All work and no play?

Homework. Is there a word imbued with more reluctance and dread? For many kids, of course, the answer is no. But the topic is also becoming controversial among educators and parents like me. This is due in part to the fact that the Common Core State Standards initiative is shining a new light on what, exactly, our children are being taught at school and at home.

“My daughter receives about three hours of homework every night,” Kathy Perez, a reading specialist and a familiar face at Baldwin Board of Education meetings, told me. “Between her homework and extracurricular activities, Ella has little to no down time. Her sleep is also compromised.”

Perez’s children, Ella, Matthew and Daniel, are all in Baldwin schools, and she says their homework burdens have increased with the advent of the Common Core.

Daniel, a second-grader, often cries when he does his homework, she said. She has also been surprised by how involved the assignments have become. “The way in which they’re being used and taught is not developmentally appropriate for kids at their grade levels,” she said. “I see practice tests that are given to [fifth-grader] Matthew now that I used to give to my eighth-graders.”

Ella, Perez’s eldest child, a vivacious and outgoing seventh-grader, says she’s “always tired” and has “so much homework every night.” Her teachers, she said, sometimes assign topics beyond what was covered in the classroom that day. She also said she wished her teachers would take into account the cumulative amount of homework their charges receive. “Homework should just give students a chance to review what they learned at school that day,” Ella said. “I don’t understand why so much needs to be given out every single night.”

Is homework truly productive? Do high school students really need to spend several hours a night doing schoolwork after being in school all day long? Is it time well spent for 6-year-olds to complete sheet after sheet of the same math problems, even after they have already mastered the underlying concept? Are we robbing children of their precious few hours a day to just be children?