Since February, Eden Lake Elementary has adopted a policy of cutting the homework in lieu of putting the emphasis on a practice called study time. The study time policy encourages parents to spend at least 15 minutes, five nights a week reading with their children. Beyond that, it’s open ended as to what the student could work on – but, no work has to be taken back to school and graded.

“The typical homework really didn’t serve the purpose that we wanted it to serve,” said Jeanne Palmer, a fourth-grade teacher at Eden Lake.

Palmer said what they are trying to instill in kids and parents is that “that they should be doing this study time every night, and it doesn’t have to be controlled by the teacher.”

“They can come up with creative and fun and interesting ways to apply what they’re learning at school to their daily lives.”

The new policy has worked out well for the Riester family, said Kerri Riester, who has two children attending Eden Lake.

“It’s not that it’s no homework,” noted Riester. “It’s just utilizing study time differently.”

She said the school is asking them to continue work with spelling words, math facts and doing reading on a regular basis.

“If you’re doing those things, everything else kind of falls into place,” she said.

Consistent approach

This is the fourth year of the study time policy at Eden Lake, but the homework side of it came into play this fall.That’s when staff realized, “different teachers here interpreted study time in different ways,” said Eden Lake Principal Chuck Richter.

So this past fall, a team of staff members decided to look at what the school was doing with homework, he said.

Bottom line, there wasn’t consistency in terms of the amount of homework different classrooms sent out.

Staff looked into the research this year and by February, came to a consensus, said Richter.

They decided to stop sending  work home to be completed and returned for grading.

“For our family, it’s worked really well,” said Riester, the president-elect of the Eden Lake PTO.

For school, her son Adam keeps a planner and daughter Allison a study log.

“It’s not that they’re not doing anything.”

It’s just taking some of the pressure off, she said.

Palmer has gotten the impression “that it’s creating a lot less stress at home.” 

“I see a difference as far as their worry level,” she said about her students.“They’re more relaxed, they’re more open to learning because they don’t have that hanging over their head.”

Concerns

Principal Richter said there was nothing in the research to show that homework has an impact on student achievement for students ages 6 to 10.

The one thing research does point to is there is benefit in teaching responsibility, which is why they’ve set up the concept of study time, he added.

Harris Cooper, a professor at Duke University, has researched the impact of homework. He noted that, with young children the correlation between homework and academic achievement “is not great.”

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they shouldn’t be bringing home homework,” he said.

For instance students who bring home things like vocabulary words to study will do better on tests than kids who don’t do that kind of homework, he said. 

“But there’s also a limit to which young children can be expected to be able to focus on academic material, so that the amount of time that they spend on these things shouldn’t be great.”

One caution he would have about completely voluntary homework is you’ll likely find that the home where there’s a greater emphasis on education would be more likely to engage in the voluntary activities.

Those kinds of policies in some instances can lead to greater disparities in academic learning.

“A positive outcome of this would be if it encourages teachers to come up with inventive kinds of homework – assignments that are  fun for parents and kids to do,” he said.

He also recommended that, for instance, if there’s a Friday spelling test it makes good sense to send those spelling words home on Thursday night and suggest that parents go over them.

Richter concedes there are philosophical differences among staff and parents on this issue.

Anecdotally, he hears most are pretty happy with what’s going on. He said he’s received nine communications (as of Monday) from parents who do not support the policy.

The two major concerns he’s heard are that they are not teaching kids responsibility because they are not asking them to bring work home and back to school. Another concern is, “How will they learn to study?”

His response to the first concern is that “responsibility is not just about homework.”

“I think study time is an excellent way to teach responsibility.”

He notes that they do ask students to bring something home and back, such as their daily planner and home folder.

As to if the study time encourages study habits:

“If they know how to read and they know how to organize time, and they know how to organize their materials then they have all the fundamental building blocks in place so that they can become good studiers,” Richter said.

Teachers enforce study time by checking with their students in the classroom..

 “So we have to be very accountable too, here,” noted Palmer.

Richter said it’s really about improved instruction.

What the policy should serve to do is improve teaching, so for instance, when a student leaves a math class, the teacher should know whether the student has learned it or not, instead of waiting for the next day, said Richter.

Palmer said they need to make sure to communicate well with the parents.

The kids need to know that “study time is mandatory,” and it can be easily documented in their planners, she said.

Eden Lake is the first to try this new approach in the Eden Prairie School District.

The system will also be adjusted by next fall to help give further guidance to parents. Richter noted that when they first started it, they offered lists of ideas for study time. 

“One of the frustrations for parents was that they had to go through the list.”

In the fall it will be much clearer, he said. Already teachers are moving toward a smaller list or one item that a student can work on.

“We just need to help parents and support them in that way.”

Richter noted that in conversations he’s had with parents, they’re looking for support.

So next fall “there will be improved communication,”

“We’ll talk more about expectations,” he said.