MCPS elementary, middle school students could get less homework under proposed policy update - How is this OK?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn't even know there was a requirement for homework 3-5 times per week. Teachers already aren't following the requirement, so I suppose it makes sense to revise the policy.

It's been interesting seeing how different teachers handle homework, especially since it's built into the eureka curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Homework is already "graded for completion" rather than for content in ES, so this doesn't feel like a huge shift.

However, I think this is the wrong direction. The MCPS approach seems to be that homework is too hard for some kids to complete if their parents are not English speakers, or if there are generational trauma issues.

So, instead of working with families and re-emphasizing the importance of education, MCPS just "drops the rope."

Contrast this with DCPS and PGCPS, both of which also have issues of English language learners and generational poverty. Those districts double down on homework, and radically scale up parental engagement, rather than just throwing up their hands and deciding it is too hard.

That is definitely not been my experience when I was working in DCPS.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Homework obviously didn't teach OP how to think.

Why does a parent need a school to assign homework?! You are the PARENT. If you want you to do more homework, assign it.

But I don't think a parent is involved at all. This smells like a thinly veiled cookie cutter talking point slogan thet certain groups repeat ad nauseum in response to all news without regard to the actual issue at hand. It doesn't work because you already have all the morons in your camp, and the rest of us see through you.

This is OP. As a parent, I am supposed to assign homework? LOL

I have had kids in both MCPS and private. When my youngest was in private elementary school, she had homework every night. Mostly math and reading and also studying for spelling tests. The math is the most time consuming, as it should be. Math is an important subject that requires practice. The short amount of time spent in school on math is not enough for a student to master it. Now MCPS teachers want parents to assign the math homework. I guess public schools are self service institutions now. This is one of the many reasons I pulled my kids out of MCPS and so glad I did.

Public school students run rings around private school students in math.

One example:

https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blog.umd.edu/dist/f/613/files/2023/12/2023-Winners.pdf

There will always be a tiny select group of exceptional students, but by and large, students performance in public schools is mediocre at best.

Nevertheles, the PP's point is valid. Public schools students run rings around private in math.

Let's be honest and tell it like it is. Asian students run rings around everyone else in math. Look at the winners and they are almost all Asian. Asian parents put their kids in the most competitive public schools to get the best education they can for their children. It doesn't have anything to do with public school math being better in elementary schools. Then in secondary there is a demand for higher level math because so many students have studied math outside of school.

This is why the no homework/less homework is really an awful way to increase equity for poor students as well as Latino and Black students. I was the third grade teacher who made sure my students really learned math facts. When I was growing up I lived in a city with many Asian immigrants. My Latino parents thought the schools were in charge of education and they didn't need to do extra. I always excelled in math so I was in the top math groups. By high school I started thinking maybe I wasn't that good in math, but finally realized that many of my Asian classmates were going to Saturday language and math school as well as private summer math classes run by members of their ethnic groups. They had access to the math instructors textbook to check all of their answers. They could keep working at a problem until they got the correct answer.

So when I became a third grade teacher I wanted to be able for my students to have extra work as well. Besides math facts I offered extra math work to anyone who wanted it. Many of my top students and their parents loved getting extra work- maybe 5 out of 25 students. Just because others didn't want to do or were unable to do the extra work shouldn't mean no one gets the opportunity to get extra work. In 4th grade a teacher from Peru who worked at my school did the same. By the time they were in 5th grade and math tracking started our students were excelling in math. So many of the students who went from my class to the Peruvian teacher's class were the top students in the grade. If we could have continued helping these families supplement in math, these kids would could have ensured theses students stayed in the top math classes when they went on to the junior high and were combined with higher income kids with more resources.

If instead of paying for all this equity training for teachers and having countless administrators if school districts paid for any FARM student to enroll in Kumon then AOPS they would see so many underrepresented students excel. It also should be a requirement that every math curriculum used has WORKED EXAMPLES so that if a student is absent or they don't understand the problems or weren't paying attention they can still go home and look at the worked examples and figure out what to do. Or their parents can figure out how to help them. Eureka math for the most part does NOT have worked examples. It makes absolutely no sense that students do not have math textbooks besides workbooks.

Eureka does have examples of how to solve problems in the Succeed/Homework book. They’re called the “Homework Helper” pages and are included for every lesson in the homework book.

The teacher book and others are also online so you can in fact see all the problems worked out.

They also have recordings of every single lessons. You can see a tough estimation of what the child learned in the classroom. Eureka is a great curriculum

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Homework isn’t equitable.

LOL!

What do you disagree with in PP's statement? Poor kids often can't do homework because reasons so assigning homework that poor kids can't or won't do isn't equitable.

No, actually equitable would be to offer after school homework help or peer buddies or audiobook pairing options with novels. You know, to help them succeed rather than expect them to fail. How insulting.

While I do believe better after school programming and longer days would be helpful it’s worth noting that MCPS provided Tutoring that many didn’t take advantage of. Also many if not all schools provide audiobooks as options for kids and definitely as a needed accommodation for IEP.

[Anonymous]

Let this thread die. OP was already outed as a outsider trolling.

[Anonymous]

My hs junior is just now getting a significant amount of homework, and it’s still nowhere near as much as I had at her age.
She has basically had none until now. MCPS since K.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Yes homework is important and the quality of homework is important. It's about starting early and slowly building up their self study skills. What's going to happen to all these kids when they're in HS and have 2-4 hours of homework? Or in college when most of their work and study is outside of the classroom?

