Is your child geting enough homework?

[Dymphna]

Studies: Don’t buy homework hype

Think tank finds tales of swamped students are exaggerated


WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 — It’s a troubling story: Public school students get so loaded with homework that they stress out and lose out on chances to be playful kids. But that story is largely wrong, two new studies contend.

MOST STUDENTS actually have less than an hour of homework a night, said Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. Compelling anecdotes of overwhelmed kids and exasperated parents don’t reflect what most families face, according to a Brookings analysis of a broad range of homework research.
“People are unduly alarmed over the amount of homework,” Loveless said. “They should realize kids are not overworked —and indeed, there is room for even more work.”
The Brookings report is based on widely cited data from the Education Department, international surveys and research by the University of Michigan and UCLA, among other sources.
For example, when asked how much homework they were assigned the day before, most students age 9, 13 and 17 all reported less than an hour, according to a federal long-term survey in 1999. The share of students assigned more than an hour of homework has dropped for all three age groups since 1984.
full article

 

[justhangn]

Both of my kids have at least an hours homework every night.

 

[vraiblonde]

I never did buy into the homework hype. Occasionally my kids have more than a half hour of homework at night. More often, they have none.

 

[Pete]

Mine gets homework and he is in 1st grade. It takes 15 minutes if there is something he wants to watch on TV, 45 minutes all other times.

 

[JabbaJawz]

I went to Catholic school in St. Mary's from grades K-8 and the amount of homework that we had each night was absolutely RIDICULOUS!!!! It would take us HOUR each night to complete, and made us extremely upset. It was hard, and took forever.

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by PFgal
I went to Catholic school in St. Mary's from grades K-8 and the amount of homework that we had each night was absolutely RIDICULOUS!!!! It would take us HOUR each night to complete, and made us extremely upset. It was hard, and took forever.

Come on Virginia don't make me wait, you Catholic girls start much too late...........

 

[Dymphna]

Originally posted by Pete
Mine gets homework and he is in 1st grade. It takes 15 minutes if there is something he wants to watch on TV, 45 minutes all other times.

Mine's in kindergarten. I originally thought "homework, in kindergarten, you've gotta be kidding"

But with the exception of the fact that he can't actually read the directions, he is very capable of doing it. He gets the week's worth on Fri and it's due on Thurs. I usually make him do one task and ask if he wants to do more or wait until the next day. This past week he took about a half hour, did the whole week's worth and the next day asked if there was anymore. He was disappointed when I said, "no."

 

[justhangn]

Originally posted by PFgal
It was hard, and took forever.

Yet now, you don't complain about that fact.

Good morning sunshine.

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by cmcdanal
Mine's in kindergarten. I originally thought "homework, in kindergarten, you've gotta be kidding"

But with the exception of the fact that he can't actually read the directions, he is very capable of doing it. He gets the week's worth on Fri and it's due on Thurs. I usually make him do one task and ask if he wants to do more or wait until the next day. This past week he took about a half hour, did the whole week's worth and the next day asked if there was anymore. He was disappointed when I said, "no."

Mine is capable of doing most of it, but needs help with he directions so I end up sitting with his doing it too.

 

[sleuth]

I think it depends on what courses he/she is taking.

I was in all the advanced courses. AP English, AP Government, fast track in math all the way up to Calculus II, Physics, Chemistry, AP History, etc.

By the time I was a high school junior I typically had 3-4 hours of homework each night, along with my school athletic endeavors.

In college, as an engineering major, I was in class about 5 hours a day, but I had about another 8-11 hours of homework every day to go with it.

 

[crabcake]

Originally posted by sleuth14
In college ... I was in class about 5 hours a day, but I had about another 8-11 hours of homework every day to go with it.

Pixie ... you see that? that might cut into your extracurricular activities.

 

[justhangn]

Originally posted by sleuth14
I was in class about 5 hours a day, but I had about another 8-11 hours of homework every day to go with it.

No wonder it was such a dry time.

 

[sleuth]

Originally posted by justhangn
No wonder it was such a dry time.

what do you think i did on weekends?
I hit the wet bars

 

[Heretic]

Now sleuth come on, thats a bit of an exaggeration.

I know when I got into college they said 3 hrs outside of class for every hour in class, what a joke......1 hour was really stretching it.

In gradschool I made a discovery that cut that time way back even so by that time Id go to class, watch some TV and go out drinking.

I never even took books home in highschool unless we had a project or something to do.

But hey I was that guy that showed up to class with a pencil and a folded up piece of notebook paper in his back pocket.

 

[Kizzy]

Originally posted by PFgal
I went to Catholic school in St. Mary's from grades K-8 and the amount of homework that we had each night was absolutely RIDICULOUS!!!! It would take us HOUR each night to complete, and made us extremely upset. It was hard, and took forever.

Boy, I know that feeling, and in high school, I took AP courses too and felt I did much less homework than I ever did in Catholic school.

 

[sleuth]

Originally posted by Heretic
Now sleuth come on, thats a bit of an exaggeration.

Not an exaggeration. Purdue rocket scientists aren't expected to have personal lives.

 

[Elle]

Originally posted by cmcdanal
Mine's in kindergarten. I originally thought "homework, in kindergarten, you've gotta be kidding"

Tyler is the same, he has to do 2 assignments a week, pertaining to the letter of the week. We usually do them both on Monday to just knock them out of the way. Then we also have to read for 10 minutes a night. He only goes to school for 3 hours a day so 30 minutes of homework 1 day a week isn't bad to me.

 

[Pete]

Mine is insane. A first grader with about an hour a night + fixing all the stuff from the day, about 5 work sheets.

 

[tlatchaw]

According to a first grade teacher at St. Leonard ES. The standard in Calvert county is 10 minutes per night per grade level as a minimum and about twice that as a maximum.

She told this to a group of parents of children that were there that evening to find out about how they are teaching kids to read, and what title 1 funding will do to help our kids from getting left behind. She was insinuating that if us lazy parents would just spend a few minutes per night with our kids that they would show a marked improvement.

Pretty bad "foot in mouth" disease when she realized that most of us are working flashcards with our kids 30-60 minutes per night! Oh well, at least if my little girl is kinda slow with reading she seems to be picking up the math real well.

 

[Ken King]

Hell no, there was never enough "homework" for my kids when they were going through school. They had plenty of school work to do, but never were they tasked to paint the house, build a deck, cook a meal, or any other "home work" assignments. I must have been gipped.