hard to get your player ruled “safe” if you’re already up by eight runs and kids on the other side seem to be having a bad time out there.

Intellectual Development
The legendary child development theorist Jean Piaget wrote about how children develop moral reasoning through their independent game playing in ”The Moral Judgment of the Child.” In the course of growing up playing marbles, early 20th century Swiss children moved beyond a state of “moral realism,” in which they just accept rules without understanding the need for them or the logic behind them. As they played games where they encountered new unforeseen situations, they came to their own understanding of why rules are actually needed. They grappled with issues of fairness, equity, and the administrative cost of creating and applying new rules.

Piaget argued that experiences like this play a vital role in helping children grow to a more mature stage of moral development.

It’s quite possible that children who never have deep experience deciding all these issues never develop beyond that moral reasoning state where rules are accepted as given. In an excellent essay called ”The Organization Kid,” David Brooks, currently a New York Times columnist and Lehrer News Hour commentator, argues that elite college students of today devote a tremendous amount of energy toward working within a set of rules while barely, if ever, questioning the rules themselves.

“It’s very rare to get a student to challenge anything or to take a position that’s counter to what the professor says.” Robert Wuthnow, a Princeton sociologist, lamented, “They are disconcertingly comfortable with authority. That’s the most common complaint the faculty has of Princeton students. They’re eager to please, eager to jump through whatever hoops the faculty puts in front of them, eager to conform.”

These kids perform fabulously on tests, but they have gaping holes in intellectual abilities that tests don’t measure. What is fair and just? What’s a better widget? What’s a better way to do something? Questions like these aren’t on the SAT or AP exams, but it’s pretty difficult to argue that answering them well has nothing to do with intellectual development. It horrifies me to think that we’re raising a generation of kids who have scant ability to think outside the box, or to question the box itself…

Egalitarianism
As I mentioned before, pickup games are chronically in need of players, so kids must constantly find bodies to play. This fact creates a built-in bias toward egalitarianism among kids.

Our rule in our neighborhood was, if you understood the basic concepts of the game and didn’t whine too much, we wanted you. We wanted Bobby, the mentally retarded kid across the street. We wanted David, the deaf kid down the block. We wanted any girl who wanted to play. We wanted little kids who could handle playing with us.

And we wanted them not only for today, but we wanted them to come back tomorrow and the day after. Thus, we cared a lot about whether each and every kid enjoyed playing. That meant that we would pitch slower to kids who weren’t as good. Sometimes we would let rules slide a bit – “OK, that’s a fair ball!” – to let them get a hit.

Sure, even given all this bending, we still wanted to win a great deal, but we balanced this need with the need to let the lesser athletes among us have a good time.

Why Are Pickup Games Going Away?
Notwithstanding all these great benefits, pickup games have largely vanished from our culture. In fact, most kids have never gotten together with other kids to organize a sports game on their own. Why is this?

Parents Delude Themselves That Their Child Can be a Superstar Athlete: Some people argue that organized sports are a better environment to hone athletic skills. While this opinion is not universal, for the purposes of this article, it is sufficient to state that most parents believe this. So, parents who place a high priority on having their kids achieve the highest level of skill possible favor organized sports over pickup games. To the extent that these parents’ goals are for their children to become professional athletes, they are largely delusional. There is practically zero chance that any given child will make a good living as a professional athlete.
Kids Stay Inside More: Far more children spend their free time inside in front of screens (videogames, computers, and TV) today than did so decades ago.
Parents Rarely Let Their Kids Outside on Their Own: Many parents are fearful of the risks of letting their children play outside on their own, so they rarely, if ever, let them do it. However, as I wrote in a previous article, kids who are driven around to organized activities are at greater risk of death than those who roam close to home. As for the concern about sports-related injuries, kids today are less likely than kids decades ago to break bones and are more likely to develop “overuse” injuries (e.g. torn rotator cuff) due to the shift from pickup sports to organized sports.

