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I don't remember homework being weighted heavily until say sixth grade by me. It would be on the report card but it was more like a job review rather than a letter or number grade like it is in middle school or high school.
We don't figure homework into the student's academic achhievement grade at all. We can use it toward effort grades.
The focus of US education is all wrong and lengthening the school year will do nothing to address this serious and damaging problem.
Since NCLB was implemented, the emphasis has changed dramatically. Nowadays, the only measure that politicians look at and pressure state education administrators on is test scores. Advanced students see these tests as a joke. Average students have no difficulty with them. The only kids who struggle with achieving a passing score are the below average students. Accordingly, all the effort these days is aimed at getting the bottom students to pass an easy test. This has been going on for a decade now and we all see how terribly this has impacted the schools, but there's no public outcry. So, look for this to continue and for idiotic top-down edicts that are designed to appeal to folks who know nothing about education to be the order of the day.
There are two major components to education - time spent in class and the amount of material learned by the student. One of these components must be a variable. In the United States (and most other countries) time is a constant, therefore the amount of learning is the variable.
We seem to expect that all students will master the material in the time allotted, but the truth is that students learn at different speeds. A teacher who has three weeks to teach a unit must cover all parts of the unit in those three weeks. The top students will master the subject matter, the average student will master most of the subject matter, and the below-average student will master only some of the content. For some reason, however, we seem to think that all students should master all of the subject matter in the time allotted.
Here is an analogy: I could line up 30 students on the school's football field and tell them to run as far as they could until I told them to stop. If I told them to stop 12 seconds later, the fastest runners will have run 100 yards, the average runners will have run 75-85 yards, and the slowest runners will have run less than 70 yards. No one would be surprised when they all didn't finish at the same pace. For some reason we are willing to accept physical limitations but not limitations on learning.
The amount of time we keep our kids in school is arbitrary. If we wanted to increase the amount of knowledge learned, we need to increase the amount of time students have to learn. This can be accomplished in many different ways: more efficient use of the time already spent in school, lengthening the school day, but not the school year, lengthening the school year, or even requiring students to go to school for more than 12 years.
There are a lot of independent variables that go into this as well, but this is a start.
What is your rationale for this? Of what is the report card (or final ) grade comprised, then?
The report card grades are based on what the student does in class. They reflect how consistent the child is in meeting the standards and how independent he/she is in demonstrating mastery.
When you grade homework, are you grading the child's efforts or that of someone else? Did he get the work correct on his own, or did he need help?
We can still assign homework, it just can't be figured into the achievement grade.
The report card grades are based on what the student does in class. They reflect how consistent the child is in meeting the standards and how independent he/she is in demonstrating mastery.
When you grade homework, are you grading the child's efforts or that of someone else? Did he get the work correct on his own, or did he need help?
We can still assign homework, it just can't be figured into the achievement grade.
Without a grade, how do you get them to do the homework?
When I first started teaching, I had no intention of grading everything we did in class or homework. After a while, my students figured out that I don't grade everything. One day I passed out the day's activity, which was intended to be an investigation to introduce a new topic and a hand went up. The question was "Is this being graded?". When I said no, I kid you not, half the class put down their pencils and would not participate.
The school I was teaching at is going to ungraded homework in math classes next year. I discussed this with my chemistry classes one day and asked how they'd like it. Half the class was appalled at the idea of not getting "free" homework points to boost their grade while the other class cheered and said "Cool! No homework EVER.". I do not see this working well.
We are on the block schedule, meaning 90 days for each semester (18 weeks). If state testing is in the 16th week, we lose 2-2.5 weeks of teaching that curriculum. (Why, you ask, are the state tests given that early? Because the bubble sheets are sent cross country to another state in order to be graded, analyzed, etc. then sent back. Again you ask, 'Why?" Because someone in the state of Tennessee is friends with the state DOE and money is being made from this effort. Too detailed to go into here, but it's true.)
Now, we are down to 15-16 weeks of teaching the curriculum. But wait! there must be 1-2 weeks of reviewing of the curriculum before those bloody standardized tests. And review we must, as they are now a part of our teacher (and school) evaluation.
Now let's remove those days we are not in class for volleyball games, plays, class meetings, pep rallys, etc. Let's say a 8 days (1.5 weeks).
So what do we have left? Out of 18 weeks to teach my Chemistry class the curriculum that the state dictates I must cover, I really only have about 13-14 weeks.
Oh, and BTW, the last 2 weeks are essentially babysitting, since the finals are already done. We might do some labs but as for curriculum - not a chance. the students know that after the state exams are done, so are they.
Without a grade, how do you get them to do the homework?
When I first started teaching, I had no intention of grading everything we did in class or homework. After a while, my students figured out that I don't grade everything. One day I passed out the day's activity, which was intended to be an investigation to introduce a new topic and a hand went up. The question was "Is this being graded?". When I said no, I kid you not, half the class put down their pencils and would not participate.
The school I was teaching at is going to ungraded homework in math classes next year. I discussed this with my chemistry classes one day and asked how they'd like it. Half the class was appalled at the idea of not getting "free" homework points to boost their grade while the other class cheered and said "Cool! No homework EVER.". I do not see this working well.
It is working fine. It can be applied towards their effort grade, just not their achievement grade. So if they don't do the hw, the effort grade drops. This is only policy up through sixth grade with the standards based grading.
You're focused on homework. We don't have to give homework. They are graded on what they demonstrate in school.
They still do the homework. Maybe it's a different population, but their parents won't let them not do it. The students who don't do it probably wouldn't do it even if it was graded.
Another interesting point is that we are not supposed to penalize the grade for work that is turned in "late".
It is working fine. It can be applied towards their effort grade, just not their achievement grade. So if they don't do the hw, the effort grade drops. This is only policy up through sixth grade with the standards based grading.
You're focused on homework. We don't have to give homework. They are graded on what they demonstrate in school.
They still do the homework. Maybe it's a different population, but their parents won't let them not do it. The students who don't do it probably wouldn't do it even if it was graded.
Another interesting point is that we are not supposed to penalize the grade for work that is turned in "late".
We don't have effort grades.
We're not supposed to penalize late work either. I kid you not, I took home a stack of papers to grade that was a foot and a half high the last weekend of the semester.
I think a shorter school year forces one to focus better.
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Is the American School Year Too Short?
