These teachers (mostly) support movement away from homework
Along the bumpy return to normalcy in our pandemic-battered schools, I see an interesting movement to ease grading and homework requirements. Many educators have been promoting such changes for years, but more education writers like me are beginning to notice.
A recent Los Angeles Times editorial sums up the latest movement well. “Schools have stuck to an outdated system that relies heavily on students’ compliance — completing homework, behaving in class, meeting deadlines and correctly answering questions on a onetime test — as a proxy for learning, rather than measuring the learning itself.”
The big handicap is a lack of useful data on how many teachers use these allegedly worn-out methods and what are the measurable results. I asked experienced public school teachers how they handled grading and homework and what they thought of the notion that the old ways were wrong.
In some aspects, the teachers are in sync with the suggested reforms. None of assigns much homework, except as a way to complete work begun in class. They don’t emphasize one-time tests.
But when making sure everyone is behaving in class, they are firm traditionalists. Class time to them is vital because, in their minds, the give-and-take between students and teachers during those precious hours is the essence of what they do.
Mark Ingerson, a social studies teacher at Salem (Va.) High School, said, “You are kidding yourself if you think you have any control over what happens once that child leaves your class. ... So my sole focus has been maximizing every single second of class so it results in student mastery of skills and knowledge.”
Mary Stevens is the English and language arts department chair at Marshall Fundamental Secondary School in Pasadena, Calif. Enrollment at that school is by lottery. Seventy percent of the students are from low-income families. “I mostly only assign the work and/ or reading we didn’t complete in class as homework,” she said. She doesn’t like the phrase “behaving in class.” She said “it has negative connotations for students. I center responsibility, hence productivity, and try not to frame my expectations around outdated ideas such as behavior.”
Greg Jouriles, a social studies teacher at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, Calif., noted reformers’ argument homework “discriminates socioeconomically and racially” and might be “unfair to students with household obligations and no quiet place to work.” He said “while all of these factors carry weight, I don’t see a problem with some homework or why practicing academics isn’t as worthwhile as practicing extracurriculars, to which students will devote hours and hours.”