No matter how much a person despised homework as a kid, he may dread it even more when he becomes a parent.
"There is never a homework-free night in our house with three kids," said Tiffany Rowe, who has two children in the Little Rock School District. "It definitely makes you think about how much else you can commit to when you know everyone is going to have homework to get done every night."
Homework has come under fire in recent years, with various groups arguing that there is just too much of it, causing students undue stress, cutting into time with families and even interfering with sleep -- which in turn affects the way they perform at school the next day.
A Harris Poll commissioned by the University of Phoenix College of Education in 2014 showed that kindergarten through fifth-grade teachers assigned an average of 2.9 hours of homework every week. That amount jumped to 3.2 hours for sixth- through eighth-grade teachers and to 3.9 hours per week for ninth- through 12th-grade teachers. The survey included responses from 1,005 teachers in public, private and parochial schools across the nation.
Because those averages are associated with individual teachers, middle and high school students could be receiving in excess of 20 hours per week worth of homework, depending on how many courses they have.
NECESSARY EVIL
Still, homework is by most accounts a necessary evil. Teachers polled said they doled out assignments because they wanted to see how well students understood lessons, to teach them problem-solving skills and to show parents what students are learning at school.
Rowe said her son, Josh, a sixth-grader at Forest Heights STEM Academy, had far more homework at the beginning of the year than he does now.
"I think he's just learned better time management skills," she said.
During a recent four-day weekend, though, Josh spent roughly 12 hours working on school projects, Rowe said, all of which happened to be due at the same time.
"It would have been nice if his ... English essay that could be no more than 7,000 words [was not] due on the same day that his 3-D science project [which was] due also while making a homemade instrument," Rowe said. "We were just all over the place. And when you have three kids, you're spending all that time on one."
Josh plays baseball and knows that schoolwork trumps sports, so he sometimes tackles his homework on the bus ride home.
"He told me, 'I did my homework until I thought I was going to throw up,' which is horrible to hear for your child," Rowe said. "But they know what their parents' and teachers' expectations are and what they're going to lose if they don't get it done."
Anna Swaim of Little Rock eschews children's activities with heavy after-school obligations for that very reason. A lighter schedule makes for easier homework completion, she said.
Swaim -- mother of John, an eighth-grader at Dunbar Magnet Middle School, and James,
a sophomore at Central High -- has friends with high school students who complete school assignments in the wee hours of the morning.
"I don't understand the point of that much homework," she said. "Everyone is encouraged to achieve a work-life balance when they enter the workforce so why wouldn't we want that for our kids?"
'ON HIS OWN'
John has homework two or three times every week, Swaim says. James has a couple of hours of homework each night, which includes assignments from two advanced placement courses.
"I know it's only going to get more intense," she said. "And he has reached the point in math and science where he is on his own. My husband and I cannot help him."
Tiffany Smith, of Conway, homeschooled her children last year but enrolled them in Central Arkansas Christian Schools this year because she struggled with how much to help in the dual role of teacher and mother.
"I feel like I did a good job, but I don't know," she said. "I always try to ask myself -- Is this helping them be a better student, or is this helping them too much or am I causing them so much anxiety by not helping them enough that they're not able to grasp the concept of what I'm trying to teach?"
Smith has arranged her part-time work schedule so she can be with Paxton, a sixth-grader, and Colton, a third-grader, right after school Tuesday through Friday. On Mondays, though, she works later and picks them up at after-care, drives the half hour home and juggles homework help and all the other things that go into running a home.
She said she has found that with "brain breaks," 20-minute timeouts given every hour or so, her kids come back to their tasks refreshed and more ready to tackle problems rather than trudging through it more slowly all at once.
She occasionally pulls from homeschooling resources for homework help, which makes her a bit better prepared to help when help is warranted.
"If I run into something that I can't fully explain to her or maybe I don't understand completely, there is a website called Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.org) and you can go there and type in any math concept and it will pull up an explanatory video," Smith said.
Of course, not all kids can expect help.
"While I think homework can be positive I have seen so many students that go home and worry about food or if anyone is even going to be there," Laura Bednar, a deputy superintendent in the Pulaski County Special School District, said.
'AT DIFFERENT PACES'
Bednar is cautious about offering guidelines for how long homework should take children.
"Kids learn and work at different paces," she said.
Parents have to use their best judgment to determine whether a child is struggling when homework takes longer than it seems it should.
"I would start with the classroom teacher. Good communication is always the key," Bednar said.
Katie Camargo, education director at GradePower Learning in Conway, works with teachers to identify and address academic weaknesses in the students she tutors.
"It's definitely not a lack of teachers trying to help the students," she said. "It's what the students are retaining that makes it difficult to do the homework -- and that's not about the student; it's just so much information."
The issues a student struggles with may not always be what they seem, Camargo said.
"Maybe when we do our assessment we find that their reading comprehension is lower than it should be and that's what's affecting their math skills," she said. "We'll simultaneously help them improve their reading comprehension skills and help them with their math homework to make sure they're not getting any further behind."
HOMEWORK LOADS VARY
GradePower serves students from several districts, and each district sets its own homework policy. Homework loads vary widely even among teachers in the same school, Camargo says.
"We believe that homework should be an extension of the teaching and learning experience in the classroom," said Harvey Howard, deputy superintendent of the Batesville School District. "It should be work that's been mastered and it should just go home for practice."
In Batesville, science fair projects are done at school to even the playing field for kids with varying levels of parental assistance.
"It needs to be child-driven," Howard said. "Experience tells us that we don't want a parent-developed science project; we want the child to develop the process. We have a lot of doctors and engineers in our community and they could do some really neat-looking stuff but we want it developed by the child so that's the way we do it."
Howard, a former elementary school principal, made sure his students got extra time at school to do homework so teachers could ensure they understood the concepts.
But, he said, "A lot of parents like to see homework come home, for them to have things to do."
Howard jokes that "it's not my father's school anymore," and he's right about things moving forward. Technology isn't something kids just learn about in school -- it's something they use.
In most districts, grades are posted online and parents are responsible for checking them regularly. Assignments, in some schools, are posted online and students are expected to check for them and often even complete them electronically.
NO INTERNET
This can pose a challenge for families who are less tech savvy or who aren't connected to the Internet.
"We're struggling with work that is assigned electronically, through Gaggle or done in a Google Doc," said Rowe. "I know my children's log-ins, so at least I can log in and check theirs. But what if a parent doesn't have [the password] or if a child doesn't remember their log-in or what if they don't have a home computer?"
On the plus side, Swaim's son could have logged in to a website and read a chapter of world history while they recently flew home from a vacation in Washington.
"I would never advocate that he take a 5-pound history book on a trip, but how amazing is it that he could read from that book on his phone on the plane?" she said.
As for homework, Swaim encourages independence. She expects her boys to do their best and keep up with their obligations.
"I do ask them about what they're reading in English, what kinds of things they're studying in history, what they plan to do their science fair projects on," she said. "But beyond that, I'm not down in the weeds. It's not because I'm not concerned or don't care. It's because it's their job right now as students. I expect them to take care of that ... I'm training them to try to be responsible so someday they can fly the nest."
Family on 11/25/2015