Insight

Looking back to her days at Alexandria High School, Candace Davis can't say how much homework she had.

She made A's. She was on the basketball team. She had friends.

"I don't recall it being a huge amount," says Davis, now starting her 13th year teaching math at her alma mater in northern Calhoun County. "I mean, I had time to do everything I needed to get done, so it must not have been overwhelming."

Poll some of Davis's students in Algebra II or III. She's tough. She expects you to work hard, and, yes, you'll have homework every night.

Just a little bit.

Enough to make a student sweat about what they were supposed to have learned the day before or, as one put it, enough to let Davis's students know what they didn't know.

"I do give homework every night," says Davis, who was among a legion of local teachers who just completed training for the Alabama Math and Science Teaching Initiative. "I don't give much, but I do believe the kids need to be able to show — and know — they understand what I've taught.

"The only way to do that is to do it on their own."

Her philosophy illustrates homework at its purest state. In one breath she speaks of giving eight or a dozen problems for her students to work. In the next, she explains that she sees no point in sending a child home with enough math problems to keep them occupied for three hours.

As schools crank back up for another year, the light over many kitchen tables will burn a little deeper into the evening. Homework's harshest critics assail it as a pointless practice lazy teachers use to shift the burden of instruction home — to that kitchen table — where Mom or Dad is supposed to supervise under the heading of "parental involvement." Those who value homework say it's like any other element in life: useful when applied correctly, but potentially hazardous when taken to extremes.

Duke University's Harris Cooper falls to the moderate side in gauging homework's value. His book, The Battle Over Homework, has gone through three editions and is still seen as a framework for parents, teachers and administrators to find common ground on the amount and rigor of homework students are expected to do.

Davis says her idea of teaching and learning has changed in the decade since she started. Originally, she taught the way she was taught. The desks were in rows. The teacher was at the chalkboard. The students sat and learned math by rote. Homework, while not intentionally a burden, was a critical part of emphasizing what was important.

Time, though, has shown her that students learn different ways. Now students are paired up to tackle a math concept. Technology, from PowerPoint to slide presentations, has made it possible for her to walk around the room and write notes on the board. She can see what students are doing and is no longer wearing that figurative chain between the chalkboard and her hand.

Homework's role has remained the same.

"I still need to know that they've understood what I've taught, that they have mastered that standard," she says of why homework is necessary. "I tell them it builds, and they need to learn daily. It's like running down a track in front of a train. You'd better keep running, because the train's going to catch up."

She says that, if they were honest, most of her students wouldn't see her homework as excessive. "But I'm also not so egocentric to think that my class is all they have to worry about. They have other classes, other responsibilities beyond what homework I might give them.

"I believe the children should have a life."

Teachers sometimes lose sight of that, says Judy McCrary, a professor of education at Jacksonville State University. Some teachers use homework as a way to prove how tough they are, or how serious they are about learning.

The real question to be asked is what is the point of a homework assignment and does it have value beyond adding two hours to a seven-hour school day?

"If I could not teach them what they needed to know in that time, I didn't expect them to go home and continue learning," says McCrary, who has been at JSU for 15 years but was in the classroom before that. "When children leave school, they need to have the opportunity to be children."

When Cooper discusses homework and research comparing homework habits around the globe, he's cautious about interpreting data from other countries, from other students' lives. Just as it's impossible to compare homework from one school to another, it's impossible to see what students do in Sweden and say it will work here, he says.

In 2006, ITAL The Case Against Homework ITAL and ITAL The Homework Myth ITAL set off a firestorm of anti-homework chatter among parents and teachers. Both books came to the conclusion that homework, particularly in the elementary years, served no long-term purpose and didn't improve standardized test scores. A parallel conclusion was drawn between the fact that American students report more time spent on homework than students in almost any other industrialized country, yet the test scores in math and science did not reflect all that time toiling at the kitchen table.

But, Cooper says, the studies don't specific what's meant by "homework." The length of a school day and year varies, meaning the students are in class longer in many countries than they are here. Nor do studies take into account that many countries have mandatory — or strongly suggested — tutoring that is done after school but not at home and, therefore, not classified as "homework."

"I'm not a big believer in cross-cultural comparisons," says Cooper, pointing out one country cited most by homework's critics. "Japan does 'less homework.' Well, they have a longer school year, and it's the common practice for parents to send their kids to after-school school.

"You can't make that comparison and conclude 'We give more homework than they do in Japan.'"

One of Cooper's doctoral students, Erika Patall, is researching parents' view of homework and how their involvement in nightly lessons affects long-term learning. So far, her understanding is that there are many ways for parents to be involved. Some common findings show that parents are likely to set rules on when homework will be done. More in-depth involvement stretches to helping the students manage their time — a child would likely call that part nagging. A handful slip into the realm of hands-on help with the lessons, and there are those parents who go so far as to take an active role in helping with assignments or projects.

"Involvement can border on cheating," Patall says, " and that doesn't help anyone."

Judy McCrary, a professor of education at Jacksonville State University, says parental involvement itself can be a touchy point with homework. Some children don't have parents at home when the work is being done, so they receive no help. Others have an unlimited amount of adult input and supervision.

That disparity — which can have dramatic ranges within the same class — automatically puts a limit on how effective homework is as learning tool.

It also affects how those parents view the amount of homework their children have, according to a 2007 study that, in the wake of the 2006 books decrying homework, decided to poll parents, students and children on just how much is done. The Met Life Survey of the American Teacher: The Homework Experience showed that the majority of American parents think their children receive the right amount of homework, overall.

It also showed the parents think their children have more homework than they actually do.

For instance, about 40 percent of students in elementary and high school reported that they get some homework assigned every day. Parents reported that they believe homework is assigned far more frequently and carries over regularly into weekend hours.

Forty-five percent of students in all grades reported that they spend about an hour or more each school night on homework. That's a little lower than what parents in the same survey estimated, showing that parents' ideas of homework are not quite in line with their children's reality. Half of the students in grades 7-12 reported that they did an hour or more, while 70 percent of parents of 7-12 grade students said it takes an hour or more nightly.

The one thing consistent among the survey: Of those who made at least A's and B's on their report cards, half did an hour or more of homework each night.

Such results show educators that homework, when used correctly, does have value. And as for it taking too long, Cooper and McCrary say some of the time drain could be placed with how students organize their time. A teacher may intend for homework to take less than 30 minutes total — the common number teachers in the Met Life survey say they shoot for. But procrastination and distraction make the minutes add up.

"I think that, beyond how much is assigned, will turn out to be the real question," says Cooper, who acknowledges that some children are good a zipping through homework, while others will stretch it out all night.

Davis says her goal is to make sure students stay abreast of what they're learning. In math, the nightly dozen or so problems can show her when students are rolling along or whether they're about to be ground under by that freight train she speaks of.

"I let them know that first day what's expected of them, and I don't give homework on the first day of school," Davis says. "But I'll give it on the second."