Parents Overmanage Their Kids’ Lives: Highly driven parents in America have developed a tendency to “overmanage” their children’s lives. Thus, most parents want to get directly involved in their kids’ sporting activities than just let them do it for themselves. I wrote an article about this phenomenon entitled, Why is it a Good Idea for Adults to Control Kids’ Sports?. As I say there, I think that parents’ time with their children would be better spent having quality family time at home rather than driving all around practically every day accommodating multiple sports team schedules.

Musings on the News
by Psych Mom

Our local television station recently did a three part feature story on home and school education issues. The promos that were broadcast in the days ahead of the actual piece gave the message that this story was about informing parents on how they can be more involved in their children’s education and that their children would have better outcomes with parent involvement. The first evening featured the topic of homework, the second night was about communication between home and school, and the third night was, what parents can do to help the struggling student. Unfortunately I was only able to watch the second evening. A couple of parents were featured, and a couple of teachers, each with their perspective on the importance of communication. One mother indicated that she stays on top of her child’s homework as a means of knowing what he’s doing at school. The teachers, one male and one female, promoted the value of communication between home and school, so that parents would be able to assist the teacher better in teaching their children.

I sent in a message to the TV station to voice my concerns about the 1950’s style of the life that seems to be portrayed in the piece I saw. There was none of the chaos of getting home at 5:30 with hungry kids…it was Mom lovingly hovering over youngster working at the kitchen table, book and papers spread wide. Everyone is smiling. You could almost hear Ward Cleaver coming through the front door. The good parent is one who wants to know what the child is doing in school and you can only learn that through making sure your child does their homework. The other aspect of the story that was clear was the idea that the teacher and school are the leaders and decision makers. The good parent follows their lead.

Maybe the point of this series was to provide some energy for parents to get through the last piece of the school year. That would imply that school is drudgery and everyone is tired by now, so lets all just pull together and see this hell through. It wasn’t about learning, it was about how to help your child survive school. And in the same vein as the message that adults give kids about “we did it, so you have to do it”, the kindly lady on TV was providing the message , ”Listen up parents, we all know school is dreadful but we have to help our kids because if you want to be a good parent that’s what you should do.” Oh, and “Listen to the teacher….he/she knows best”

I read and loved the piece but I couldn’t be bothered to answer FedUp Mom’s questions and neither could anyone else. So for the next several Thursdays, FedUp Mom will answer the questions herself.

Such, Such Thursdays
by Fedup Mom

QUESTION #1:

(from Such, Such Were the Joys)

Over a period of two or three years the scholarship boys were crammed with learning as cynically as a goose is crammed for Christmas… At St. Cyprian’s the whole process was frankly a preparation for a sort of confidence trick. Your job was to learn exactly those things that would give an examiner the impression that you knew more than you did know, and as far as possible to avoid burdening your brain with anything else.

[Vocabulary: “confidence trick” is the British equivalent of the American “con”.]

How does Orwell’s experience relate to today’s standardized-testing-infested public schools? Compare and contrast, if possible.

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FedUp Mom’s ANSWER:

The parallel here is so close it’s painful. There is nothing new in schools staking their reputation on their student’s performance. There is nothing new in students being force-fed just what they will need for an exam, and no more.

In Orwell’s day, schoolboys had to study Latin and Greek to do well on the exams that would take them to the best “public” schools. Once they were done with school, of course, only a tiny minority of students would have any use for the Latin and Greek they worked so hard to learn.

In our own time, we have cut out the middleman. We teach test-taking skills directly, with no intervening content. Our kids work hard to learn to write a 5-paragraph essay or Brief Constructed Response that they will have no use for when they’re done with school.

What gets tested is what gets taught. If our goal is to get all kids testing at grade level, the child who starts the year testing above grade level can comfortably be ignored. Even better, why not lock in the test scores, by starting the year with most of the kids performing above grade level? This can be achieved by pushing the goals of each year down to the previous year. Kindergarten is the new first grade, and high school is the new college.

