We stopped paying attention to how much homework was assigned when our pups got to 3rd grade. It was up to them to know what they had to do, and to finish it.
In Middle School, they were each given weekly planners, where they were supposed to record their homework assigned and due dates for each class, and parents were asked to initial them every week, for part of their grade (but if was up to the teacher to check for parent initials). It was apparent that their teachers would only check if the kid was struggling, and in some cases hadn’t turned in their homework, or did poorly on tests. I left the initialing task to DH, who tormented our pups at the time by writing his initials upside down, or monogram style, or sometimes he’d even write their initials because he felt they were the ones responsible. By the end, he was writing the teacher’s initials because it was clear they didn’t look.
I remember talking to other parents at the time who’d complain about how much homework the kids had, and my pups never seemed to take anywhere close to that amount of time on it. They read very fast, and never had to re-write anything they wrote.
By Middle school, the successful kids were taking Algebra 2 , Geometry, and Latin 3. These are not difficult classes that should not require a lot of homework.
When my daughter was about to start 6th grade, I transferred her from a private school to a public middle school.
Her private school assigned way to much homework in my opinion and I wanted my child to have time to ‘stop and smell the roses’ so to speak.
The curriculum in her public school was developmentally appropriate and the homework was reasonable at 1-1 1/2 hours at night. This gave her ample time to pursue other interests as well as extracurriculars and to ‘breath’.
She had plenty of time to read free-choice books and pursue her interests.
If I had kept her in her private school with 3-4 hours of homework a night, it would have destroyed her.
Childhood is precious and fleeting, kids have all the time in the world to mature and carry heavy academics loads when they are more mature in high school. The trend to push kids breaks my heart.
Go with your instincts. Too much Homework to soon does not guarantee success, in fact, it is often detrimental.
Good luck!
The worst thing about homework in middle and high school was that the daily amount was completely unpredictable. It was assigned that day, due the next day. The argument that kids needed to plan and use their time well was moot when they didn’t have any idea ahead of time if they would have one hour of homework or four. Ds are a college senior and junior and this still gets my blood boiling.
Don’t get me started on the day the middle school “team” of teachers decided to have 4 tests and a major project due on the same day. Their response to my questioning the schedule: they’ll have days with multiple tests in high school because the teachers there don’t work together like we do. Uh, sure, so let’s torment the 7th graders.
I live in NYC and certainly don’t consider Lab "a fancy school."It is a good public school, but …not a fancy one. It is selective, but admissions are limited to one district within the City. Academics are weighted 60% in admissions. It’s in a drab building and there are 30 kids in a class.30% are eligible for free or reduced lunch. Here if you want to know more. https://insideschools.org/school/02M312
I have not read all the responses. But no. My kids are homeschooled. They literally probably never spent more than 4-5 hours on school during the middle school years. My oldest is a junior. His sophomore ACT score was 31 (predicted 33+ for this year) and he is pulling straight As as a dual enrolled student. Both my kids have devoted a ton of time to extra curricular activities and out of the box interests.
I did not take Geometry until 10th grade (back in the olden days). I recall being quite shocked when my geometry homework started to take an hour a night. Math had never taken that long! It actually made sense for the work to take that long because the problems were quite varied, and the effort spent on the homework genuinely repaid itself in learning. This is often not the case with typical middle-school homework.
I recall one challenging problem during the year, in solid geometry, where I had to abandon the problem the first weekend night I worked on it, and return to it the next day (got it that time). That was a worthwhile experience in itself. My spouse had a high-school geometry course that included six weeks of non-Euclidean geometry, also very worthwhile.
How much homework is actually required for geometry varies a lot with the nature of the course. Geometry was proof-based in my high school. Essentially all of the schools in our area have dropped proof-based geometry now on the grounds that it is “too hard” for the students. (We were very fortunate that an accelerated high school curriculum was offered at the local university, taught by university faculty members, and that the geometry there was proof-based, obviously. QMP did take that in middle school.)
My experience with geometry has been highly valuable to me personally. The proof-based work gave me the ability to tell when I really understood something–an ability I draw on in my work to this day. If a geometry course were as good as mine was, then it would not be out of line for a student to spend an hour a day on the homework. However, I don’t think this would be appropriate for middle school students.
