At first, the homework was nightly and I saw the same things everyone is talking about. At about the 10 week mark into school, I started to assign homework as needed.

Those needed days were days we didn’t get enough practice in (43 minute period) or when I needed to see if students could modify the material and apply it to a different style of question.

I have at least one homework assignment a week… those are Spiral Review Quizzes. These count as quiz grades and are 5 multiple choice questions on previous material.

I know some students will cheat and just get the answers. I have to remind myself (and I know you know as well) that no matter what I try to do, some students will refuse to do any amount of work outside of school and that will ultimately show on the in class quizzes and tests.

I have averaged at least 1 homework assignment (not take home quiz) a week. My homework counts as 25% of the grade currently. Not sure if I will keep it that much next year.

Dan’s data might have a decent link to what students know & are able to do because the course grade is an attempt to be based directly on that factor.

One much suggest that a student getting a high grade in a class could become more positive about the subject & consider himself to be “good” at the subject — this could lead to listening in class, getting more interested, even trying harder– all of which could support better learning results.
On the other hand, what if one looked at a scatterplot of the compliance based classroom where daily work is 40% of the final grade and one time testing of a chapter is the norm. Even if this is well-done with homework returned immediately and super use of the overhead projector in demonstrating the problem solving methods, overall results of math learning systemwide are not encouraging. It might be able to further discourage the student who is “not good” at math, and doesn’t get the way the teacher is demonstrating what he or she understands so well.

I don’t think that the no grade system works, but the grade system doesn’t either. Homework goes beyond extending practice. There’s probably more time for practice in a classroom that cuts down on the demonstrating, correcting, and housekeeping of the traditional approach.

Great topic & super data.

“I agree with you completely about the “immortal weight” given to homework in the middle school. We are, in fact, changing that. Eventually, our school will give minimal points for homework and grade students on what they can actually do.”

But you should be concerned about making that learning easier. Does practice not work at all?

“If we are required to give homework, how do we make it meaningful?”

Of all subjects, math is the easiest one to figure out. There are specific skills that have to be mastered. Practice is required, but the teacher and students can’t just go through the motions. You have to make sure that the practice is effective. You have to correct each homework set and go over problems in class. You have to grade the homework to make sure that kids will do the work. There needs to be a quick turn-around between when the students do the homework and when you go over issues in class.

I used to teach algebra with 25-30 students per class with no assistant. I gave out problem sets almost every class with both odd and even problems. I went over every problem and gave out a check (plus/minus) to all work. I handed back the problems at the next class, and since I went through all the homework, I knew what areas to talk about.

Some kids still might not do the work or do it poorly. Although grading will force the issue (say 20% of the final grade), some kids still won’t do the work. I didn’t base my teaching on those kids. Some kids might be so good or the material might be so easy that they don’t need to do the homework. I didn’t worry about them. They should crank out the homework and quit complaining. I cared mostly about the kids who needed the practice and review.

I’ll give you an example. I teach my son algebra at home because he is a year ahead and we don’t want the rest of his schedule screwed up. We were talking about the slope-intercept form of the line:

y = mx + b

He had to rearrange an equation into this form and plot it. One result came out as

y = 3 – x/2

He got stuck on what ‘m’ was. I had taked about the different ways you can look at something like (-x/2) in the past, but he got confused when he saw it in this example. I also realized (once again) that I can’t take anything for granted. I proceeded to explain to him that (-x/2) can also be seen as:

(-1/2) * x

or even

(x/(-2))

It fixed a big misunderstanding and it took very little time. Practice revealed this problem.

You could try for doing more (all) practice in class. My sister-in-law teaches high school English and is heading this way, but it requires lowering expectations. Her complaint was not that homework didn’t work, but that many kids did not do it. She saw her change as a way of getting more learning done. I’m not impressed. This might be the best solution for her, individually, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the best teaching solution on a K-12 educational basis.

Teachers look at problems as what walks into their classroom and they worry about what they can do there and then. I, as a parent, look at problems longitudinally, as the summation of grades, as systemic problems. While I can sympathize for a fifth-grade teacher who has to go back and teach the times table, the solution is not what can be done to achieve the most learning in that particular classroom.

The problems of individual teachers do not necessarily define the problems of education. Better education does not come from generalizing what works best for individual teachers.

Of course, the bastard put the data on our next problem set.