Of course, kindergarten kids may not be developmentally ready for first grade, and high school students have nowhere near as much free time as college students, but if the standardized test scores look good, why should the schools care?

Don’t Let Play Disappear
by Nini Engel

I’m writing as a school psychologist, as a mother of three daughters, and as a former child. We need to value the complexity and deep worth of play in our children’s lives and our own. I’m concerned that play is being crowded out of our schools and homes. Several years ago, I came to this website and the homework debate as a concerned parent of a sleep and play-deprived adolescent.

As a psychology undergraduate, I took a folklore class at the University of Pennsylvania, entitled “Play and Games,” taught by an engaging New Zealander named Brian Sutton-Smith. While my friends teased me about whether I was playing Clue in class, the experience was a pivotal one in my education. Children and young mammals play. Humans play house, war and school; dogs pretend to hunt. “A nip connotes a bit but not what a bite connotes,” was the quote that stuck. That, and the concept of “flow,” Csikszentmihalyi’s idea of a state where we are so engaged in activity that our surroundings, the passage of time, and ego awareness cease to register. We play and process our emotions; we play and try on different roles; we play and master skills and fears. We need play and play has intrinsic value.

In a balanced world, children could learn and work hard to master real skills, but still have time to run and pretend at recess. Play could infuse education and make it less boring, but there are still times when children and adults have to work. Those of us lucky enough to have work we love, even experience “flow” when we’re earning money. However, in civilized societies we assume that no one has to work all the time. This assumption varies from culture to culture and shifts in historic periods, but we give at least lip service to leisure.

I want to argue that afternoons, evenings and weekends should primarily be safeguarded for play, family interaction, and developing the responsibilities of being a member of a household unit. I know many upper-middle class families where teenagers have few family responsibilities because their homework loads are too heavy. I admit that my teenagers are frequently members of this group. When am I to teach them how to cook, to balance a checkbook, to organize a family celebration? When can we play cards or Scrabble, chase the dog around the backyard, or sing around the piano? I want to raise intelligent, educated, ethical children who can relax and enjoy the fruits of their labors. Otherwise, what is the ultimate point of all this work?

Dear Teacher
by David B. Cohen
from Accomplished California Teachers

Dear Teacher,

I just want to take a moment to thank you for all that you did for me when I was in your class. Now that I’m out of high school, I really appreciate it even more. When I started your English class, I knew that my test scores were kind of low, and I was really committed to improving my performance on two of the subtests. You saw that potential in me, and even more. By providing me with chances to read anthologized literary excerpts and random workplace documents, all followed by multiple choice assessments, you showed a commitment to my learning, and my test scores that spring really proved how far I had come. I was totally comfortable dealing with any readings chosen for me, and comfortable choosing the answers to other people’s questions. I also remember that you showed us how to answer the questions without even doing most of the reading, and that sure did help on the test!

Do you remember my sister? She was in your class a few years ahead of me, and I was just talking to her about your class. She couldn’t even remember what her test scores were – probably because she usually has her nose in a book, when she’s not writing in her journals or on her blog.

My sister just graduated from college, but as for me, I don’t know if you heard, but I’ve taken a break from school. I tried it for a year, but none of the instructors cared as much as you did, so it was hard to connect. A lot of times they assigned us really long readings and didn’t even give us any points for doing all that homework. Then, we had to write essays on these ridiculously hard questions where you couldn’t even find the answer in the books. I did my best and put together my five paragraphs and everything, and I still got low grades. When they don’t tell you how to find the answers and don’t even give you the motivation, well… it just wasn’t for me. It’s just too bad that all those skills we practiced in your class don’t even seem to matter in college. I think I might transfer to another school, but for now, I’m just working and waiting for inspiration to come along.

One more thing – I saw on the news that they’re going to start paying teachers more if your students do well on tests. That should be good news for you! And why not? I definitely think you deserve it after all you did to raise our test scores.

Sincerely,

Your former Proficient Student

To the Editor
From a piano teacher

So here we are again, discussing the same issue that has been brought up countless times.