If MCPS adopts less homework policy, this won't be a problem in HS at least. College may not be so good though...

The proposed policy is only until 8th grade. So HS-ers are in for a major shock of being unprepared, especially those entering magnet programs.

Actually, many teachers, even those teaching AP classes, have jumped on the "homework is inequitable" bandwagon. Lots of things that used to be standard have disappeared, like summer assignments, etc. Some even allow the kids to read their books in class. Of course, this really cuts down on what can be covered during a year, but don't worry, everything is "fine" in MCPS - AP teacher who still gives homework.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Yes homework is important and the quality of homework is important. It's about starting early and slowly building up their self study skills. What's going to happen to all these kids when they're in HS and have 2-4 hours of homework? Or in college when most of their work and study is outside of the classroom?

If MCPS adopts less homework policy, this won't be a problem in HS at least. College may not be so good though...

The proposed policy is only until 8th grade. So HS-ers are in for a major shock of being unprepared, especially those entering magnet programs.

Actually, many teachers, even those teaching AP classes, have jumped on the "homework is inequitable" bandwagon. Lots of things that used to be standard have disappeared, like summer assignments, etc. Some even allow the kids to read their books in class. Of course, this really cuts down on what can be covered during a year, but don't worry, everything is "fine" in MCPS - AP teacher who still gives homework.

I’m fine with homework but Summer Assignments have long needed to go. The teacher isn’t there to help with learning or questions, and besides summer is suppose to be a break or at least a time for exploring other interests or avenues for learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Yes homework is important and the quality of homework is important. It's about starting early and slowly building up their self study skills. What's going to happen to all these kids when they're in HS and have 2-4 hours of homework? Or in college when most of their work and study is outside of the classroom?

If MCPS adopts less homework policy, this won't be a problem in HS at least. College may not be so good though...

The proposed policy is only until 8th grade. So HS-ers are in for a major shock of being unprepared, especially those entering magnet programs.

Actually, many teachers, even those teaching AP classes, have jumped on the "homework is inequitable" bandwagon. Lots of things that used to be standard have disappeared, like summer assignments, etc. Some even allow the kids to read their books in class. Of course, this really cuts down on what can be covered during a year, but don't worry, everything is "fine" in MCPS - AP teacher who still gives homework.

I’m fine with homework but Summer Assignments have long needed to go. The teacher isn’t there to help with learning or questions, and besides summer is suppose to be a break or at least a time for exploring other interests or avenues for learning.

Your "advanced" kid can't read a book over the summer? It takes too much time???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes homework is important and the quality of homework is important. It's about starting early and slowly building up their self study skills. What's going to happen to all these kids when they're in HS and have 2-4 hours of homework? Or in college when most of their work and study is outside of the classroom?

If MCPS adopts less homework policy, this won't be a problem in HS at least. College may not be so good though...

The proposed policy is only until 8th grade. So HS-ers are in for a major shock of being unprepared, especially those entering magnet programs.

The proposed policy allows the teacher to decide on the frequency of homework.

That is effectively what the current policy does, given that there is zero enforcement. My kids have never had as much HW as is supposedly required.

[Anonymous]

I have a second grader, and am not opposed to homework in ES general, so long that it’s relevant to what they are learning in school. My kid does his Eureka homework every night, and although it’s easy for him right now, I think it’s good to establish homework skills and it allows us to understand more what they are learning. I wish there was similar homework for ELA. Reading has not come as easily for my kid and I wish they had some homework to reinforce the phonics skills they learn in school. I have to ask the teacher what they are learning and come up with ways to reinforce on my own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree that academic rigor is associated with more, not less, homework, to reinforce critical thinking. However, having put had two kids go through elementary and middle school in different MCPS school clusters, I have to point out that the homework is usually quite dumb.

It would be better if homework was more intelligent, and a little more targeted to students' levels. I gave one of my kids a pass in elementary for homework, because it was all way below her level, and thus did not serve its purpose. For my other kid with learning disabilities, the homework suited perfectly, and I sat down with him to make sure he did it

Yikes. That was a bad lesson to teach your younger kid, that she didn't have to do the homework because it was "beneath" her. Better to teach her that sometimes we have to do things because it's part of being in a community, school, work place, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes homework is important and the quality of homework is important. It's about starting early and slowly building up their self study skills. What's going to happen to all these kids when they're in HS and have 2-4 hours of homework? Or in college when most of their work and study is outside of the classroom?

If MCPS adopts less homework policy, this won't be a problem in HS at least. College may not be so good though...

The proposed policy is only until 8th grade. So HS-ers are in for a major shock of being unprepared, especially those entering magnet programs.

Actually, many teachers, even those teaching AP classes, have jumped on the "homework is inequitable" bandwagon. Lots of things that used to be standard have disappeared, like summer assignments, etc. Some even allow the kids to read their books in class. Of course, this really cuts down on what can be covered during a year, but don't worry, everything is "fine" in MCPS - AP teacher who still gives homework.

I’m fine with homework but Summer Assignments have long needed to go. The teacher isn’t there to help with learning or questions, and besides summer is suppose to be a break or at least a time for exploring other interests or avenues for learning.

What other 'avenues for learing' does your snowflake explore for two and a half months in the summer? Tik Tok videos?