Parent-teacher contracts

Here is another homework advice article: Parent or Homework Monitor: Knowing When to Step Back.

It led me to think in new terms about the relationship between parents and teachers. I posted the following comment to the article.

As you say, homework is a contract between the student and the teacher, but it is also a contract between the teacher and the parent. Think of the student-teacher contract as similar to employment, the parent-teacher contract as one similar to rent. You, as a parent, have made an implicit agreement to allow schoolwork to take place in your space, the home. If you agree, as most parents do, ask yourself, have you considered the terms? Are you willing to let homework dominate your home? Are you willing to have your children terrorized in your space, or do you want them to feel comfortable and secure? If I recall, the standard rental agreement includes a provision for the "quiet enjoyment" of the space. Is one of the conditions under which you allow homework that it including such quiet enjoyment? I agree that parents should not hover over kids or do the work for them under the guise of "help." If anything, they should observe what is going on as they might have feedback to give the teacher that will help that teacher educate the child. But overall, full ownership by the parent of the environment is vital for family tranquility and, in the end, for some kids, academic success.

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 

Featured Radio Interview

Here's a link to a radio program on homework.

I have the following comment to what one of the callers-in said on the clip.


The teacher who called in with the issue of pace in this segment hones in on the most important issue regarding homework, but then comes to the wrong conclusion. She is absolutely right that children vary in the pace at which they work, and that some who excel have no homework at all. They get it all done in class. She then goes on to suggest that those who work more slowly should continue working on the assignments at home. That is precisely the wrong solution and it is the reason why so many kids get turned off to school and why many of them move in unproductive, and sometimes dangerous directions, when they reach their teens. We all vary in skills. I know people who had much more trouble in school than I had, may have plodded along to get the assignments done, but go on to fix their cars or complete projects in their homes at speeds that are virtually out of the range for an academic like me. The notion that we would identify a person's weakness and go on to pile on more and more of what they don't do well makes no sense at all.

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 

Teens Doing Homework

I came across this article “Making Teen Boys Do Their Homework.” The article has some good advice, and it has some points that I consider worth questioning and commenting on.

"The biggest reason that students procrastinate on their homework is because they don't know the concepts or how to do it."

This is absolutely true. The article goes on to add “Other common problems include disorganization and boredom.” That is true, but that is also true for many kids who get their homework done. We need to emphasize the issue of ability, rather than get distracted by personality differences and moral issues. Some kids are disorganized. Some kids are more prone to boredom. We need to educate kids regardless of who they are and develop strategies that teach them as they are, not as we think they ought to be. Keeping the focus on educational issues (I call this The Myth of Motivation) is one of the most important things we can do.

“For some teens, an hour is enough, but for others, two hours is more like it.”

It is true that kids will differ in how much time they “need” to spend on their homework. But we should not confuse what they need to do with what they need to do to get it all done. If the criterion is simply homework completion, we run the risk of taking kids with ADHD who actually need unwind and spend less time at homework and make them work more. We run the risk of taking kids who work well with their hands and making them spend too much time dwelling on what they don’t do well. “Need” needs to include issues regarding their mental and emotional well-being as well as their need to have time to explore other, not necessarily academic types of types.

“Consequences will be if he doesn't do his work” This is a tricky area. The author recommends attaching electronic and weekend privileges to homework. Perhaps, that works for some kids, but in my experience, those consequences are either unenforceable, or, if enforced, used too often. The definition of a “good consequence” is one you don’t have to use anymore, since that tells you it was effective. Consequences used repetitively without positive results reinforce acting out behavior, and are not good for kids.

“Teachers and parents work together with the student.” Before parents and teachers can truly work together, they need to make sure they understand the boundaries of their authority: Parents in charge of the home; teachers in charge of the school. I certainly support dialogue and cooperation between parents and teachers, but if teachers retain final say about what must be done in the home, the disturbance to the natural hierarchies between parents and teachers is too great for productive work, unless the problem happened to have been small. Parents should tell teachers that they will do what they can to support them, but make it clear that, in the end, they have the authority to relieve pressure at home if, in their best judgment, that’s what is needed.

“Look at Long-Term Goals.”  There is no question we want to keep long-term goals in mind, but long-term goals are not restricted to academic goals. We also want to make sure that our children have healthy late teen years. We want to make sure that our children have access to healthy peer groups in high school. Relentless homework pressure can drive children to negative peer groups with significant consequences.

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 

Misguided policy

Here's an article in which a school system removes computer privileges from struggling students. It is misguided. Here's the comment I posted to the article.