A few years ago, I wrote a letter to the Citizen, suggesting that homework impacts negatively on home life and extracurricular activities. As a piano teacher I was seeing several students a week come in embarrassed and apologetic because they hadn’t had time to practise. Many broke down in tears because they were so overworked and stressed. So much for piano for fun.

This situation has not changed. I am still seeing children as young as Grade 2 sobbing in my piano studio because there’s just no time to do anything other than school work.

Teachers don’t seem to understand; projects, summatives and tests are piled on indiscriminately and each teacher expects the most from each student. Multiply that by eight subjects in elementary school and four in high school.

Who has time to practise piano and enjoy it? Who has time for gymnastics or karate? Who has time just to play outside? I hear complaints from all ages of four to five hours of homework, from immediately after school, break for dinner, back to work till bedtime. Is this necessary?

Not only are we a society of burned-out adults, but we’re creating the same world for our children! School trustees and teachers, please, consider abolishing homework so that kids can be kids, so that I can see my wonderful students come in smiling and satisfied that they are prepared for their lesson, and ready to enjoy it.

And parents, please, take a stand and fight for your child’s emotional well being.

Good for parent Diane Hunter who declared there would be no more homework in the Hunter home. I admire her.

Elaine Armstrong,

Orléans

Guest Post #5
by FedUp Mom

Talent vs. Hard Work

Recently there’s been a cultural meme claiming that achievement is all about hours of practice. It began with the book Outliers, which I heard quoted so much that I never bothered to read it, and continued recently with articles in the New York Times.

On the one hand, I agree that talent takes a great deal of hard work to develop properly. On the other hand, I don’t believe for a moment that the biggest difference between me and Mozart is that Mozart got more practice. Equally, if you had taken me at the same age Michael Phelps was when he started swimming, and made me spend the same number of hours swimming that he did, I would never have gone to the Olympics. Why? I don’t have the build, the energy, the coordination, or the ability. In short (and how!), I don’t have athletic talent.

My biggest fear about the idea of hours of practice is that it will be applied unthinkingly to our kids, many of whom are already overworked.

If you are passionate about something, the hours of practice can fly by. There must be a balance that will allow our kids to find their passion, and spend their energy wisely and effectively.

Guest Post #4
by FedUp Mom

How the Homework Got Done

“The schoolmaster who imagines he is loved and trusted by his boys is in fact mimicked and laughed at behind his back.”

— George Orwell, “Such, Such Were the Joys”

“Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares” is a TV show wherein Gordon Ramsay, a famous chef, travels around to failing restaurants and attempts to whip them into shape. A recurring theme is the absolute cluelessness of the failing chef. “But the customers love this!” he’ll say, as he’s ladling up some revolting slop. “I’ve never had any complaints!” Gordon Ramsay points out, correctly, that most people don’t bother to complain; they vote with their feet, and simply never return.

I wish the bad chef could hear what his customers really say about his food. Similarly, I wish every teacher could hear what her students, and the students’ parents, say behind her back. I wish they could see how the homework actually gets done.

For instance, my older daughter recently came home with an assignment from the school librarian. It consisted of 20 random factual questions (e.g., “what year was the first World Series game?”), of which my daughter was supposed to answer 15. She was only allowed to get help for 10 of the questions, and each person who helped was only allowed to help with 1 question. She was supposed to find the answers in almanacs or dictionaries, not the internet. If she answered all 20 questions correctly, she could win some contest (dd: “I don’t care about the contest!”) My daughter was very tense and worried about how she could manage all this.

Naturally, I told her that what the librarian doesn’t know won’t hurt her. We then spent a few minutes answering the questions by looking them up on the internet. I personally haven’t opened an almanac in many years, and it isn’t because I don’t look things up.

When my daughter turns in her answers, the librarian will think her assignment worked. That is, unless she reads the stophomework blog.

Now, I could have gone in and complained, and I still might. But like the dissatisfied diners, sometimes I’m just looking for a quick exit.

