Iowa School District no longer will give students 0s for not doing homework

Parent Cafe
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<p>What do you think about this? Me, I think that lots of homework should be optional because depending on the school and the class -some homework really is a waste of time for kids who can learn the material without it. For instance, doing pages of math problems is unnecessary for students who quickly understand the concepts. Having to write out definitions of vocabulary words is a waste of time for students with extensive vocabularies. Doing outlines of history chapters are a waste of time for students like my older S who could easily learn AP history without doing anything but reading the history book.</p>

<p>I do, think, homework – including some tedious homework – is necessary for students who need that in order to learn the material, and those who don’t do such homework may end up flunking the course whether or not they get 0 or 50 points for missed homework.</p>

<p>"COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa – Students who don’t hand in homework won’t receive a zero anymore under new rules for a new semester that started on Monday at Council Bluffs Community Schools.</p>

<p>Students and teachers are encouraged to use the new grading techniques. School officials said that under the old regime, a student who received a zero had a tough time recovering a grade in the course. Administrators said that by making the failing gap smaller, students still have a chance to bounce back and pass at the end of the semester, even after a mistake.</p>

<p>Superintendent Dr. Marth Bruckner said she has seen many students start a new year rebelling.</p>

<p>“We don’t want to send the message to kids, as we have done in some classes, that after you have failed in this class for four weeks, you have no chance of passing at the semester,” Bruckner said.</p>

<p>In Council Bluffs, each grade range has constituted 10 points, so an A is a grade from 90 to 100, a B is from 80 to 90 etc. An F has ranged from zero to 60.</p>

<p>Last week, Bruckner said she visited with high school staff and recommended using similar intervals, so that on the 100-point scale, an F would range from 50 to 60 instead of zero to 60…"
[New</a> School Rule: Skip Homework Still Get Grade - Des Moines News Story - KCCI Des Moines](<a href=“http://www.kcci.com/news/15052147/detail.html]New”>Des Moines IA News and Weather - Iowa News - KCCI 8 News)</p>

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<p>This article is a little vague, but in my experience–both with my senior S and myself many moons ago–is that homework is a waste of time for many kids. It can be stultifying busy work that detracts from the learning experience. If my son had complied and turned in all his vocabulary homework and his math problems like a “good” kid (and frankly, I wish he had) his GPA would have been quite a bit higher. But at the same time, I disagree with a system that doesn’t provide alternative assignments for kids who have already learned the material.</p>

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<p>Personally it seems to me that in most cases doing homework is part of the work required to get a course grade.</p>

<p>If teachers want to give a grade only based on whether or not students have learned the material, they could simply equate 100% of the class grade with a final exam.</p>

<p>I think a grading system that takes into consideration class attendance, completion of homework, quizzes and test is a better way to go. </p>

<p>Ongoing assignment and interim grades encourage students to stay engaged in the class and with the material.</p>

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<p>Homework is non existent or minimal in AP classes and in college. Understanding of the material, not just effort, is what should determine a grade imo.</p>

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<p>Are you kidding? D’s junior year, she was in three APs second semester (block scheduling): Calc, APUSH, and Lit. With Calc there was homework every night; APUSH required (teacher’s requirements) reams of note cards that were checked over every week; and in Lit, if you didn’t do the assigned homework readings, teacher knew it because you wouldn’t be prepared for classroom discussions.</p>

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<p>Back when my kids were in elementary/secondary school, and grades were important to ME, I wanted their grades to reflect their mastery of the MATERIAL. That was valuable feedback to me. Having an A grade just because they turned in a bunch of homework, or a C grade because they didn’t, was misleading. I appreciated knowing exactly how well they knew the subject, for better or worse.</p>

<p>Math classes are the worst, when graded based on hw, outlines, notebook checks, etc. Students could get Bs and Cs on tests, and still end up with an A in the class. It was no wonder that as they progressed into higher level maths, they suddenly found themselves falling further and further behind. Their core understanding of the fundamentals was built on sand, but they didn’t know it because their teacher gave them A’s! Had they received meaningful feedback in lower grades, they might have beefed up their skills at THAT level, and been successful later on.</p>

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<p>I wish this trend would spread – my slacker son would have a lot better grades… he does fine on tests/quizzes/big projects, but right now those zeros for homework are a real gpa killer…</p>

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<p>A better idea would be to have a separate line item for each subject (like they do for “conduct” at some schools) for “organization/reliability”. That way, a parent could see if the student was making A’s on the tests, and F’s on homework, or vice versa.</p>

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<p>When it comes to math, I’m strongly in favor of homework. It is easy enough for a bright student to do well on a unit test and even a final over concepts learned in that class. However, as you progress to higher levels of math in college you need the experience of having done lots of problems in order to realize that as part of your problem you have to use a certain algebra technique to arrive at the answer. I knew one of my math professors very well and he said that the earlier math was the biggest problem students had. He firmly believed the only way to know math thoroughly was to do lots of it. One of my friend’s kids sailed through high school math not doing any homework and acing tests. He failed upon hitting calculus because of not having a solid base.</p>