This is an interesting but misguided concept. One of the reasons students have disciplinary problems is because they have struggled with homework all their lives. We misunderstand this, thinking that they don't do their work because they lack motivation. In fact, they don't do their work because the have under-the-radar learning problems. Typically, these problems manifest in difficulties with auditory processing and difficulties with handwriting. The solution, for many of these kids, is to cut down the amount of homework they are required to do, or to offer them bypass strategies around the problem. The computer proves a valuable tool in helping these kids with handwriting deficits compensate for their difficulties. Some do better in college than they did in high school, partly because laptops are the norm there.  It seems to me that the policy described here actually removes the solution these students need. I understand why the policy was made. It's based on a common misunderstanding about why some children don't do their work, and end up posing behavioral problems.

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 I recommend giving copies of the book to the teachers at your child's school. Discount purchases are available through Wyndmoor Press. Single copies can be purchased at Amazon.

Teacher retention

Education Week has a round table forum on teacher retention, with several teachers participating from urban districts plagued by high turnover rates. Despite the differences of opinions shared, the comments tend to coincide with basic principles of organizational theory. In general, organizations function best and people thrive when the hierarchies are rational. This means strong leadership, clear lines of authority, and decision-making vested at the lowest possible level. Finding this balance can be difficult and often depends on the feelings and intuitions of the people involved. Not every employer or leader in an organization will have the same intuitive sense about where decisions should be made. But in general, the superintendent should not make decisions the principal can rationally make. The principal should not make decisions the teacher can naturally make. And the teachers should not make decisions that the students can naturally make. While different people will set the dividing lines on decision-making differently, and this will impact how the organization functions and appears, the more consensus there is among the people involved, the better the system works, and, in the end, the more likely it is that teachers will remain on their jobs.

I'm not an educator but a psychologist, and I've seen this process work in many different systems. In my younger days, I did administrative work, as the director of a day treatment program and as the director of a mental health clinic, and then later as a consultant to people who were operating in those roles. In each case, the principles I just described applied.

This issue is also central to understanding homework problems. In my book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers, I include a chapter on the Systems Effects. It is important to look at homework, not just as a task that needs to be done (according to the teachers) or as questionable whether it needs to be assigned (according to leading homework critics), but as an aberration of the natural hierarchies, the teacher in charge of the class, the parent in charge of the home.

As I said, people will differ in their gut feelings about where authority should lie and, because of that, there will be parents for whom homework fits naturally with what they expect and other parents for whom homework is perceived as an unnecessary intrusion into family life. Unlike the school, or any other corporate organization, which develops its internal operating principles and understandings about how decisions are made, homework makes its way into the community at large. Parents are not true members of the educational team (even if they are sometimes told they are when the child study team gets involved), since the focus of their involvement is solely restricted to the child in their home and they have no involvement in any other team interactions that impact school in general.

Unless we take stock of these hierarchical realities, we are going to continue to have kids and families whose lives are made miserable by homework. Those kids will be at risk of doing what teachers do in dysfunctional systems, and that is to leave (after all, the article I referred to has to do with teacher retention). And what does it mean for kids to "leave?" It means they turn off to school, gravitate to dysfunctional peer groups, and have increased chances of engaging in risky behaviors involving sex, drugs, and illegal activities.

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 I recommend giving copies of the book to the teachers at your child's school. Discount purchases are available through Wyndmoor Press. Single copies can be purchased at Amazon.

Policies that do not make sense

I came across this article about a middle school in Texas and its efforts to get students to do their homework. The policy is all too familiar as it is strikingly similar to what happened with my homework-trapped child that eventually led me to look into the subject with my clients (I'm a psychologist) and to write my book, The Homework Trap.

The policy involves a stepwise opportunity for kids to make up their homework in what is called the Homework Hall, which takes place during lunch time. The kids get a grace day to hand in the homework without penalty and then a 10% penalty. Kids who do all their homework for a few weeks, get a class period off to play.

The article notes that large numbers of kids are going to this Homework Hall, showing that the system is not working. One kid who attends this program is quoted as calling it stupid, and noting an attitude that says it is okay to fail. One teacher is proposing extending the program to Saturday school. In my case, my homework-trapped child was often forced to attend what his school called, Saturday detention.

Through the process, there is no recognition that the system does not work. The system was intended to get kids to do the homework and insstead, it creates a subgroup of kids who are now considering it part of their "new normal," to skip lunch and go to Homework Hall. They are being taught to not appreciate school. The punishments are actually reinforcing continued homework noncompliant behavior. The idea of sitting in Homework Hall with peers defined as similar to themselves has become the reality of their life.

