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.
My two cents here is that this a failure of the education system to properly stimulate them. (Not calling you out here)
Taking writing for example:
In order to get a hundred a student merely needs to write at a sufficient level that puts them above the grade accepted standard rather than what is pushing them to improve and learn.
As a side note, what do you think about labor based grading practices? Is it impractical to actually implement? Looking at the theory behind it it seems like a good practice for evaluating actual student growth instead of engaging in grading policies that high level kids easily handle and promptly do nothing.
Yeah I think different assessment benchmarks are more or less appropriate depending on the subject. In art class I think an improvement lens is fine, in a physics class it's not sufficient because passing doesn't just mean you put in X amount of effort but that you have displayed enough understanding to participate in the next level of the subject. It's not a one-size-fits-all thing.
But yeah there's too many factors to have a deep discussion about this stuff here without doxxing, like grade level, subject matter, support for students at risk and students who are low, etc. All these play such a huge role in this conversation that I'm not convinced it can be really had here in a coherent manner.