The real problem is teaching children THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR ACTION (OR INATION ) AND BEHAVIOR.

My " motivation " was " spare THE BELT and spoil the child ). I also worked at my grandfather's farm and motivation there was: You WORK or YOU DON'T EAT.

I just wrote this for Yahoo on this same study that throws money at this problem.

When a toddler starts walking around, the toddler finds the stove. The toddler reaches for the stove and gets told NO! ( this is the PC version with no slapping of the hand ) Yet as soon the parent has their back turned, the toddler reaches for the stove and find that the stove IS HOT.
then the word NO! gets imprinted in the brain NO! = PAIN.

This is called OPERANT CONDITIONING and it works well for ALL ANIMALS INCLUDING THE HUMAN ANIMALS.

When a person has fewer choices, they have less stress to deal with. They can choose RIGHT OR WRONG based on learning these basics before becoming of school age.

Hey, that worked for me.

MVHS CLASS OF 1973. No stress & no worries ( execpt for WW III, which I could do nothing about except stay informed and duck into the nearest CD marked shelter )

I have found, through my experience as a LAHS and Freestyle parent, that one of the greatest strengths of the MVLA's wellness program is the flexibility given to teachers to address students' needs on an individual basis. This flexibility allows the student to learn to advocate for him/herself and for teachers to use their professional judgment in modifying a student's coursework. This approach allows administration, teachers and parents to work in conjunction to support all students.

Yep, it has been a LONG time since you went through school. It is all different. It is all different from 1983!

Getting into college is harder than it was. I simply applied to my local CSU, got my acceptance and went to college. I did not take any AP or Honors classes, I did not have straight As, I did not do homework for hours every single night, including weekends.

Today, I would not get into my local CSU! It is easy to apply what you believe based solely on what it was like when you went to school. The problem is that it is NOTHING like when you went to school.

My experience with my students at MVHS is not that way at all. My children did advocate for themselves. However, there was no "modifying the student's coursework".

Your children got some nice teachers. Not all teachers are made the same, nor are classes, even though the District mandated that the classes are balanced and doing the same coursework.

Freestyle parent... What the hell is this? Sounds like the "cool" parents that let their kids and friends drink at home.

@allyoucaneat- Freestyle Academy is the film and web design school that is part of the MVLA District. It is housed on the Mountain View High campus. Juniors and seniors can take classes there for half the school day. It's a wonderful program.

To the other parent whose children did not have the same experience. You are correct. Not everyone's experience is the same. My youngest is a senior. Hopefully, there has been a change in teacher attitude since your children attended and teachers now have more flexibility in responding to their students' needs.

It really is true, you see it every day: We mock that what we do not understand.

I'm reading this in horror. The district is unable to agree that kids should be able to have a *single weekend* without hours and hours of homework? This is insane!

Why are we putting young people through this? There is no evidence that homework is helpful and we are making our children's lives a misery at a time when they should be free to explore their interests, make friends, have some fun, and learn in way that doesn't cause anxiety and depression. Maybe I'm a candidate for homeschooling because I can't comprehend why anyone could think this amount of homework is productive or helpful to young people's growth.

There is a comment in the article from a student whose parents allowed her to take 5 AP (Advanced Placement = extra hard) courses in one year. The generic warning to those parents and students is 5 hours of homework every day of the work week. That is what they signed up for. Not 3 hours - 'cause I want to hang with my friends, be on a travel volleyball team etc. etc.

5 hours (like reading texts and supplementary materials, making notes, doing internet searches, writing papers, re-writing paper, study for testing, study for AP year end exam). Friday is a week day - if you want to party hardy on Friday after school - guess you "signed up for" five hours of weekend work then.

Why not 3 hours AP per day? (3 AP classes) Parents and students - please use your basic math, AP Calculus not needed.

"Getting into college is harder than it was. "

That's for sure since Universities are catering for rich overseas kids, so they can have more money for their over inflated salaries and pensions. Then to top it off, the universities give 200k speaking payments to rich people like the clinton to make a short speech. Then they go beg the governor for more taxpayer money.

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I still don't understand why more kids don't leave the US education system and do their schooling in a more civilized country, like the UK. I got in and out in 4 years and have a BSc. and teaching credential to show for it. My peers are in their late 20's and early 30's and are still struggling with student debts and the ridiculous class lottery that goes on in many US colleges. Some of them took 6 to 7 years to finish their degree due to having classes missing from their transcript as a result of too many people being enrolled. My brothers is getting his MSc. in 4 years, start to finish, in Scotland.

