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<p>I don’t know… How many parents here have kids with an average two hours of homework perday?</p>
<p>Try 3-5 hours.</p>
<p>Some kids study a lot more than that. I know one of d’s friends goes to sleep at 11:00 P.M and get up at 3:00 A.M to study. So maybe more than 5-6 hours. Her father is a professor so she is pretty bright but some high schools are very demanding.</p>
<p>More than two hours a day for my daughter, who was in IB. Less than two hours a day for my son, who was in the regular high school program, with about half honors or AP courses.</p>
<p>If the school system really wants to be considerate, they should assign homework a week in advance so that kids with outside commitments can plan their time. Assigning homework on Wednesday to be turned in on Thursday makes life difficult for a kid who happens to have a time-consuming extracurricular activity on Wednesdays.</p>
<p>I’m in IB and have an average of four hours a night - much more if there is a major test or paper due. On the one hand, I suppose I have chosen this lifestyle, and could easily have practically no homework if I took easy classes. On the other hand, I have had teachers in the past that assign 4hrs.+ per night JUST FOR THEIR CLASS. I have one teacher who even goes so far as to tell us that he couldn’t care less about the rest of our class load. That is clearly over the top, however this is the best teacher I have ever had, so perhaps I should appreciate the excellent education I have recieved from him. Two hours a night for an academically competitive senior is almost laughable.</p>
<p>My kids have less than two hours of homework per night, though sometimes they spend that much time when they have a big project due. My older child is now a freshman at a selective LAC, so I guess she was academically competitive despite the “low” homework load. Two hours seems like plenty of homework to me.</p>
<p>D#1 attended academically-oriented private HS. Five hours of homework per night was stipulated by the school. D’s really smart and “got by” with three to three and a half nightly. She also attended local public HS for one year. One hour of homework was more than enough for that year. Ugh.</p>
<p>Three to five hours of homework per night? Only time will tell how that type of stress on children will translate into happy, successful adults. I find that amazing, and not in a positive way…but then, my son with honors and AP classes is a B student, but happy and relaxed.</p>
<p>At my school, middle school classes aimed for 45 minutes of homework per night per class; in high school, it was up to an hour per night per class. With study hall (which was required) and working quickly, it was doable, though difficult. Students take 5-6 academic classes, usually, plus art, commuter programming, and other electives.</p>
<p>D has more than two hours of homework a night. S (who is ten) has an hour of writing work and 45 minutes of assigned reading. It seems a lot but he’s really moved forward with this teacher.</p>
<p>I’m hoping my daughter’s teachers will take pity the nights before SAT/ACT exams.</p>
<p>wow, i never had that much homework in high school. if i did, i must not have done it… lol. i did have a few study halls here and there that i did work in during school but that was pretty much it… i rarely brought home a book, unless i had a test or something the next day. i did have study hall during my very last period every day, which i forfeited and elected to go home from school 45 minutes early… which was great because i had enough time to get a snack before going to work every day. :)</p>
<p>college, on the other hand, was a completely different story. it always seemed like there weren’t enough hours in the day for all of my work during college… i had classes with a lot of group work and papers and all sorts of stuff that required massive work outside of class, plus i worked my way through college… but somehow i pulled it off… i even managed time to shoot pool with my friends for an hour or two every day… (i’m quite good… I’m looking forward to finishing the basement in my new house once I save up some money again… that way I can have a pool table!!) I remember my one prof gave me a lecture during senior year (after having me in like 4-5 other classes) about how i was going to burn myself out working like 40 hours a week plus 18 credits of senior level classes… I got an A in that class though, so I think I proved him wrong… actually, that semester was my best of them all during colllege. :)</p>
<p>mathson generally had less than two hours of homework. S2 with a similar schedule takes longer.</p>
<p>S tends to do his homework on the bus ride to school…</p>
<p>Homework makes me cranky. It is a plague on our society. It takes over the dynamics within families who value academic success. In families with less or no interest, the kids get further and further behind academically, and eventually many if not most fall by the wayside. I have a PhD, but growing up, I almost never had any homework. I recall the drudgery of reading “Moby Dick” in high school, writing one research paper my senior year, and some test studying, but that was it, even though I was in all the advanced classes. There was time for self-directed reading, activities and social life, and my parents never ever ever were made aware of any pressure on me to get things done, because there was none. Why does it have to be like it is now, with family life taken over by projects, journals, and drudgery? It does not help anything. I saw a ten year old girl at the gym the other day with a ten page math assignment for the weekend…give me a break!</p>
<p>I tell my AP students that they should probably expect to spend 3-4 hours per week outside of class time working on my course. Not all of that is necessarily formal homework assignments. Frequently it refers to time that should be spent reading or reviewing. I try to the extent that I can to give assignments that allow the students some flexibility on completing them. That’s not always possible when other duties and responsibilities demand my time and attention. (Dept. Chair, mentoring new teachers, ILT member, union rep, additional after-school study groups, etc.)</p>
<p>At the same time homework is only 10% of the students’ grades, with the other 90% being assessments in various forms. What that does is change the purpose for homework making it to help reinforce or supplement what we have learned or will be learning in class rather than for a grade in and of itself.</p>
<p>I also believe strongly that for any of my students, whether they are AP or not, that an assignment that can be completed by sitting in front of the TV and be done correctly and completely isn’t worth giving.</p>
<p>In Broward County here and the above article is welcome but too late for my son. A freshman in high school, he routinely does an average of 4-5 hours of homework each nite. There is no way to tell high school teachers to coordinate homework assignments. In middle school, he had between 2 and 3 hours a night. Not all Broward kids have this much work but it seems that they penalized the smart kids (gifted classes). My friend’s son has half the work in honors classes (as opposed to gifted/honors…same weighting but they give more essays, projects and homework)! Next year we are encouraging him to take only honors English and Chemistry (and not the gifted/honors sections) because it just isn’t worth it!</p>