Guest Post #3
by FedUp Mom

FedUpMom’s IEP

I wonder how teachers see mothers. To the extent they think about us at all, I think they see a faceless mass of willing volunteers, always at the ready to organize and supervise our children’s homework, track down and buy obscure supplies, and explain difficult concepts that the teacher neglected to address. With a miraculously open schedule and wallets to match, we are an army of Everymoms at their beck and call. This describes the “good” Moms, of course.

While most schools at least give lip service to the idea that different kids have different needs, there is no such leeway for Mom. No matter how busy, tired, stressed-out or opposed she may be, she is never allowed to shirk her duties as homework cop.

A child might get an IEP for her special needs, but where’s Mom’s IEP? If we ever return to the public schools, I want an IEP of my own. It might go like this:

“FedUpMom suffers from Battle Fatigue and Overloaded Irascibility Disorder. If she shows up in your classroom sounding off about homework, the best strategy is to back away slowly. Keep your hands at your sides and avoid sudden movements. Accede to all of her demands. Do not antagonize. Any false move on your part could result in FedUpMom pulling a nice package of test scores (her daughter) out of the district.”

Guest Post #2
by FedUp Mom

“I suppose there is no place in the world where snobbery is quite so ever-present or where it is cultivated in such refined and subtle forms as in an English public school. Here at least one cannot say that English ‘education’ fails to do its job. You forget your Latin and Greek within a few months of leaving school — I studied Greek for eight or ten years, and now, at thirty-three, I cannot even repeat the Greek alphabet — but your snobbishness, unless you persistently root it out like the bindweed it is, sticks by you till your grave.”

— George Orwell, “The Road to Wigan Pier”

I was in a meeting early this school year to discuss the search for a new Head of School at my kids’ Quaker school. There was one moment that will stay with me for a long time. For some mysterious reason, everyone around the table took turns stating their connections to public schools. “I went to the public schools!” “My mother taught in the public schools!” Finally, one of the PTA-type Moms summed up the discussion by saying: “See, we’re not elitist!” Everyone except me nodded solemnly in agreement.

A friend suggested that I should have said “Twenty thousand bucks a year and we’re not elitist? I’ve been robbed!” and stalked out in a huff. My husband suggested that when everyone was giving their public-school testimony, I should have offered, “I blew up a public school!” As usual, I didn’t think to say either of these at the time, but I have a hunch the whole ritual will be repeated, and maybe I’ll use the suggestions then.

One of the basic hazards of private school is the snobbery that comes with belonging to an expensive club. The Quakers are not immune: their stated commitment to equality and simplicity just makes their snobbery more convoluted and mind-boggling. (For more, here’s an interesting blog, which, alas, cannot live up to its title: F***Thee: I Was A Teenage Quaker.)

Recently, I asked my daughter how her school day had been and she said, “It’s really annoying how the kids brag about being lifers. They’re going to have a special interview with a lifer for the school paper.” A “lifer” is a child who has been to no other school than this one, usually starting in pre-kindergarten. My daughter is well aware of her second-class status as a newcomer to the school.

Of course, the private schools don’t have a monopoly on snobbery. The public schools have their constant ranking and open discussion of “good” vs. “bad” districts. Within a district, there’s the sorting and grouping of kids into “honors” and “accelerated” and “gifted” programs. Indeed, my daughter’s placement into one of these groups was presumed to be enough to keep me happy (“What are you complaining about? We put her in the winners’ track!”)

School snobbery and its cousins, competition and anxiety, are corrosive to our children’s learning and development. What is the remedy? I welcome your thoughts.

FedUpMom attained her FedUp status through the experiences of her older daughter at the local nominally high-performing public school. Currently, both of FedUpMom’s daughters attend a small Quaker school, in kindergarten and 6th grade.

Guest Post #1
by FedUpMom

*******
“Such, such were the joys
When we all, girls and boys,
In our youth time were seen
On the Echoing Green.”

(from “the Echoing Green”, by William Blake)

“Such, Such Were the Joys” is an essay by George Orwell, about his experiences at St. Cyprian’s school. It is bloody brilliant, and only becomes more relevant with every passing year.

