Thoughts on Homework?
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...