Thursday, April 28, 2011
7:05 PM
Attendees from the Board: Susan Guthrie, Virginia Pollard, Diane DiBonaventura, Lisa Pliskin, Lyn Kugel
Attendees from the Admin: Mike Kelly, Steve Barbados, Wagner Marseille, Christopher McGinley
Kelly:
Process began in the fall
Began soliciting information from different groups
- Met as an academic council
- Met as a group of principals
- Discussions at policy committee
Tonight they will collect feedback
New policy draft by next Friday
Goal is to do a first read in May
Other meetings:
May 6 - policy meeting - may have a draft policy at that point
June 1 - curriculum meeting
Early June policy meeting
This meeting is divided into 3 parts
Part 1
Barbados: Goes through presentation (see slides here)
Steve says research all says 10 minutes per grade max
Marseille: Talks about special circumstances for different kids
Talks about consideration because of extended breaks or holidays
Guthrie: looked at the piece put together by the parents - that was a summary - can someone please tell her where the 10 minutes comes from - was it a controlled study? What drives that recommendation?
Marseille: a variety of methodologies by different researchers; (all from parent research)
DiBonaventura: asks him to explain the 10 minute rule
Marseille: 10 minutes x the grade level - so 6th grade gets 60 minutes; when you exceed that, you see regression in students
Barbados: references Cooper that put together 120 different studies
Guthrie: what were the 120 trials? Were they correlations? Data driven?
Marseille: says someone in the audience might know the answer. Instead or reading each study they looked at researchers who studied this, looked at the major players, read their work
Kugel: refers Guthrie to the references in the back of the report
Marseille: would answer questions at another time
Pliskin: how would you manage this in high school when the teachers aren't in teams
Marseille: that is a major hurdle. At elementary and middle there is much more collaboration; trying to open the communication, looking at teaming at the HS level; trying to model times to allow teacher to collaborate. A long was from adapting the ES MS process, but they are trying to get teachers more time to collaborate.
McGinley: arranging for places for people to post their major assignments; technology allows us to do this, but we need to make ourselves to do this
DiBonaventura: at the high schools - 6 subjects, 20 minutes per subject, would be the time. Should the assignments be 20 minutes? Thinks a lot of teachers would be upset if they were limited to 20 minutes. Difficult to manage across course loads.
Marseille: this is all TBD. We are trying to determine a framework, the conversations will continue.
DiBonaventura: the older the students get, the longer the variation in the length of time it takes a kid to do an assignment. Is it possible to put the onus on the student to monitor the time.
Pliskin: no discussion in the presentation of preparing students for the next level. In college they wont have teams either. We do a great job of study skill preparation. At what point are we getting these kids accustomed to something they will never see again.
Kugel: A lot of our teachers say stop after X amount of time, but there is a feeling in our students that they need to finish. They can feel it is their fault if they don’t finish it. This needs to be incorporated.
Marseille: if we move away from homework, and talk about educational practices. If you understand the student, you will understand the variation between students.
Pliskin: just went on a college tour; every conversation starts with having the most challenging curriculum that your district offers; this is a struggle because there is a tradeoff between the reality of the situation, and the stress. With a tough course schedule, it will be very difficult to keep the homework to 20 minutes a night. The kids will have to look at what they have and figure out how to balance it.
DiBonaventura: Is there a consensus as to the purpose of homework
Barbados: the purpose is to
- Inform instruction
- Broaden experiences - explore individual interests
- Deepen confidence level
McGinley: feedback from parents is that the homework is more random, not always meaningful
Guthrie: do we have guidelines or a cap on how hard their schedule can get? How does that play into the issues regarding homework?
Marseille: there is a lot of examining course loads and figuring out what is needed for college. We do have recommendations, but you are battling expectations from a variety of sources - LMSD, colleges, parents, peers. Peers are most important. Guidance counselors talk about course load and expectations. That conversation happens, but the counselor usually acquiesces to the other forces.
Kugel: hearing that teachers are not posting their homework on the eboards consistently. Wants to give the kids the ability to plan a week in advance.
Marseille: looking at the initial syllabus, looking to see if there are better ways to communicate the syllabus and timelines that go along.
Kugel: but you can know when the papers are going to be due. Kids need to be able to look at a week and see what is coming up. Kids go from week to week, not over semesters. Kids should be able to plan their week so they can do work in advance of a big game.
Public Comment #1
Rules for audience participation:
- Sit down in the front
- 2 minutes to speak
- No give and take
- There are also index cards in the back
Audience: important to teach time management and work management; consider that nothing is important enough to have a weekend or midnight turn in. This communicates the value of life balance and time management.
