Parents need to do their homework

Posted: Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Heather Jefferson used to make sure her daughters did their homework perfectly - until it dawned on her that she was making the biggest mistake herself.

"How would the teachers ever know where their weaknesses lie?" reasoned Heather, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mother of two. "By third grade, I figured out I needed to stop correcting. I just make sure they've completed it."

When it comes to helping a child with homework, parents are learning that nothing is obvious. Students today come home with far more homework - and start getting it at a younger age - than their parents did. That puts a lot of pressure on moms and dads, who are seldom told their proper role. Are they to be teacher, enforcer or bystander?

Studies suggest that time spent on homework has grown by half over the past two decades. And the concept of a kindergartner coming home with a project due for school is no longer a punch line, it's a common experience in private and public schools.

Study Guide

Set a schedule for when homework should be completed

Never give answers; offer clues

Create an area for your child to do homework

Talk to your child's teachers if you are frustrated by the number of assignments

"Nowadays, there's so much to learn, a lot gets pushed down to the lower grades," said Barbara Sharrer, a resource teacher at Lansdowne Elementary and 36-year veteran of Baltimore County schools. "I know it gets some parents upset to see so much homework be sent home, but some parents get upset if there isn't homework, too."

But no matter where parents stand on the subject, primary school homework is a fact of life and virtually demands parental involvement. How a parent reacts to homework can make the difference between a fulfilling experience and a distressing one.

"We recommend that parents talk to teachers before everything hits the frustration level," said Linda Hodge, national president of the Chicago-based PTA and a mother of three.

Harris M. Cooper, author of "The Battle Over Homework" (Corwin Press, 2001) and a professor of psychology at Duke University in Durham, N.C., said problems with homework inevitably start because parents aren't told what their role should be.

"A mistake made by teachers is that they make an assumption that parents have both the time and skill necessary to be effective mentors," he said.

At Clarksville Elementary School, a top-performing school in Howard County, Md., fifth-grade teachers are trying to improve those lines of communication. They sent home a full-page letter of homework advice to parents during the first week of school.

Their recommendations included setting a schedule for when homework will be done and being careful to never give answers, but sometimes offer clues like: "The question asks for the total. Does that mean the numbers all together or only the number left over?"

"We take suggestions and comments about homework assignments from parents and we use them to try to make homework better," said Vickie Cohen, one of the school's fifth-grade teachers.

"The most important thing for parents to do is to create an environment for children to do their work at home," said Diane Miller, a fourth-grade teacher at Clarksville. "I don't give parents homework. The child has to be able to work independently."

Clarksville teachers say they live by the popular homework mantra - 10 minutes of homework per night per grade - so that first-graders get 10 minutes, second-graders 20 minutes and so on. Homework is only assigned Monday through Thursday so that families won't have to deal with it on weekends.