Requiring homework on a consistent basis is not an evidence-based practice and actually introduces worse outcomes for kids whose parents/guardians are less present, which disproportionately affects poor kids and kids of color.
Why do we do it? Because there are some parents (you know the ones) who will pester the school and lobby for dropping their funding if they don’t see consistent tangible output from their students. If the kids aren’t coming home with half a dozen papers each day and a bag of books, how can we verify that the teachers aren’t just sitting around on their phones all day not doing shit and collecting a paycheck WITH OUR TAX DOLLARSSSSS?!!!?!?!
So, homework largely serves as busy work to signal to parents that teachers are doing things. And the system is designed for parents to actively encourage and participate in the development of the skills required to regularly complete homework independently by high school. Kids whose parents have less free time are inherently disadvantaged, often labeled as bad kids or lazy early on, and can have a seat on the prison train before they’ve entered middle school. It also harms kids’ self esteem and sets an unhealthy precedent for expectations around work-life balance.
There isn’t a single thing that homework accomplishes by accident which couldn’t be accomplished better on purpose via other methods. Fuck homework.
While sorta off topic it's still sorta related. My mother's school district has transitioned away from traditional grading methods which is in line more with the research that states letter grades are not nuanced enough and end up discouraging students. I don't believe anything outside of quizzes actually holds any solid weight towards pass/fail now, but there are other factors that go into the pass/fail determination. They've changed the curriculum for a third time in three years requiring teachers to make all new plans and basically have to play learn the curriculum a week ahead of the students.
The end result is my mother working basically every day 730a-5p along with work she brings home and continues to work on up until like 7-8pm with a little time for commute and dinner. She's doing close to 12 hour days and grading has become significantly more difficult because these better methods also require more actual labor from a teacher to work properly, but in a country where people don't want to become educators because of the terrible conditions, the conditions continue to get worse.
Between standardized testing and standardized online classwork, there's less of an actual education role they're filling while having to monitor all the students. They also have ended up with more behavioral problems in the past few years likely as a combination of COVID fucking shit up and mainstreaming students that would otherwise be in a specialized classroom for the serious behavioral issues since the theory is that placing students that are lagging behind in with the rest will help pull them forward but the general gist has seen them being more of a disturbance and pulling other students down with them.
Homework is mostly a waste of time and my mother has long since stopped assigning it instead opting that if "you don't finish it in class, finish it at home" with exceptions carved out for students that are just generally slower at the work for whatever reason.
I feel like we just need an top to bottom redo of the American education system. Students aren't benefiting from half these attempts at reform in a positive direction because the teachers are overworked to hell, teachers are less open to change because they're already being asked to do too much with less and less. Students are basically just sat in front of a computer most of the day anymore to do everything. Just like what I see in my line of work in healthcare, the entire thing is standing on the most termite damaged, rotted beams imaginable and it's only through the sheer grace of God that it hasn't all fallen down yet.
The thing you're missing here is that this is a deliberate strategy to privatize and deprofessionalize teaching. The dream is that teachers will be poorly-paid gig workers who oversee the implementation of a digital curriculum created by a private company. This, of course, will not be the case for the wealthy, who will privately educate their children in the traditional style.
I see that very clearly, it's a slow process that continues to eat away at teaching. It's a similar thing we're seeing in nursing with actual gig apps for nursing existing already trying to sell it as a way to control your schedule. COVID did a number on traditional nursing jobs with a lot more going through travel or agency gigs, shit we're seeing with charter schools, something my mother hates but can't fully articulate the reason as to why it's bad beyond seeing them siphoning off a bunch of funding that would've otherwise gone to the district.
Yep. I suspect there's a lot more of this going on than we even hear about. I suspect that if you talk to anyone that works in a field that is still professionalized, there is a version of this going on.