The combined cost in terms of time and money makes it a very viable option. Plus your child gets a cultural education with many life lessons on independent living. No chance of running home for the weekend for mommy to do your laundry.

The requirements to get in are not as crazy as the ones to get into a US college, and when compared side by side, these are actually objectively better schools when looking at worldwide rankings.

The scary thing is that parents are relying on the schools to dictate the entire learning experience of their children when all free time to study and read is consumed by homework. When will these children (yes they are still children) be able to enjoy books of their own choosing? When will they have time to explore art and music, practice various instruments, play sports not part of the high school system, ride a horse, skateboard, ski, to tinker with old computers or machines or cars, to build something out of wood, clay, stained glass?

Creativity, unique skills and genius are not born from such rigid systems where every student is expected to master the same thing.

We are just preparing them to be the slaves of Silicon Valley if they are not allowed to have an original thought, idea, inspiration, skill etc in their head.

The entire system seems to be the result of insecurity and doubt in the abilities of our students. How did it get this way? Does the iPhone and all the Apps that go with it have anything to do with it?

I agree that this is something worth discussing, but there is something to be said about every child being different and that kids and parents don't always need a school "rule" to decide what will work for you and your family. And I understand why it's hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all approach to school work in general.

A couple of things:

1) re: "The district is unable to agree that kids should be able to have a *single weekend* without hours and hours of homework?"
My child has 2 classes with semester long projects this semester. On the weekends that he doesn't have other assigned work, he might do some work on those (but he doesn't always). Should that "count" if you have a district designated "non-homework weekend"? Some districts with homework policies say yes, others say no.

2) re: "There is a comment in the article from a student whose parents allowed her to take 5 AP (Advanced Placement = extra hard) courses in one year. The generic warning to those parents and students is 5 hours of homework every day of the work week.".
My child never took 5 AP courses, but he did take 4 last year as a junior. BUT, we had a long discussion when he was picking classes talking about pros and cons of "upper level" (i.e. honors or AP) classes. I questioned him on the wisdom of taking that hard a load,especially since he is also a Varsity athlete and we knew junior year would be full of pre-college testing etc. and this is what he told me: a) on a day-to-day basis, the homework load [for me] is usually 50-60% of what the teachers tell us as nightly "estimates" [my note: to be fair - much of the work in many AP classes is reading and note taking, and he is very good at reading quickly for content]. [I] might need an hour or more a night for a project or something, but that's usually only for a few days and usually in one, or maybe two classes at a time. And b) the honors and AP classes are more interesting and have better discussions because the kids all pretty much want to be there, have done the reading and have interesting stuff to say.

So, he took four AP courses and did well in all of them (and was somewhat bored in the 2 "regular" classes he took, but still did fine in those, too).
I'm not sure he ever had a fully "non-homework weekend" (if you include long-term projects) all year, but there were definitely weekends (and even a few rare weekdays) where he did no homework at all. Did he work hard? Absolutely. Were there weeks that were time stressed? Occasionally. Did he have time to spend with family? Yes. Did he have time to laze around occasionally or go for a walk or read something non-academic? Yes. Did he spend his breaks slaving over schoolwork? No.
He told me once he thought he was "doing high school wrong" because he was almost always in bed by 11pm.

Our case is probably not "the norm", and it's not that I don't think that there aren't stressors on kids that we didn't have (don't get me started on the insanity of the college application process), but I don't think that you can create a blanket policy that will universally "reduce stress" on all students and I'm not sure it's fair to insist that students not take courses that are interesting to them because someone else thinks it's too much.

It's all about pressuring your kid to take as many AP courses as possible to beat the competition (their peers at same high school) for college admissions. Colleges will only give one/a few offers to students at the same high school. Parents want any possible leg up, so Tiger Moms make sure their kids take more than their peers, regardless of interest or motivation. Motivation is "ensured" via constant, advanced paid tutoring. It's not Education and Learning; it's a RACE.

Los Altos school district needs to get up to date with what neighboring schools are doing. Palo Alto, for example, will survey kids to get information on how much work is assigned per class per specific teacher. Yes, there are kids who are more efficient at doing homework. And then there those who will take longer time. But what we need is an average time!

If we have the statistics, then the kids and parents can make a well-informed decision at class selection time.

There is no easy fix but at least Palo is doing the logical thing, which is actively gathering information. I don't see this being done in Los Altos!

Web Link

This article is talking about MVLA- the high school district- not the Los Altos School District.

Interesting how we don't have this same discussion for the amount of time required for varsity sports. It's at least as time intensive as two AP classes for an honors kid.