<p>For other subjects, I’m not so sure. Foreign language homework makes sense to me as does grammar homework. Outlining chapters- ugh. My son has a class right now where he has to do that and it is a total waste of time. Some homework has a lot of educational merit. My youngest did a biology worksheet just this morning where he had to apply what he had learned about dominant and recessive genes to solve a given situation. It was an example of a quality assignment in my book.</p>

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** Sounds suspicious to me. Real math homework is doing proofs and many HS never get the kids to this point.</p>

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<p>There is plenty of evidence and research that suggests that homework in elementary school is harmful, not beneficial.</p>

<p>The benefits in middle school can be dubious. Mostly , it is a huge time glut spent on boring repetition, which many students do not need.</p>

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<p>Wish my D went to this school…</p>

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<p>Many of my IB classes were like this. Math, particularly - our teacher’s policy was “don’t do homework if you don’t feel you need to, but if you start doing badly I will give you so much homework to do you will hate me forever”. Great policy, great teacher.</p>

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<p><em>snerk</em></p>

<p>Of course, if you had told me that during the week, in my final undergrad term, that I spent 60 hours doing the homework for one class, I might have flipped out at you instead of snickering. ;)</p>

<p>Much grade school homework is poorly designed and unhelpful, but if you know that it’s part of your grade and you don’t do it, you deserve what you get. At some point, for some class, you will have to do work that you don’t enjoy.</p>

<p>I’m all in favor of letting students who already know the material go into more advanced classes, but not in exempting them from the normal workload.</p>

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<p>“Math classes are the worst, when graded based on hw, outlines, notebook checks, etc. Students could get Bs and Cs on tests, and still end up with an A in the class”</p>

<p>This is the definition of grade inflation and why so many on CC have 4.0 GPA’s</p>

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<p>A workable compromise solution is to give zeros for homework that is not turned in BUT have homework count only for a fixed and relatively small portion of the grade – say, 10%.</p>

<p>In this system, a student who turns in no homework at all drops one letter grade but no more. Students who miss turning in only a few of the marking period’s assignments lose only a few points, perhaps not even enough to drop them one letter grade.</p>

<p>Ordinarily, I don’t support the idea of having a particular type of work count for a specified portion of the grade (I have seen too many instances where teachers say “quizzes count for 25% of your grade” and then give only one quiz during the marking period, thus making that one quiz worth more than a test or major project). However, for homework, it might be a viable idea.</p>

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Huh. I guess problem sets, essays, reading, research and preparation of presentations isn’t counted as “homework.” My D has all of these. In college. Or…wait…maybe she’s not in college and I’m being scammed for so-called tuition payments.</p>

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<p>I agree with the thrust of TheDad’s comment. Homework in primary and secondary school is to help develop organization and study habits outside the classroom. One of the biggest transitions to college is when it falls to the student to make herself work on her courses outside of the classroom.</p>

<p>And, if homework wasn’t graded in primary and secondary school many children and their parents would (and do) discount its value and not learn these skills.</p>

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<p>My son’s calculus teacher assigned homework, but told the kids up front it was up to them to decide how many problems they needed to do. She went over it, but never checked it. I think that works very well for math at least when kids get far enough along to know themselves - I think it could backfire in the earlier grades when kids don’t yet appreciate a certain amount of repetition helps make facts sink in. Repetition is critical for most people in foreign languages.</p>

<p>OTOH there’s so much awful pointless homework out there - learning vocabulary they already knew was one of my kids’ least favorites, outlining books is also pretty pointless for kids with good memories.</p>

<p>On the third hand, when my son blew off a creative writing homework/project in English freshman year in high school - the zero did a number on his grade, which I thought he fully deserved. So he didn’t want to write a poem, he still could have cobbled something together that would have gotten some points - a lot more than zero. It was a good lesson for him to learn.</p>

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<p>I have mixed feelings about hw. My kids lost so much of their childhood to time-wasting stuff. Times when they should have been outside on their bikes, and instead doing pages of stuff they knew already, or projects that taught them absolutely nothing.</p>

<p>I am in favor of homework, such as reading certain books at home, so as to spend class time on discussion. I’m in favor of a certain amount of math exercises to practice, reinforce, and help kids figure out what they don’t know. </p>

<p>But I know my kids social lives and childhoods were lost in part because of busy work, both in elementary school and in HS. When my youngest went through ES, they finally got smart and limited HW to 10 mins per grade (ie first grade - 10 mins per night, 5th grade - 50 mins per night. If kids didn’t finish in that amount of time, parents were allowed to send a note.) </p>

<p>In German Gymnasiums (“college prep” schools), the course grade is based, as someone here said, on one or two exams given over the semester and perhaps some class work or presentations. Homework is assigned, but not usually graded. Kids that pass the class really do know the subject. Kids that don’t pass the class flunk the entire grade. (And flunk a second time, and you’re out of the school.) Kids get stuff done because they want to graduate, because then they get to go to university free.</p>