Seattle Schools Community Forum

Two great stories about public education and expectations for kids.

Useful homework chart to keep your kids encouraged and not discouraged (or things you can say to help):

In what is probably one of THE longest running discussions in the history of US public education, comes yet another study on the outcomes for student doing homework. From Stanford University News (Stanford is where the study was conducted): A Stanford researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter. "Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good," wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education. What is fascinating is who the researchers studied.  It was about 4,000 students from 10 high-performing high schools in well-off California cities.   There was a survey and open-ended questions about the students' own thoughts on homework. Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours o...

Hearing from parents about classroom issues like homework.  Below are two comments (off-topic in Math Adoption thread) and we have heard enough of these to warrant their own thread. Rant and rave away - please DO state things you like in your child's classroom as well as any concerns/unhappiness.

From The Atlantic magazine, one father's account of doing - not for his children but to understand their workload - his daughters' homework for a week.  Crazy amount of work. It turns out that there is no correlation between homework and achievement. According to a 2005 study by the Penn State professors Gerald K. LeTendre and David P. Baker, some of the countries that score higher than the U.S. on testing in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study—Japan and Denmark, for example—give less homework, while some of those scoring lower, including Thailand and Greece, assign more. The irony is that some countries where the school systems are held up as models for our schools have been going in the opposite direction of the U.S., giving less homework and implementing narrower curricula built to encourage deeper understanding rather than broader coverage. His take: The more immersed I become in Esmee’s homework, the more reassured I am tha...

A couple of good parenting ideas have come across my desk. One is an article from Parent Map on how to get your children to do their homework .  This mom made a "homework hour" for the entire family.  (I assume she got out her bills, etc. to work on while they did schoolwork.) Any thoughts/tips from you about how you handle homework?  Do you feel like your child is getting too much/too little/not effective homework or is it just right? The other story is from a mom's blog - Janel Burley Hofmann about an iPhone contract with her 13-year old son.   It is an 18-point contract full of some good stuff.    What I like is that she is blunt - about how he might use it and consequences to doing some of those things, how she expects him to use it, outcomes if it is lost or damaged, school use, etc.  I do disagree a little with her saying she "owns" it if she gave it as a gift.  (However, if she and her husband are paying for the service - as I...

Wednesday Work Session on Integrated Capacity Management - 4:00 - 4:45 p.m.  No agenda/presentation available yet. Exit Conference for Financial Statements and Federal Single Audit Report - 4:45 -5:30 p.m. - This would appear to be for the State Auditor's office.  I'll call for more details.  Board Meeting - 6:00 - 9:00 pm.  Agenda Highlights: Science update by Cathy Thompson - ( for fun, look for those grammatical errors).  They feel they need to keep explaining what alignment is and is not but teachers, how are you seeing the alignment as it rolls out?   Page 8 gives the science scores for last year - there is quite a clear divide and I'd be interested to know what factors are in play.  (It can't be facilities; Nova does almost as well as the higher ranked schools like Garfield and Center.)  There is finally a written validation process - again, teachers how likely is it an alternative science course can be validated as this is ...