What do you think of this policy?: Homework Counts For Less For LA Unified Students

[bluestateguy]

I can see the merits to this. So much homework is just pointless busywork, and some teachers really do pile it on way too much.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/27/homework-counts-for-less-for-la-students-_n_885310.html

Homework is one of those necessary evils, but it's not going to count for much for LA students anymore.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the country's second largest school system, Los Angeles Unified, is rolling out a new policy where homework can only count for 10 percent of a student's grade.

Students will no doubt be thrilled by the new policy, but teachers are worried it will encourage students to slack off on doing their assignments -- and even could penalize hardworking students who receive higher marks for effort, reports KTLA.

But it's being done to try to create a level academic playing field. The policy claims that "varying degrees of access to academic support, for whatever reason, should not penalize a student so severely that it prevents the student from passing a class, nor should it inflate the grade," and is a refection of the many issues that face LA's students.

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[ieoeja]

1. Makes sense to me.

Homework is the means (practice) to the ends (learning). Better to grade students on what they end up learning, I would think.

However, I am no expert in education. So I would leave it up to the experts (aka the educators) to figure out what is best.

[mike_c]

2. I think the larger question is whether educational policy should be set...

...by administrative bodies or whether it should be set by schools and teachers. While I think a good argument can be made for not grading homework at all, or even assigning it, good cases can likewise be made for the opposite, especially in settings where learning skills takes considerable independent practice.

I guess my point is that system wide administrative decisions more often constrain good, creative teaching than they foster it.

[Gormy Cuss]

3. I appeciate the thinking behind this policy, but I hope that the policy came from educators.

rather than administrators or politicians.

[Igel]

7. Educators in schools with endemic cheating do this.

You can't control copying of homework, so you wind up putting a lot more emphasis on stuff that's done in class and which is controlled.

Then you wind up with 80% or 85% of the grade being based on tests: You have 4 units during a grading period, each test is 20% of your grade. Hey, let's make *every* test a high-stakes test.


I don't know how many times in my brief career I've explained to kids how their brains work (or don't work): You understand something? Great! But your brain won't retain it without practice, taking it from working and short term memory and putting it into long term memory. "I know this when we do it in class, but I can't do the tests!" is a complaint about the test--and then you point out that the test problems *were* the homework problems. It demoralizes them so then they seriously don't study or do homework.

Foolish. Utterly foolish.

[salin]

8. My experience echoes your view point.

in the end it seems to be a counter productive policy.

I give the caveat - that I think that homework should have a point and not be busy work. Pointless homework is just that.

Intentional homework (skills practice so that skills are internalized such that class time can be spent not on endless repitition, but on higher and higher levels of skills and critical thinking (that is then practiced ala homework) where support is available at school for those students who may have no support (or even place/space to do homework).

[JDPriestly]

4. Horrors!

Teachers do not cause children to learn. Teachers guide children as the children learn for themselves. Homework, yes, all that boring repetition is how you install information from the textbook into your brain.

Downplaying homework is like downloading a new program or an update on your computer and then never installing it.

Homework is about training your memory -- an organ that most Americans seem to have forgotten that they ever had.

[WatsonT]

5. Then they won't do it

Might as well stop assigning it as giving out homework that will not be taken seriously only undermines the teachers authority.

[frustrated_lefty]

6. Probably not the best of ideas.

Properly applied, homework provides a useful tool to help reinforce student's long term memory of new information. It provides a balance to the student's natural inclination to cram the night before a test, a process which results in minimal retention.

This doesn't strike me as a policy designed to promote education. It seems to be directed at artificially elevating grades, presumably for the purpose of meeting government standards.

Johny can't write a book report, but he plays nice with others?

[Edweird]

9. Homework kept me from getting "A"s. I could always ace the tests from just sitting in class.

I obviously understood the concepts and was able to demonstrate it. Which, as I understand it, is the point of school. I was penalized for having a fucked up home life and a brain that clearly was unlike others. Such is life.

[TheCentepedeShoes]

10. Back when I was in JHS or HS - aka the old days

Homework had two purposes
For verbal subject like English or history it was to read ahead for the next day's discussion with the threat of a pop quiz
For math related subjects there was class instruction first, then the homework was practice for what had been covered in class