In my view, something similar is true of Latin 3, though half an hour a night would probably have been more realistic for it, as it was taught in my high school. Sallust and Cicero were breezes, but Tacitus and Ovid were bears! The Latin 3 curriculum can vary a lot from place to place. Depending on the number of courses and the homework loads in the other courses, half an hour of Latin 3 homework per day might well be inappropriate for middle schoolers.
Wow, your puppies can do that? I’m so impressed! All mine does is fetch!
I have a middle schooler, in Latin 3, at a top school, and he doesn’t have hours and hours of homework. Maybe an hour at most, and he is no child prodigy.
He spends more time on sports then homework, and more time with friends then homework. And although he has the means to be on social media, that’s not where his interests are. It seems to be the appropriate balance for a a very young teen.
@paul2752 That isn’t necessarily true. If a student takes high school classes in middle school, it will usually show up on the high school transcript and sometimes will be included in high school GPA.
@paul2752 Middle school grades are also commonly used for HS placement - kids are commonly denied AP or honors courses in HS if they did not do well in middle school. This affects their ability to earn a higher weighted GPA, which can shut them out of the potential for top 25% class rank. At some high schools, this means they’re looking at directional state or at lower tier colleges that do not offer significant merit or need based financial aid. So to many families, middle school grades matter a lot.
@3puppies Wow, if they are so worried about grades in middle school just to get into the right high school classes how will they ever be “good enough” Public schools differ, most, I would imagine let a student who gets an A in a lower grade to transfer up. Besides, not every kid in the best schools took the AP route. Some kids got there via sports or really great EC’s and demonstrating an interest in their field of interest.
Nothing from Middle School is on my daughter’s high school transcript. She took several high school level classes at the high school and they no longer exist. They have vanished. They are no more.
My high school is full of kids who went to 6 different Ivy schools, and we all came from same middle school. No one asked for our mid school transcrip.t
@paul2752 , what @itsgettingreal17 is saying that especially in NYS, students are allowed to accelerate courses in middle school for high school credit in English, Math,Social studies, science and foreign language.
While a student may pass the regents with a 65 in middle school to accelerate and receive high school credit, once they get to high school, the student may be programmed for ex: Algebra again if they did not achieve college readiness (because in NYS and math or science course that culminates in a regents can be taught over the course of 2 years and retake the regents exam to achieve college readiness). However, the grade that they receive in the course in middle school is part of the high school record and will be incorporated into the students overall gpa. If the middle school does not code the course correctly for acceleration credit, the student will not be able to get credit - the middle school must make the correction on their end.
If student accelerate through these courses and pass the NYC regents exam (in the case of Foreign Language, pass the LOTE or SLP), they will receive high school credit. The course grade from the middle school as well as the regents exam grade, both become part of the high school record.
At the NYCDOE if you went to public school for middle school and you are in public school for high school, no one has to ask for your middle school transcript, they can access it through STARS or get the information directly through ATS.
“Middle school grades are also commonly used for HS placement - kids are commonly denied AP or honors courses in HS if they did not do well in middle school. This affects their ability to earn a higher weighted GPA, which can shut them out of the potential for top 25% class rank. At some high schools, this means they’re looking at directional state or at lower tier colleges that do not offer significant merit or need based financial aid. So to many families, middle school grades matter a lot.”
Typically, parents can override recommendations from teachers and put their kids in honors or AP classes. Most schools also offer a test whereby if they pass, they can go to the accelerated class. I grew up in NJ/NY so know this can be done, as it can be out here in California. We do not want to send a message that middle school grades matter a lot. Colleges calculate GPAs on their own using 9-11 or 10-11.
Don’t know what NYS is, but I guess that doesn’t apply outside of New York State. So, this is of interest only to those who live in the New York area. It’s bad enough, if we have to start getting kids ready in middle school there will be more kids doing homework all day long.
While Lab’s building is old and definitely not modern, it is more convenient to mass transit. the kids go to lunch at Chelsea market, which is less than 2 blocks away. There is a lot of work, there is aa lot of rigor, but there is also a lot of collaboration (at least it was back in the day) PTA raises close to a half million for enrichment
East side middle used to be for kids who were more interested in art/writing but wanted more rigor than the clinton shool (they built ELRO so that there would be a neighborhood feeder high school)