I know my recommendation isn’t enough to motivate you to read the essay, so I’ve decided to make it compulsory. You can find a book of Orwell’s essays at your local library, or buy it from Amazon. Buy it used; you know your family can’t afford to buy it new.

Or, you can read it online.

Answer the questions below and turn in your answers by the end of the week. All submissions must be signed by a parent or guardian, your local police chief, the superintendent of the school board, and the Pope.

(Or, use those finely honed school skills and answer the questions without reading the essay! I will never know the difference.)

All quotes are from the essay.

1.) “Over a period of two or three years the scholarship boys were crammed with learning as cynically as a goose is crammed for Christmas… At St. Cyprian’s the whole process was frankly a preparation for a sort of confidence trick. Your job was to learn exactly those things that would give an examiner the impression that you knew more than you did know, and as far as possible to avoid burdening your brain with anything else.”

[Vocabulary: “confidence trick” is the British equivalent of the American “con”.]

How does Orwell’s experience relate to today’s standardized-testing-infested public schools? Compare and contrast, if possible.

2.) “Indeed, it was universally taken for granted at St. Cyprian’s that unless you went to a ‘good’ public school (and only about fifteen schools came under this heading) you were ruined for life… Over a period of about two years, I do not think there was ever a day when ‘the exam’, as I called it, was quite out of my waking thoughts… For people like me, the ambitious middle class, the examination passers, only a bleak, laborious kind of success was possible. ”

[Vocabulary: in British usage, “public” schools are so called because they are not open to the public. It’s pronounced “Chumley”.]

How does Orwell’s quest for a ‘good’ public school compare to today’s upper-middle-class quest for an Ivy League school? How is ‘the exam’, which got Orwell to Eton, similar to today’s SAT? Compare, contrast, and weep.

3.) “Looking back, I realize that I then worked harder than I have ever done since, and yet at the time it never seemed possible to make quite the effort that was demanded of one…All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude — and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep…The conviction that it was not possible for me to be a success went deep enough to influence my actions till far into adult life.”

Would Orwell have fared better or worse in your local “gifted” program? Explain.

4.) “That was the pattern of school life — a continuous triumph of the strong over the weak. Virtue consisted in winning: it consisted in being bigger, stronger, handsomer, richer, more popular, more elegant, more unscrupulous than other people … Life was hierarchical and whatever happened was right. There were the strong, who deserved to win and always did win, and there were the weak, who deserved to lose and always did lose, everlastingly.”

Has anything changed? Support your answer.

Extra credit:

5.) “There never was, I suppose, in the history of the world a time when the sheer vulgar fatness of wealth, without any kind of aristocratic elegance to redeem it, was so obtrusive as in those years before 1914… The extraordinary thing was the way in which everyone took it for granted that this oozing, bulging wealth of the English upper and upper-middle classes would last for ever, and was part of the order of things… How would St. Cyprian’s appear to me now, if I could go back, at my present age, and see it as it was in 1915 [when Orwell left the school]? … I should see them [the Headmaster and his wife] as a couple of silly, shallow, ineffectual people, eagerly clambering up a social ladder which any thinking person could see to be on the point of collapse.”

How does Orwell’s historical moment compare to our own? Is our social ladder on the point of collapse?

Since I know that free play is critically important to young children’s development (doesn’t everyone know that?), I’ve been really disturbed by the recent articles on recess coaches. But I was especially saddened when I read an op-ed in Friday’s New York Times by David Elkind, the author of The Hurried Child, a man I consider to be the grandfather of reasonable parenting.

Elkind readily admitted that in the past he would have been opposed to recess coaches. But he states that childhood as we knew it has disappeared, that the culture of childhood no longer exists, and that children no longer experience peer socialization. Rather than calling for an end to all of the nonsense, though, he writes that recess coaches are likely to be a good influence.

