…which means that they do not want to give homework to their students anymore.
Take these comments from Charlene Taylor at Chapel Hill’s Culbreth Middle School, for example:
With parents or with kids, I refuse to make homework a battle.
It should not be a big chore.
The challenge should be minimal, not so much that you have to get help from your rocket scientist uncle at NASA.
Parents shouldn’t be involved in homework. But they are. No child should fall behind because of what their parents can’t provide.
Here are some school district policies:
School leaders in Wake are encouraging teachers to stop giving zeros for late or missed homework assignments.
East Millbrook Middle School in Raleigh does not count homework as part of the academic grade.
How does this happen? Teachers do not want to be bothered with making homework assignments meaningful, mostly because they do not want to bothered with checking it every day, keeping track of homework grades, and dealing with students excuses. Administrators do not want to hear from angry parents who object to homework assignments. In other words, less homework equals less hassle.
Certainly, piles of trivial assignments will do little to aid learning, but focused and engaging homework is a necessary part of the educational process. For subjects like mathematics and English, students need homework assignments to practice computational procedures and refine rhetorical and grammatical skills.
