How much homework is too much?

[hammy]

Monkeygirlsmom---the homework idea that your children have seems like a decent idea. Homework is meant to reinforce what is learned in school. Part of the reason kids are encouraged to read every night is because reading is a major foundation in learning, and reading should be used across the curriculum.

As far as the No Child Left Behind act I must say that I partially agree with it. Look at how many college students do not know that there are 3 branches in the government or what a noun is. Many cannot look at a picture of Abraham Lincoln and say who he was. A perfect example is Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader or when Jay Leno does Jay walking and asks average Americans questions they should know. How many American citizens would be able to pass the citizenship test? My guess would be that not too many would pass. Many foreign countries require students to pass a test to graduate high school, and the test includes basic information that the students should already know. The No Child Left Behind Act has increased academic success in schools.

There are also bad sides, one being the fact that it does require uniformity in education. However, students must know basics before learning the more difficult material.


Honestly, I don't see why teachers and students stress out about the tests, if the students were learning what they were supposed to be learning in the first place then it wouldn't be a problem. There are more techniques to teaching than just doing drills, and the teacher education programs are making advancements in teaching future educators different teaching techniques and how to incorporate things across the curriculum.

Property taxes attribute to the main funding in schools; which is probably not the best idea. There was a documentary taped in Ohio that showed the differences between urban, rural, and suburban schools--the differences were incredible and horrible.

Long story short, I'm partially in favor of NCLB because it holds teachers accountable for teaching students things they should know.

[hammy]

No Child Left Behind Act information:

http://www.nea.org/esea/index.html

http://www.ed.gov/nclb/overview/importance/nclbworking.html.

http://www.ed.gov/nclb/overview/intro/4pillars.html

http://www.hooverdigest.org/061/finn.html (Good and bad about the act)

[fruitcake]

I agree with the principal behind No child left behind. It is the implementation that is an issue for me. My child came home with homework that required her to do "front end truncation with compensation or adjustment" What is that?! It turns out to be the technical term for rounding which we all know how to do. The problem is the kids have to learn lots of technical terms that they will most likely never use--or need to. The other problem is you are testing kids multiple choice which doesn't work on their logic skills which are so much more important. My 4th grader had to read paragraphs and then decide which type of text structure it was--ie cause/effect, descriptive, comparison(I forget the others) but they can't justify the answer they give and when we adults were presented with sample questions we had different answers.
I also have issues with comparing this years subset to next years subset. A great teacher can have different results because she/he has different kids with different strengths/weaknesses. Look at kids over time instead.
Just my 2 cents!

[hammy]

I agree fruitcake. I'm not a fan of multiple choice questions either--everyone is different and everyone analyzes questions differently. I'm not a huge fan of "standardized" tests, but I still feel that everyone should know certain information.