Few students spend their summers worrying about homework. Lounging by the pool or earning extra cash at a part-time job take center stage while the hot months slowly wind their way toward the inevitable first day of school in August or September.
But homework is a subject that's increasingly on the minds of their teachers and principals. A high-stakes testing environment driven largely by the move toward state learning standards and the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act may be partly to blame.
"There is definitely more homework being given now than ever before," says Erika Daniels, a 6th and 8th grade language arts teacher at Jefferson Middle School in Oceanside, Calif. "Many teachers are giving homework to teach the standards because there isn't enough time to cover [all of them] in class for mastery."
"Teachers I've spoken with have said that they're increasing the amount of homework they're giving," says David Boers, professor of graduate education at Marion College in Fond du Lac, Wisc. Citing pressures brought about by NCLB and the standards and testing movements, Boers says that many teachers are beefing up homework assignments in an effort to help their students prepare for tests and to ensure that their schools measure up for state assessments.
"Teachers feel pressured by administrators telling them that they need to improve or change the system. As a result, teachers who didn't believe in homework as a teaching strategy now feel pressured to increase it," Boers adds.
But some educators aren't sure revving up homework assignments helps students learn more. They say test-preparation measures and assignments geared toward boosting achievement on standardized exams may actually undermine learning and understanding. "This causes a lot of stress on students and teachers," Boers asserts. "And what's more, by high school kids realize tests are all about playing the game. When that happens, learning loses its importance."
Out with the Old
Although NCLB began having an effect on schools shortly after becoming law in 2002, its direct impact on the number and kinds of student assignments is only now becoming evident, according to principals and teachers.
"Standards and testing have most certainly changed the content of homework," says Lucretia Coates, principal of Bernard Harris Elementary School in Baltimore, Md. "The language of assignments is changing to more of a test format, and students are now required to explain how they got the answers they got to show they understand the content."
In other words, kids are not only receiving more homework, but the homework that they are getting increasingly resembles the tests that they can expect to take at the end of the year.
"The changes tend to be more of a formatting change," says Dean Terry, principal of Franklin High School in Baltimore. Instead of reading text and writing one or two paragraphs, for example, students complete multiple-choice queries about their assignment in much the same way they would answer questions on an assessment test.
This, Terry and others say, helps make it second nature for students to handle tests: By the time they sit for exams, they've seen these types of questions hundreds of times before. "When you can find ways of incorporating those questions into the day-to-day instruction and put kids in a comfort zone, they won't feel alienated when they see them on tests," Terry adds.
The Best Measure?
But is what's good for the test taker also good for the learner? Standards, high-stakes tests, and NCLB may have merit, but skeptics believe the "hidden consequences" of the trends hurt teachers' ability to craft successful and interesting assignments—and hurt their students' education as well.
"Good scores on standardized tests don't necessarily prove or improve intellectual ability," Boers asserts.
Traditionally, homework has been one way for teachers to measure how well students understand new material and apply new skills. An education environment defined by high-stakes testing may mean that homework has less diagnostic value and that teachers have less time to devote to preparing and grading meaningful homework assignments.
"Testing and tracking is driving teachers bananas," says Coates. Because NCLB requires tracking substantial amounts of student performance data, teachers often find themselves stretched to handle both the various data-recording responsibilities that are required by law and their regular duties of preparing lessons and grading homework.
That data may not be particularly useful for helping teachers adjust classroom practices to maximize learning. The sorting and processing simply take too long.
"The feedback that we get is often too late to have any bearing on instruction," Coates says. An end-of-the-year exam given in May and analyzed over the summer doesn't yield results until August. By that time, students have already moved on to other grades, and the lesson plans for the coming year—and the homework assignments—have already been finalized. "Teachers want to use that data for the assignments they give their students, but often they don't see the results until it's too late," Coates laments.
Even teachers who don't assign lots of homework agree that, at the very least, it does provide timely feedback.
The Nature of Change
Despite the difficulties posed by the new standards-and-testing regime, many teachers remain committed to finding ways of both abiding by legal requirements and ensuring a positive learning experience for their students.
"Changes happen," says Chris McChesney, a 6th grade teacher at Pikesville Middle School in Maryland. NCLB, he says, has affected teachers' planning and the curriculum, but the goal of the legislation remains respectable even if its consequences are sometimes problematic. "I believe in the premise of NCLB," he says. "I believe it's a good idea; the execution just needs to be fine-tuned."
Others take a more critical perspective. "What's happening now is detrimental to students," says Daniels, the California language arts teacher. If homework increases because there isn't enough time to cover the material in the classroom, then a significant portion of each student's education happens without the benefit of a teacher to guide the learning process. Daniels believes that important understanding—maybe even of topics to be covered on state assessments—may go missing if the only work happens at home.
"Poor kids are at a particular disadvantage, because if they don't have parents at home who can help them with their homework assignments, they're not going to be able to keep up. That means that as more material gets added to the curriculum, these kids are going to fall farther behind," Daniels says.
She continues, "Lots of students I talked with spoke about the increased amount of stress they're feeling. They feel resentful about their homework because they're trying to balance babysitting duties at home for parents who work. Cooking dinner and cleaning and then finding time for homework is just too much."
Still, Daniels concedes that NCLB has had some benefits. "I think a lot of us are more focused than before," she says. "We're all clear about our goals and objectives as a result of NCLB." She pauses. "But the unintended consequences of the law need to be seen a lot more by the public."
