I dug my spoon into the pudding and low and behold, the proof was in it.

This all seems like fiction to me. My daughter is in Los Altos High and the amount of homework has not decreased at all - if anything, it seems to have increased. She is told to limit the time spent on certain assignments but she knows this will impair her grades. The new school policy is meant only to make the district appear as responsive, with no intent of actually reducing what in my view is n excessive homework load.

Perhaps the Voice could do a more in-depth to see what is really happening. Why not, for example, interview students from different courses?

I have to agree with MTV resident. I have yet to see a decrease in the homework this year. My child took AP Modern European History last year, and aside from the tremendous class/homework load, she still had to study quite a bit on her own. She did quite well on the test, though.

I agree with the other parents. My kid's workload didn't get better. It is all PR.

There are only two ways to reduce the homework load for AP US History: either spread the course over two years of high school or get the College Board to limit the scope of the test. It covers the Clovis people up thru the Obama administration. There is too much material to cover so the pace of the course is fast and the reading is extensive. Just think, it will only get worse for future generations as history never stops growing!

This is so NOT true. My son is at MVHS in Bio Honors and he has over 1.5 hours of homework in that class alone. Last year my daughter in Honors Am Lit spent 15 hours per week on that class alone, with the Authors project taking up 10 of those hours each week. This year MV inserted a 35 min tutorial period on Tuesdays, which is well intentioned but hasn't really helped reduce the HW load at home.

The reality is that we as parents have as much to do with all this student stress as the school assignments. We push our kids to take all AP classes because we know that it will eventually save money on college admissions, not to mention that it looks good to college administrators. We think that having students pushing themselves to the limit for all three or four years of high schools and having good grades from that means they'll get into the school they want to attend for college. This comes at a price. You don't have to have your kids enroll in these classes. They don't have to take all AP classes or all Honors classes. Kids can take regular classes, have normal work loads, volunteer, work, play sports and live a happy healthy life. But if you're looking for all that other stuff, there's going to be a price to pay and we just can't expect the cost to come down. It's only going to go up. There are kids willing to do it. There are kids who won't. But we as parents get to decide. And once you do decide, you've just gotta be the resource that helps them get through it. We can do that.

Cfrink, you are so spot on.

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?