These kids will take these lessons from middle school and continue as a subgroup of non-academically minded children, even if the truth were that they might have been enthusiastic learners in class if the school had come up with a different approach, and not banked their education on the Holy Grail of homework.

These kids are at risk of turning away from the positive components of high school social life that might involve sports, drama, and other activities centered in the school. Or they might get turned away from those activities, sports in particular, by policies the insist on continuing to punish them for their homework noncompliance.

But nowhere in this article is it mentioned that this has caused the teachers to question their homework policy, consider alternatives to homework, consider why, from the student's point of view, the homework is not getting done, or consider other ways to engage students in a positive educational experience.

This is the type of policy that was in place in the school where my children went and in schools all around the country. And it is true that the majority of students get through unscathed. But here we learn that in Texas, 150 kids are going down a path that does not appear very good for them.

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 I recommend giving copies of the book to the teachers at your child's school. Discount purchases are available through Wyndmoor Press. Single copies can be purchased at Amazon.

NASP Guidelines on Helping Children Processing School Shooting

The Washington Post has reprinted recommendations by the National Association of School Psychologists on how to help children deal with the violence in Connecticut.

The article makes sense, if it applies to your situation. Sadly, there are all too many children going to schools where their parents cannot honestly share the first point, that schools are safe. If you live in the suburbs or in a small town, this is probably true. But we have too many urban schools where our children are far from being safe. The Connecticut authorities are right to place an officer of the law in each school building to reassure the kids. Those officers are there to keep outsiders out. There are many urban schools with officers in the buildings ready to arrest the kids themselves.

I wonder how it feels to a mother of a child who has no choice but to send her child to an unsafe school, to read this article and recognize the fact that her child is being left behind. I wonder what it is like for their suburban neighbors who are rightfully touched by the loss of children many miles away, to be inured to violence that is not so far away.

Columbine took place when my kids were young. We live ten minutes from Camden, NJ. As a whole, the members of our community overlooked Camden while feeling terrified and shocked over violence 2000 miles away.

I don’t mean to criticize NASP for the guidelines they’ve written. They are good. They make sense. But let’s not forget that we have too many children who are trying to learn under a cloud of fear that they’ll be hurt.

I applaud the president for including in his comments, when discussing the spate of violence that has come across our country, “a street corner in Chicago,” to the other highly publicized situations that have recently occurred.

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 I recommend giving copies of the book to the teachers at your child's school. Discount purchases are available through Wyndmoor Press. Single copies can be purchased at Amazon.

Teacher Continuing Education

I follow the Scholastic Teacher and Parent Facebook pages. The other day, the question was posed: "Fill in the blank: If you could choose a day of great professional development on any subject, it would be ____________."

One hundred sixty eight comments were left covering a wide swath of educational topics: technology, writing, classroom management, to name a few. No one, other than I, left a comment expressing an interest in learning about homework.

I understand that teachers will set different priorities for their own professional development. Yet, I find it odd that no one expressed an interest in furthering their understanding of a practice that is weighted so highly and has such a great impact on children's lives.

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 I recommend giving copies of the book to the teachers at your child's school. Discount purchases are available through Wyndmoor Press. Single copies can be purchased at Amazon.

Comments on French Homework Ban

NJ.com has an editorial entitled "French Proposal to Ban Homework is Dunce Move." I provided the following comment on their website:

Calling this a “dunce” proposal is a fairly simplistic response to a highly complicated issue. Here are my thoughts:

1.       The notion that homework is persecutory to the poor has been well-documented even before President Hollande took his stand. Etta Kralovec and John Buell made a compelling argument about this in their book, “The End of Homework.” The fact that many individuals at the lower rung of our social hierarchy believe in homework is not surprising. We respect different points of view. But scholarly studies give support to what President Hollande says.

2.      Turnaround schools in impoverished areas are almost always characterized by a reduced dependence on homework. I’ve followed numerous accounts of inner city school success stories and, to a tee, they bank on what goes on in the school, not what the children have to do when they go home.

3.      You don’t have to be poor to like President Hollande’s approach. Many conservative and affluent families have opted for homeschooling, not just on religious grounds, but to protect the sanctity of their homes. The reality is that homework traverses the boundaries between home and school, vesting huge authority in 30 to 40 different people, teachers, over the course of a child’s life, over the authority of the parent. I don’t doubt these teachers are thoughtful and sincere, but it is still an example of overreach and an assault to parental decision-making and authority. This issue often goes unnoticed because homework is not a problem if, in the particular case, it is not a problem. But when it is, parents find themselves in an unusually helpless position as heads of their homes. Conservatives, who resent government intrusion into the family, should think about how that relates to the no homework policy.

