If a tenured teacher decides to load up on hw anyway, saying "No, I think I'll decide how much homework to assign", what will the ramifications be? I've seen policy changes like this ignored elsewhere, and with no penalty for breaking it, it meant nothing.

Here's to the future crop of left behind students from MVLAHSD! They can spend even more time with their families when they don't get accepted to any universities.

Tuesday afternoon

Hi, all,

These changes are well-meant, and show wise acknowledgment of a very real problem.

But everything I know from running an English classroom at Gunn for fifteen years tells me that they won't do the job.

A policy is nothing without a tool to make it work.

Who is to enforce this policy? Department heads? Vice-principals? Who counts the minutes assigned, and the minutes worked? Does the student complain to the parent, who complains to the principal, who calls in the instructional supervisor to speak to the teacher?

Do forms and emails and accusations (with no solid evidence) fly back and forth? How does the teacher get information on minutes worked by the kids? All 150 students write down numbers on their homework papers and the teacher averages them?

Too much homework is the product of a simple, missing link: teenagers have never had a way to tell their teachers when workloads are too big.

They're too young to speak up to authority figures who hold the keys to the kingdom (grades) and too embarrassed to "whine" in front of their friends. Even parents are loath to take on teachers, for fear of repercussions.

All students need, though, is one simple thing. A confidential way to communicate actual time spent--via an online app that crunches the numbers overnight for teachers. Teachers are so busy they can't be expected to input and average numbers all the time--and such an app would give them data on all kinds of useful things.

JoJo or Nathan has been looking miserable lately in class? Just look up the numbers on how much work they're shouldering for all their classes combined? Don't know if you're assigning more minutes than your colleagues? Just look it up, onscreen.

And on the school marguee ever morning, flashes a number for "Average Minutes of Homework Done by All Students at this School Last Night." Talk about useful feedback!

These policies are directed at a genuine, longstanding burden, but don't take on what actually causes that burden.

Kids and teachers need a useful, user-friendly homework communications app: call it "ClockTalk." Our very own whiz-kids are smart enough to build it-- to the cheers of their clasmates and the community.

Sincerely,

Marc Vincenti
Gunn English Dept. (1995-2010)
Campaign Coordinator
Save the 2,008 -- bringing hope to Palo Alto's high-schoolers
(Note: "ClockTalk" is one of the six, simple Save the 2,008 proposals for reducing high-school stress. For more, see: savethe2008.com)

I'm of the opinion that almost any homework is too much. I don't like to take MY work home with me and consider my time away from work to be mine, and precious. Why do we allow schools to colonize our children's time like that? To train them to be obedient workers when their future bosses force them to take their work home?

I start with the presumption that kids are inherently free and my job as parent is to help my kid make his way as a free and happy citizen. From this perspective, the notion that I want my child to leave his 6+ hour-a-day unpaid, non-voluntary "job" at school only to come home and be forced to do more work assigned by his "job" is quite repellent.

I realize that puts me in the minority of "people skeptical of our current school system and its effects on our children." Since most parents had to go through it and survived, many seem overly-invested in the idea that, imperfect though it might be, our school system is still a net good for our kids. I think in the age of ubiquitous information from the internet our school system more and more looks like a dinosaur, a relic from an earlier time that traumatizes kids at least as much as it educates them.

If someone wants to put forward some science showing that homework improves outcomes I might -- might -- reconsider.
Web Link

Mr. Vincenti,

Thanks for your suggestion, which offers a very "Silicon Valley" approach in both positive and negative ways. The positive is that is is a data-based empirical approach in which realtime numbers can be tracked and potentially adjusted. As the late activist Aaron Swartz said, "The revolution will be A/B tested."

The downside, and what makes your suggestion extremely problematic in the real world, is that your data-based approach also requires real-time ubiquitous surveillance of our kids. "When is Mary working and when is she not? This app will tell us everything!" Totalitarian surveillance by private companies is already a thing, and Google is moving quickly into the educational space where they are rapidly hoovering up all the personal data of our children. Any system that gives an outside entity -- whether the school board or an unaccountable private corporation or, frequently, the latter working on behalf of the former -- more power to spy on our kids is creepy and totally unacceptable to me.

current homework policy is utterly ignored. Why create a new one without teeth?