I’m thinking a part of it is the current local public instructors, K-12 teachers, and parents of current students I know have the sense the average NYC K-12 curriculum is doing such an inadequate job of preparing students…especially those in underserved areas with the basic skills necessary to succeed in college and beyond.
This wasn’t helped by recent news reports that revealed the curriculum and tests were watered down to make it seem the former mayor’s educational initiatives were surpassing all expectations. Assessments which have since been called seriously into doubt.
Part of this is also affecting the controversy over admissions to public magnets like the one I attended.
Despite the fact the entrance exam hasn’t changed structurally or contentwise from the time I took it in the early '90s, there’s a wider perception among parents…including ones who were public magnet alums that unless students succeed in attending a highly selective G & T centered elementary/middle school, they must start prepping as early as third grade to succeed. Back when I took the exam, most students took the exam stone cold or did a few months of prep at the most whether it’s immigrant kids reinforcing English CR/vocab or American-born students reinforcing math concepts.
Many more kids taking the exam also came from some of the worst school districts*/neighborhoods in NYC. I was one of them.
My old NYC neighborhood's local high school was not only crime ridden, but had such a long history of poor academic performance/graduation rates that it was shut down by the DOE a few years ago. Even in the last year, it still had serious disciplinary issues and had a graduation rate of only around 34%...and that's an IMPROVEMENT compared to when I lived in that neighborhood.
When my kids were little (and one is still in school), they all enjoyed doing book reports, which I think were valuable, but never the work sheets, craft projects or “current events.” My least favorite homework ever in history was current events. I foam at at the mouth over current events assignments. In fact I break out in cold sweats over that. All of my kids had time management classes in upper middle school and that was appropriate, but we also did a lot of writing and skills practice at home. For me. The thank you note my second grader wrote for his birthday presents was much more beneficial than pages of lines of at, the, of, etc.
“How is it that I have cousin’s children in practically all elementary grades, cousin’s who are teachers in elementary, middle and high school (one is even a principle of a middle school) and the most our conversations consist of are, “how are the kids, do the like their teacher, etc.?” And the last thing the teachers want to talk about when we are in a social setting is school.”
I live with a teacher, several of her besties are teachers and are frequently in my house, but they don’t discuss these details either. Only when something majorly noteworthy happens, like a kid getting arrested or another moving up from special ed to general ed.
I personally enjoyed current events assignments…especially one in Catholic elementary school where we simulated a mock presidential election in an election year and “voted” for our favorite candidate after several days of accessing a diverse array of news reports on the presidential candidates in that year.
Most of us enjoyed it and despite some friendly ribbing…we were quite civil and level headed.
Agree with the busywork worksheets and crafts projects.
Especially craft projects graded as if the student was auditioning for or attending professional art school in classes not related to art.
I agree emily. I hated crafty stuff when the kids were too young to be unsupervised. All three had an assignment every week where they had to cut out a newspaper article about a theme, glue it to paper and draw a picture or something about it or write something when they were a little older. Drove me nuts for several reasons. First, in first and second grade choosing, cutting and gluing were messy and time consuming. Second, no one really believed six year olds truly understood the articles, so it was more of a weekly assignment for the parents that the kids got Nothing out of other than annoyed parents. And, frankly, the number of age appropriate articles on a particular topic was always limited, so the whole class ended up doing the same thing. Older kids? Fine. But not before fifth or sixth grade, and all my kids had this I. Different schools and decades but all of them every week from first grade on from first grade on.
Such an argument wouldn’t have washed at the two Catholic elementary schools I attended, especially the one which expelled me just a few weeks in first grade because I was “too rambunctious” as a 5 year old first grader.
Even my father who was normally had the “teacher/principal/school is always right” attitude felt the principal was being ridiculous, especially after hearing from classmates and a few parents who felt she was being ridiculous. Said father and parents wouldn’t have been supportive if they heard from classmates I had been standing at my desk rather than merely fidgeting.
The second school where I spent the rest of elementary school while more lenient wouldn’t have tolerated young students standing at their desks and would have had harsh words for parents and if the kid continued to stand, be told to find another school for their noncompliant child. And most parents who sent their kids to those Catholic schools would have backed the school on that score as one reason why they sent their kids there was so they avoided the violence, rowdiness, and the general “anything goes” chaos of the local public schools.
I don’t see anything wrong with play. My friends and I always played after school. We didn’t have homework until 7th grade, and the majority of us ended up with fine work ethics.
I’m seeing far too many parents of ES kids in NYS complaining that the homework isn’t practice; they’re responsible for teaching Common Core to their kids because the teachers don’t have time to make sure every kid gets it during the school day. Because the test results are a part of the teachers’ APPR (teacher review), there’s a lot of stress on the teachers and the children. Kids who could accomplish the tasks another way (basic math problems, for instance) aren’t permitted to; they must do them the Common Core way. So learning time is lost due to an inflexible program that is dependent upon parents who haven’t been taught how to teach it and homework that makes no sense to either the parents or the children.