I think Elkind has set up a false dichotomy. If kids don’t know how to play anymore, then we need to give them time to play. If kids don’t have time for play, then we need to ensure that they have time to play. But we don’t have to either abolish recess in favor of more academics or have recess coaches. We need to let children play. And we need to let schools know that we won’t abide an end to real recess altogether.

Why I Cheat
by a High School Sophomore

To start off, I’m a sophomore in a relatively prestigious private institution; I have an IQ over 180. I don’t need to cheat. But why wouldn’t I? Hell, I don’t bother on tests, I get all the answers right before most kids in my class, but the sheer volume of homework I receive every night is absolutely ridiculous! Tell me, if I’m already investing 8 hours in school, 2 in sports, 2 in other ECs, how in the hell do my teachers expect me to add 6 more hours to homework?

I’m not stupid, it’s not a matter of me being slow with my work, there just aren’t enough hours in a day for school, rugby practice, play rehearsal, and that much homework! I’ll give a run-down of what I’m supposed to do tonight:

AP U.S. History: Take (meticulous) notes on chapters 40?–?43 (the end of the text, thank [insert deity here].) Prepare for in-class essay on any thing that occurred during Roosevelt’s presidency. Okay, so that’s not so bad, but we still have another 6 classes to cover.

English II: Read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and be prepared for a test tomorrow or the next day. Two work sheets on Moby Dick. I should probably also start on the autobiography due next week, since I can’t really cheat on that.

Latin II: Translate two books of Jason, test tomorrow.

Algebra II/Trig: 78 problems covering material that our teacher has conveniently for gotten to teach us.

Biology: Not too bad, just read and summarize a few articles from Scientific American and write up a lab report.

Gym (yes, gym): Look up all sorts of vocabulary concerning sports that nobody has played since the middle ages, and memorize it in two days

AP Stat: Busyworkbusyworkbusyworkbusyworkbusywork

How the staff a) expects students to do this much work while maintaining sleep/sanity (luckily I’m an insomniac and I went insane long, long ago) and b) thinks that any body does some of this ridiculous @%!&, is absolutely beyond me.

The only kids who don’t cheat are the kinds in all fundamentals classes who don’t know any better. If I could begin to describe to you the network of cheating that runs beneath this school, well, you probably wouldn’t really be all that surprised, but it’s still ridiculous.

Anyway, I feels good to get this off my chest. I predict that nobody will ever read this rant, but if you do, and by some miracle you made it here to the end, please know that this post was fueled by 12 sleepless nights, a fever, and a mos­quito that has been in my room for the past hour that is pissing me the hell off.

Thank you, good night.

“People have this conception of kindergarten as everybody gets cookies and milk and takes a nap, and you’re just not going to see that anymore,” said Kathy Fox, associate professor in the Watson School of Education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. “The focus on academics has been pushed downward.”

In her 22 years teaching preschool through second grade, Fox has watched unstructured playtime shrink, replaced by worksheets and nightly homework. Fox remembers the shift starting in the 1990s, when studies ranked students in the United States well below those in other developed nations like Japan in math and reading. There was a push to close that gap, Fox recalls, and one solution was to start emphasizing academic subjects at a younger age.

Walking into [a] classroom at Castle Hayne Elementary, parents will see fewer toys and more tables and chairs than they might expect, according to teacher Tina Weldon. Students have a 30-minute recess every day, and the rest of the time is scheduled for specific activities. The school day has stretched, from half a day to the full six and a half hours.

“It seems like kindergarten now is like what first or second grade was like when I was in school,” Weldon said.,

Read the story here.

The Conseil supérieur de l’éducation, an influential body that advises the Quebec government, just issued a 124-page report recommending that elementary school homework be re-examined, refocused, and maybe even abolished.

In addition to finding that scientific studies show no definitive link between homework and academic success, the report took into account the reality of today’s families, where many are headed by single parents or where both parents work, and where there is little time to help children with homework.

You can read the story here.

