At my school

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Home : 2006 : November : 22

At my school
By maryteach

we cannot count homework toward their grade at all. We have a few reasons for this:

We are a high poverty school, and children in poverty often really can't get the homework done. If you're living with 10 or 12
people in the home, there is no quiet place to work. Often, homes in poverty have inadequate lighting. The children often are little adults when they come home from school, taking care of little ones, even fixing dinner for them, because child care is unaffordable. We found that with our population, it wasn't a matter of WON'T--it was a matter of JUST CAN'T.

We are trying

to move, in our school, towards being standards-based. In a standards-based setting, you can only count what the child has done IN CLASS because that's all you've seen. You don't really know who's doing the homework, but you do know what you see in your room. So in that type of setting, you can't count homework towards any type of standards achievement.

I don't give homework anyway, and I teach sixth. I find we have plenty of time to get everything done in class. I don't need the extra grading, and God knows I really don't need to be chasing kids, or their parents, for the homework. Life is too short.