Date: 10/19/2006 1:52:15 PM

Resource: Daily Herald

More parents, teachers questioning value of homework

Now translate that to school. It's what some students face every day.

"I hate homework," said freshman Meagan Beckham of Nashville, who has several honors classes in her schedule and complains that take-home assignments take away from her free time. "I'd much rather have less homework or no homework."

Of course, it's not called homework for being quick and easy.

"Starting in middle school, homework was incredibly discouraging for my children because they'd already gone to school for a long day and they came home with huge amounts of homework that took them into late at night," said Wendy Kurland, mother of two college students and director of the Homework Hotline, a nonprofit that serves 28 counties in the Middle Tennessee area.

"As grownups, if we had jobs like that, we would quit."

It is both the much-loathed bane of the young and a Goldilocks conundrum: What's too much, too little and just right?

Teachers say they have to juggle aspirations to impart knowledge with the expectations of standardized tests as well as their students' hectic schedules. Sometimes, that means no homework at all. Whether it's too time-consuming is a matter of opinion.

Some students say it's too much. Others feel the workload is manageable, such as sophomore Taylor Cochran of Nashville, though his honors-heavy schedule means homework that takes anywhere from half an hour to two hours.

"It's what I expect," Cochran said. "I don't mind doing it because it's what I signed up for. Since you have a limited time at school, you can't learn it all in an hour of time. "

The National PTA and National Education Association both recommend no more than 10 minutes of homework per grade level per night. In other words, no more than 10 minutes' labor for a first-grader, and no more than two hours for a high school senior.

Harris Cooper, a leading researcher on homework from Duke University, said in an editorial for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last month that he found homework assignments mainly helped kids fare better on end-of-unit tests.

"Homework for junior high students appears to reach the point of diminishing returns after about 90 minutes a night," he wrote. "For high school students, the positive line continues to climb until between 90 minutes and 2½ hours of homework a night, after which returns diminish."

That may be the case for 12-year-old Justin Wright. The Wright Middle School seventh-grade tuba player said his take-home assignments take him between one and three hours to finish.

"Sometimes I can't even turn in my homework because I didn't finish it because I was so tired," he said.

How do parents feel? A poll of 1,085 parents, conducted by the Associated Press and AOL Learning Services earlier this year, showed that 57 percent feel the amount of homework their kids get is fitting. Nineteen percent thought it was too much and 23 percent, too little. (One percent did not answer.)

The 810 teachers polled felt similarly: Sixty-three percent said the load was just right, 12 percent thought it too much and 25 percent, not enough.

But in a marked difference in opinion, 87 percent of teachers say they felt parents didn't spend enough time helping with homework. Only 27 percent of parents agreed.

Many a child has parents who aren't available evenings because they're working, said Kurland of the Homework Hotline. Plus, she added, the concepts and skills required are sometimes too advanced for parents who may not have finished high school - and even those who have.

After all, how many of us remember polynomials or the quadratic equation?

"There are a lot of children begging for help," Kurland said. "We are filled to capacity every single night all year. It's just about impossible to get through on our phone lines some nights."

The nonprofit group took nearly 37,000 calls last year. It has about 15 lines answered mostly by Metro teachers, plus adult and student volunteers and some private paid teachers.

Schools - high schools in particular - have the responsibility of preparing young people for the workload they can expect in college, said Judith Presley, assistant dean for teachers' education at Tennessee State University.

At a recent freshmen orientation, she told the students they needed to set enough time aside to properly study for midterms. One student asked if 30 minutes a class was enough.

"That tells me that that student probably has not had a lot of homework or had not been prepared to take a lot of exams in high school," she said.

But younger children in particular need someone available to help them. If parental support isn't there, teachers may opt not to give out homework.

"The older they get, the homework has to be limited to something they feel they can accomplish," Presley said. "I see that as well with college students. If they have so much homework they feel they can't complete the homework and really comprehend what they've done, it becomes frustrating."

Bryan Itzep, 9, a Nashville fourth-grader, can relate. He's not too keen on bringing two textbooks home nearly every day and having to do two to three pages' worth of work in each. It usually takes him about 30 minutes total to finish.

"I think it's too much because most of the pages have too many questions," he said.

Kristin Pollack, a 10th-grade English teacher at Smyrna High School, chooses not to assign homework at all. She feels take-home English assignments are simply unnecessary by the high school level. Her students have enough on their plates.

"If I plan well and I use my time correctly and I make sure the students are on task, I just don't need it," the 26-year teaching veteran said.

That's not to say her students never go home with English work. Pollack will, for example, start an assignment on Monday with expectations it be turned in the following Monday and give students time in class during the week to do it. Some may be finished by Friday while others may need to take it home over the weekend.

At Wright Middle in Nashville, fifth-grade teacher Mari Essery teaches the same students all day, unlike the school's typical two-teacher teams. That means she has control of the students' entire homework load.

Essery, who has a daughter at M.L. King Magnet High, has adopted a three-day-a-week homework policy. She tries not to give assignments requiring textbooks, just a practice sheet or two that can each be done in 10 to 15 minutes' time on their own. She wants her students to have family time. "We have so much pressure with TCAP (Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program tests) and all the pressures that are on us," she said. "I'll work with it, but I want to be able to do it in a meaningful way."

That awareness of students' schedules is more apparent this year, observed Jill Beckham, mom of Hillsboro student Meagan and a former teacher. Her daughter's workload seems more reasonable this year.

Still, she feels schools should offer more physical activity, believing it helps kids focus better. Teaching organization and time-management skills, plus providing follow-up support, is a necessity as well.

Jill Beckham thinks schools, in an effort to keep up with the No Child Left Behind Act, can put too much emphasis on homework and getting good grades rather than looking at the whole child. "The purpose of homework, besides reviewing what they've learned and demonstrating that they know it, is for students to start taking responsibility for their own learning." she said." .