Audience: confused that this is described as a policy, there is a danger that thinking that there is something to measure. For example the 10 minute rule - do you really want everyone t oget it into their head that there is a 10 minute hard and fast limit. Everything in here is an average. That is really dangerous. In individual classrooms, freedom should not be taken into account
Audience: parents say they are spending a lot of time helping, others that say their kids receive no homework at all. Homework should be discussed as part of the IEP
Audience: issue of overload and AP issues has come up before. A child taking AP classes - supposed to be 1 hr in class, and 1 hr prep. Will spend 65 hours a week. Should the AP student get more credits for the AP course? Then they would have more time for the AP work.
Audience: thank you for taking the issue seriously; no good evidence that shows that homework teaches work ethic; there is also evidence the learning spelling has no effect on literacy; evidence that doing math incorrectly is detrimental
Audience: recommends the book "the homework myth" , why are we giving homework at all? PSSAs are the happiest times. Why not giving homework doing PSSA's? Why not doing that every day of the year. Wants more free time for kids.
Audience: how do you benchmark an assignment? Kids are so individual
DiBonavantura: is there an answer for this?
Marseille: teachers show know their students
Audience: respond to something Lisa said; don't think we have to worry about getting to the next level - kids say college is easier than high school;
Audience: SB should keep looking at the research; former teacher - sees that the time with family is much more important
Audience: teacher at WV - wrote points of view program; does not believe homework is needed - it is a habit for teachers; believes that the teachers will respond ; students are afraid of homework and it deters from them from taking tougher classes.
Audience: counseling program at Penn - lots of college kids that are better at doing than being; open ended activities are a struggle; purpose of education isn't to prepare kids for college, we need to prepare kids for life.
Audience: thanks for race to nowhere and for Ginsberg - called this a high pressure district; this deters creativity and exploration; but we all care about our children. Homework was made their household miserable sometimes, Ginseberg could help with the follow-up
McGinley: there will be follow-ups to these programs as part of the holistic needs of students
Part 2
Marseille: homework has to inform practice; should there be a weight towards the overall grade; differentiating for students;
Kugel: some kids think grades on homework are a good thing - helps some kids
Marseille: teachers are concerned about authenticity - parental involvement, peer work, technology access
DiBonaventura: there are a lot of things that you just cant do in the classroom; we need to be really careful when we talk about grading what kinds of homework we are grading; the piece about challenging students - make sure the kids that are doing well don’t feel punished
Marseille: I was the student that didn't test well, could make it up with other assessments
Guthrie: I learned that homeworks came home graded in backpacks; never gone over with the students - she later learned she was supposed to go over the work - this has to be communicated to parents. Not all parents will have time to go over the homework. Re:late homework,
Barbados: we definitely need to work on the feedback piece
Public comment #2
Audience: all kids are all exceptions; don’t make up rules saddle the teachers
Audience: make the default none, and give the kids extras
Part 3
Kelly: roles of teachers and students - who is the "contract" between - the schools and the students, the parents or the students, or the teacher and the students? This may not be appropriate for the policy
Barbados: at the elementary schools
Guthrie: puzzled why this wouldn't be in the policy
Marseille: [I'm not sure what he says here]
Pliskin: another commenter said the policy was a little "skinny" - need to understand the difference between policy and the administrative regulation. Policy is a grand aspiration and a delegation of authority, the administrative regulations are details.
McGinley: the AR will have something about the parent role.
Pliskin: she agrees that there should be no rules - more parameters and guidelines
DiBonaventura: the things that are in the policy are the things that should not change. There should be a reference in the policy to the roles of the teachers/parents/students. That being said - the parent should stay out of the way
McGinley: but there are cases where the parent should be involved
Pollard: When the rules are defined it will help parents get involved in an appropriate way; understand as a team how that student will be educated to the best of their ability. As we look at homework, we have to be open to all of the situations that are part of the education of the student
Kugel: we need to make everyone in the district aware of the rules they can come up with so we are all working together to obtain student success
Public Comment #3
Audience: the researchers talked about the stress on the family from the homework. Any homework that requires a parent is not good homework. The stress in her house is trying to get her kids to stop doing homework
Audience: if homework is part of the curriculum, then there needs to be an investment in-service for the teachers and for help at home for kids that require help
Audience: not every student has two parents, or parents with college degrees, some kids don’t have the space. Need to make up for the support
Audience: If there were something about what the district expects/hopes the parent will do that will help
Audience: how will we assess teachers? Homework measures the students, how teachers be measured with respect to teachers. If my job were on the line, I would push my students through homework. Make sure this is considered.
Kelly
Shows a cartoon
Next they take all the feedback and create a draft policy and AR
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