4.      Teachers are not trained to give homework. A cursory view of a typical catalog for any school of education will highlight that there are no courses called homework. A review of the workshops in a standard teacher professional conference will show an absence of meetings on homework. The public does not realize this, but teachers are giving homework and weighting it heavily, even though their own teacher training spends little time studying the issue.

5.      France had a ban on homework in the elementary schools before President Hollande made his pronouncement. Last spring, there was a teacher-parent organized strike in France because teachers were overriding and not adhering to what was already official policy at the lower grades. This has not made the news.

My major and only criticism of President Hollande’s decision lies in the fact that it is a top-down decision and runs the same risk that many of our own top-down decisions about improving education have had. The issue of educational philosophy should be coming at the teacher level, just as the issue of teacher evaluations should occur at that level. In that sense, both France and the United States have it wrong trying to effect change through political mandates rather than through professional forces. The Finns are the ones who really have it right. They invest much more time and energy into teacher training. Their teachers are more respected than ours tend to be. Their system of education receives accolades around the world. And, interestingly, Finns assign very little homework.

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 I recommend giving copies of the book to the teachers at your child's school. Discount purchases are available through Wyndmoor Press. Single copies can be purchased at Amazon.

Turnaround School

Here is one more story about how a high risk school turns around without overly evaluating and firing teachers and without any mention of homework. They emphasize attendance followed by behavior in the school, without banking on behavior in the home, i.e. homework, which schools cannot control and becomes a major reason why kids don't want to go.

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 I recommend giving copies of the book to the teachers at your child's school. Discount purchases are available through Wyndmoor Press. Single copies can be purchased at Amazon.

A Letter to Kingston

Dear Kingston Residents and School Personnel:

I’m pleased to read that you are going to look at your homework policy again. As you may know, I reviewed your draft policy and offered some comments in a prior blog.

As you move forth in developing you policy, let me offer a suggestion.  Typically, communities form task forces and develop surveys to find out what different community members want and what they think the policy should be. I don’t think they ask the opposite question, “What would things be like for you if we did things the other way”, referring to an approach they might not like.

Think about it. I may “want” an expensive car, but I chose a cheaper model. It gets me where I want to go and makes it easier for me to pay my mortgage and buy my children food.

Teachers: What would it be like to teach kids with no homework at all? Could you do it? Would the students still learn? What about homework that could not count for more than 10% of the grade? What if you had guidelines like the ones the Race toNowhere team proposed to the National PTA this past summer? What if you had free reign to give homework, but the parents had the final say on whether it had to get done?

Principals: What do you think would happened with these different proposals? Would they diminish or enhance your control of the school? Might you see a reduction in disciplinary situations? Do you think you could keep standard test scores up? Would the children still learn?

Parents: How would these policies affect your home? Would they enhance or detract from the quality of family life? Would they give you relief for your homework-trapped child? Would you start having problems with your homework-compliant child if some of his friends were given homework relief and he was still required to get his work done?

If you study the impact of proposed homework policies, rather than settling for what people prefer, you might get a better sense about how to proceed.

My guess is that, if you pose your questions this way, you’ll find that, because most of your teachers are highly skilled professionals, they are perfectly capable of teaching children with or without homework.

Those are my thoughts. I’ve gotta go to get so I can get to my office on time (in my economy car even though I might like to drive a BMW).

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 I recommend giving copies of the book to the teachers at your child's school. Discount purchases are available through Wyndmoor Press. Single copies can be purchased at Amazon.

Question for Teachers

As many of you know, French President Francois Hollande has proposed a ban on homework. This has led to controversy around the world with people weighing in on different sides. President Hollande's reasons coincide with his socialist perspective and concern for the education of the poor. Frankly, one could make a conservative argument for the ban based on family values and the importance of parents being the ones who are in charge of their homes. But here is my question, and its one for teachers.

Please put your opinions about President Hollande's proposal aside and ask yourself, what would you do if homework was banned?

Would you quit teaching because it was now impossible to teach? Would you continue teaching with the understanding that you will be a less effective teacher? Would you respond to this "new normal" and develop effective ways to teach your students?

I want to hear what you think? And if you are not a teacher, I ask that you pass this question along to teachers you know and ask them to tell me what they think? Please leave a comment.

Thank you.

Kenneth Goldberg

*****

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 I recommend giving copies of the book to the teachers at your child's school. Discount purchases are available through Wyndmoor Press. Single copies can be purchased at Amazon.