No wonder the number of families leaving public school for home schooling is increasing so much.
No one said there’s anything wrong with play. However, it is conditioned on the student making reasonable academic progress and not being placed in a school system where the curriculum is widely perceived by many parents and even some veteran teachers as woefully inadequate.
This anxiety among many parents at this elementary schools and other NYC regular public schools is one reason why this “no homework” policy has generated such an outcry among them.
@romani - one of mine hated the arts and crafts stuff, and I was one of those PITA parents who got permission to substitute written reports for dioramas and such. (Not sure how this would have worked for something along the line of the mission project in the California curriculum.) But hours just slipped by while they were busy with coding.
The other could spend hours more than absolutely necessary getting any project, not just an arts and crafts project, to perfection, and end up neglecting everything else.
I did get upset when we would run out of craft supplies (or printer ink) at the last minute, and expenses tended to run up quickly on these.
What I really, really hated were the science fair projects. I enjoyed some of the projects that asked for parental participation provided I got enough lead time.
I am not so sure that withdrawing homework is a very good idea, though, for reasons that others have mentioned. It could put students already at risk even further behind.
Nonsense. Children who have parental help are always going have an advantage whether there is homework or not and that is the whole point of parenting so if someone fails to do it and their kid falls behind whose fault is that? The solution is not to dumb down everyone else. Jeez. Anyway most of these complaints seem to be from parents who didn’t much enjoy messy projects or homework hassles. I didn’t like them much either but it was not that big a deal.
As we sit here debating the pros and cons of homework, many families both in the USA and abroad, especially Asia (Hagwon, Kumon) are signing there kids up for even more school/tutoring at the end of the school day.
This selected CC group of us who wouldn’t sign our children up for such programs would have our kids actively engaged in appropriate play and learning activities in the absence of homework. Unfortunately, there are many kids lacking the family structure to do so where the students would be glued to a screen, big or small, or engaging in worse behavior during that free time.
doschicos, even if it’s assigned, there is no guarantee that they’ll do it. Especially young children. Then they are further punished at school (my teacher’s punishment was no recess… and no, it didn’t motivate them to do the hw the next time). Then they begin to hate school and it becomes a negative cycle.
I see your point, @romanigypsyeyes. Probably why some charter schools serving at risk populations opt for a longer school day to get that studying/practice in during more structured time at school.
Actually, they did. An ealier poster worried that ES students might spend a lot of time playing video games and watching TV if they didn’t have homework. Most home schoolers I know don’t assign homework and many use a lot of video games. The kinds of things you can learn from an activity that’s made to look like a game is amazing. And TV has a world of excellent content available too. Documentaries on history and science, biographies, how-to shows, nature programs, environmental shows…my children watch a large variety of educational programs that they search out on their own. They’ve never had homework, ever, but are self-directed and well organized.
The NYS public school teachers, administrators, and parents I know don’t believe homework for ES is the answer to our problems. Fewer unfunded mandates, more money from the state, repeal of the Common Core so our teachers can go back to teaching, more technology grants, and equitable funding across the state, yes. Homework for kindergarteners, not so much.
We moved DS from private elementary school #1 to private elementary school #2 after 3rd grade because I got tired of ruining our evenings with fights over busywork. If he had just sat down and done it, it wouldn’t have taken all that long, but fight we did and I was worried about getting into a downward spiral of hating school, not doing well, hating it even more, etc. The teachers insisted that all of the other kids were doing it without problems, but I know that wasn’t true.
They also wanted kids to keep track of how much time they spent reading and if they read N minute per night all year, they would get a certificate at the awards ceremony at the end of the year. S refused to read because he said didn’t care about the certificate. I told him I didn’t care about he certificate either, but I did care that he read. Once we stopped worrying about keeping track of how many minute he was reading in order to fill out the form, he read a lot and enjoyed it. (Cue Alphie Kohn)
School #2 had very little homework, and our family life was much more pleasant. He was able to do homework on his own just fine in middle school and high school, and graduated last June with honors from U Chicago. I’m convinced that if he had stayed at school #1, his academic trajectory could have been much different.
I didn’t care at all if my kid came home after school and vegged out in front of the TV. It was a long day for elementary aged kids and he was tired when he came home. And brains need rest, too.
When S1 came home in 5th grade and said that for his homework assignment for social studies he had to color the continents and he had learned all the continents in 1st grade, I decided enough was enough. I told him that I would do all coloring assignments from then on. I made sure to color a little bit outside the lines as my messy S1 would have done. Much less stress in our household!
Much less stress in our household!