You know that you have trained your class to ignore
distractions well when someone throws up DURING state
testing and no one even flinches and continues with their
testing!

No lie!

My classroom!

Today!

Luckily he missed the book by an inch and hit the trashcan
which I had shoved in front of his face when I saw him
starting to turn green!

Nurse is right across the hall, off he goes, trashcan and all!

First question the principal asks me at the break is… did
anything hit the test book? Evidently there is some major
procedure involving fort knox and some security company
trained by the cia and fbi that needs to be followed when
someone barfs on the book!

He writes all about it on his blog, homework headaches.

Should Homework be Reduced – 13 support; 3 opposed; 1 undecided; 4 no response
by Fred Baumgarten

As of today, out of 21 fifth grade families in our school, 12 have indicated their support of my efforts to reduce and improve homework; 3 are opposed (2 of them strongly; one just responded to another recent e-mail thus: “We do not support your movement. I thought lack of our response would have given you some indication”); 1 is provisionally supportive but still researching it; and 5 have not responded to e-mails and phone messages.

In my latest e-mail I invited those parents who are supportive or who had not responded to join me at a meeting with the principal. None have responded positively to the invitation.

Nevertheless, I have gone ahead and scheduled a meeting with the principal. Given that more than half of the families are in support, and greater than 75% of those who responded are in support, I feel I have a pretty strong case for proceeding.

It would be interesting to know whether there are class or other distinctions — to be blunt about it — that affect people’s perceptions and positions on the homework issue. I know the two families who most strenuously reject my efforts (will they actively try to oppose them?) are highly conservative and working class (granted the term is debatable). The author of the quip about my “movement” is a local law-enforcement officer.

Are there differences in education level that affect opinions? Does my having an advanced degree make me more likely to be a critic of homework, or even more likely to have problems with it in my family? In any case, a number of responses I have received to both my e-mails and in informal conversations have inevitably, it would seem, revolved around mathematics.

One parent (of a fourth grader) said that she depends on homework to tell her what and how her child is learning in school, especially in math; she felt that often the math was taught badly, and she used the homework to help correct her child’s understanding. Another parent of a fifth grader, one who was generally, but gently, not supportive of my efforts, told me that she thought there might not be enough homework; but at the same time she felt that the type of work happening in math was too abstract and not practical enough — for example, she said that she thought the students should be doing more drilling of times tables. (I happen to agree with that!)

And several parents, even among those who do support my “movement,” feel that the math homework is still indispensible for “practicing” and “reinforcing” the skills and operations the students learn in class. I have heard several people say that students who have gone through the program with this math teacher, one of the veteran teachers in the school, perform better than their peers at the regional high school.

Leaving aside the question of what type of math education takes place at the high school and how it feeds back to the elementary curriculum for better or worse — the answer to which I don’t know — I have to come back to what I do know: my child’s struggles with the math work, and my own math history.

That’s the part that I hope to discuss a bit further, but for now it will have to wait. Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, I am beginning to think of a strategy for my meeting. It is going to be challenging, especially being on my own — and only having a half-hour! But I definitely feel it’s time to “cut to the chase” and be prepared with specific requests (which in all fairness I have made before) and responses to the arguments I expect to hear, from “I will not talk about the policy or “philosophy,” only about your child,” to “We all understand why homework is important….” As I said, stay tuned!

Zzz…Teenagers need more sleep
School board should consider late start for high school, junior high students
BY RUSS CAREY

It is time for the Estacada School District to switch the school starting time of the high school and junior high schools with that of the grade schools. Today’s teens are sleep-deprived.

There are many studies that clearly show that teens need more sleep that they are getting. I believe that the junior high and high school classes should begin later in the morning to help solve this problem.

At present, classes for high school and junior high school students begin at 7:45 a.m., and grade school classes begin at 9:05 a.m. I would like to propose switching these two times. My reasons: Teenagers have more homework, more extra-curricular activities and require more sleep than younger children. This change would give the older students the extra time for the sleep they need to succeed.

Read the rest of the piece here.