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.
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.