New Homework Policy

[sookie]

Here is a portion of a new "pilot" homework policy. The rest of the policy deals with the amount and purpose of homework. This is the grading part. Read it carefully, and then offer your comments. I'm curious how many interpret it the way an average student has interpreted it this year.

Grading:
The classroom teacher has a professional obligation to acknowledge, respond, and evaluate the work. Although grading homework is not always necessary, errors and misunderstandings must always be indicated, addressed, and corrected. Positive feedback to students is vital to the education process and must never be ignored. Teachers shall return all homework assignments to students as expeditiously as possible.


Homework that is graded for accuracy should be utilized to help increase the students’ subject specific grade. However, grading homework for completion or as student responsibility shall not be included in subject specific grade. Instead, student completion of homework for responsibility should be identified and discussed with the individual student and parent on a regular basis.

I don't even understand this. LOL

 

[Turn the Page]

I don't even understand this. LOL

Perhaps that was the point? Just the posters on this thread have come up with a couple of different interpretations. Maybe the school wrote the policy so it can be construed any way they feel like construing it depending on what the situation calls for at any given time. I hate to sound cynical but it kind of makes sense.

 

[scheddj]

This takes me back to my senior year math class. The first day the teacher tells everyone she will assign homework 3 or 4 nights a week and there is a small chance she will spot check it the next day for two points. If I recall correctly we went over the correct answers so we would know if we got them right or not. Anyway, that whole first semester I don't think I did more than five homework assignments but I also understood the material and got A's and B's on all the tests and ended up with a B in the class.

After the first semester was over a bunch of kids who had done all the homework still bombed all the tests and complained that they didn't get the grade they wanted so the teacher started checking homework every day. I still didn't do more than a few and still got A's and B's on all the tests but got a D one quarter because the final grade was weighted so heavily in favor of homework rather than actually learning the material.

Keep in mind this is senior year of high school not elementary school so I don't think the argument that some kids don't test well should have much weight at this point. They have to learn to handle it eventually if they plan to go to college or go on job interviews.

The purpose of attending school is to learn. Not just the material but responsibility and things of that nature. The purpose of homework traditionally has been to reinforce the lesson of the day. However, I can't see how forcing a kid to spend three or four hours a night doing busy work teaches them anything but to hate school. If the kids understand the material and don't need reinforcement in the form of an hour of math repetitious math homework every night why make them do it?

I don't know what the answer is but I don't think kids should be punished for not doing 40 math problems a night when they understand the material and I don't think kids who aren't actually learning much of anything should receive a higher grade just because they turned in a bunch of busy work that they didn't learn anything from as per my example above. There should be some middle ground where you are rewarded for how much your are learning not how much busy work you turn in.

I agree with this.

 

[scrapquitler]

I am educated (MS) and I think it needs to be simplified because it's WAYYYY too wordy and flowery leaving lots of room for, "WHAT?"

Liz

I agree. I read it three times and I'm still not sure what it says.

 

[NotUrsula]

In my experience, and I coach teachers around student behavior for a living, very few students are motivated by something as long term as a grade. Kids do their homework or don't do their homework for a large number of reasons -- to please the teachers who smile and thank them when they turn it in, to please their parents who look at assignments online, to see a good grade on the paper, to avoid embarrassment of not knowing the answer . . . But not because 8 weeks from now they'll have a B- instead of a B+.

Turn The Page's story above is a good example. She was a senior in HS, so at the top end of the age range, and apparently a good student based on her test scores, and yet knowing that the rules had changed didn't change her behavior one speck. If HS seniors don't have the maturity to work for a long term goal, why would we structure our classrooms and our grading policies around the assumption that it would work for younger kids.

Who said anything about long-term goals, OR self-motivated students? These are middle-school kids, so I'm assuming that adults in their lives are monitoring their grades and telling them what to do.

As I see it, the scenario includes the kid who blows a test and is told by a coach that if he can't bring his class grade up to a C by the end of the grading period he's going to be cut from basketball, so he needs to do 3 homework assignments for the extra credit points to dig himself out of the hole.

Bonus point assignments are an insurance policy, and those of us with kids who are prone to blowing tests on occasion tend to force them to do some of them in order to create a cushion against flunking the class. The kids may not care much, but parents who are on the ball will, and with the popular use of student information software, it isn't hard to stay on them. I know immediately if DS makes less than a 75 on any assignment.

Oh, and I agree with the previous poster who said that with older kids, it is usually more an issue of whether or not they think that the payoff is worth the effort, rather than not caring about a long-term grade goal. If you have a B average and you are fine with a B-average, you are not going to make the extra effort unless there is a situation that actively puts you in immediate danger of dropping to a D.

 

[joviroxx]

With this and other threads popping up lately, I have to say, the last thing I would want to be right now is a teacher. EVERY little thing is run to death and over complicated. No matter what you do, there is apparently, always some parent who will complain, not just to you, but now to the papers, media, etc...


Maybe Im just simplistic. My kids go to private school and I always went to private school. Its homework. Not rocket science. Assign it, the kids have to do it. Simple. I'm still confused as to why this incredibly wordy and complicated publication is needed.