By Cindy J. Roth
A Herald study distributed by the Malverne School District in its fifth- and 10th-grade classes Oct. 21-23 found that students spend on average zero to two hours a night doing homework and reported that they are tested fairly.
The 10-question study asked students to report how much time they spend during the week and on weekends doing homework; which subjects involved the most homework nightly and weekly; how many hours a week they receive extra help with homework from a parent or teacher; the rate at which new material is introduced in the classroom; how often they're tested, and the challenge the material taught in class provides.
The East Rockaway and Lynbrook school districts declined to participate in the survey.
Anthony Pecorale, Malverne interim superintendent since October, said he wasn't surprised with the survey results. Both fifth- and 10th-grade students reported that new material is introduced at a fair pace and that it's of average challenge. The survey results also showed that students have more homework on weekdays than on weekends.
"The student answers are on track with what I thought they should be," said Pecorale. "Teachers try not to overload kids with homework on weekends. Kids still need time to take care of kid things, especially with all the activities they do and family obligations."
Pecorale was shocked by one survey result, however. Students in both grades said social studies was the subject in which they were given the most homework both nightly and monthly. Of the 115 10th-graders surveyed, 34 percent said they were given the most homework in history. Science ranked second, with 32 percent of the vote for nightly homework and 30 percent for monthly homework.
Thirty-five percent of the 111 fifth-graders surveyed said they were given the most nightly homework in social studies, and 33 percent said that applied to monthly homework as well. For fifth-graders, English came in second place in both homework categories, at 32 and 30 percent, respectively.
"The biggest surprise was that history gets the most homework," said Pecorale. "Over the years it has always been math first, and second on its heels is foreign language."
Marcia Murray, district social studies department chairwoman, said she wasn't surprised with those results. She said social studies is very much an intensified subject, and students need the homework to reinforce what they learn in class. Also, with the new Regents requirement that students pass two social studies exams to graduate and the statewide fifth-grade social studies test, added emphasis has been put on the subject.
"Students are required to write more and know more with the Regents exams," said Murray. "They have to interpret maps, cartoons, graphs and charts. It's more document-based understanding."
Murray also said that current events have played a large role in what students are learning in the classroom. "So much is taking place in the world that we want them to be apprised of," she said.
Homework quality vs. quantity
Like higher education, where guidelines for the amount of work students should be doing outside class vary from college to college, on the elementary and secondary levels homework is strictly a local decision.
"Instructional issues are reserved for school districts," said Bill Hirschen, spokesman for the New York State Education Department. "We don't interfere at that level."
Maureen Mabeta, elementary education professor in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Hofstra, said homework should augment work done in school. On average, Mabeta said, in grades K through 2 students should be given 10 to 20 minutes of homework a night, increasing to about a half-hour in third grade, an hour or so in middle school and up to three hours a night in high school.
"Sometimes it's practice homework," Mabeta said. "The better assignments are extensions of what happens in school."
Alan Singer, professor of secondary social studies education at Hofstra's Curriculum and Teaching department, explained that it's impossible to say exactly how much homework children should be doing each night. Instead, he said, homework should just make sense. Some subjects will require more, others less depending on applicability and necessity.
"Dumping work on kids by a time schedule for most kids just ensures they won't do it," said Singer.
Malverne High School PTA President Patrice Martinez said giving 10 minutes of homework per subject, or about an hour and a half of work a night, is enough. For kids involved in a lot of extra-curricular activities, any more than that can become unbearable.
Mary Dalia, a parent of a 10th-grader, agrees with Singer that the focus should be on quality homework assignments, not quantity.
"If homework is given just to do homework, it's insanity," said Dalia. "It has to serve the right purpose, and I'm not sure it does all the time. If teachers do a good job during the day, I don't care if they give 10 minutes of homework a day. I think it's a matter of content, not time."
Whose homework is it, anyway?
In a September episode of the TV show "Everybody Loves Raymond," Ray Barone joked with other parents at a back-to-school night about how much homework "he" has in the fifth grade. Ray debated with some other fathers which of "their" dioramas was the best. While the approach was a humorous one, it brought to light the question of how much parents should help with their children's homework.
"Parents do want to participate in the learning process, and homework allows that," said Mabeta. "The problem is when kids become dependent on parent participation. [Students] need support from parents, not to be pushed."
Parents' involvement in homework is more of an issue at the elementary and middle-school levels than in high school. Karen Hamburger, Malverne's Howard T. Herber Middle School PTA president, who has twins in fifth grade, said she finds parents are often too involved with their children's homework. Hamburger's philosophy is to guide her children. She isn't afraid to send them to school with incomplete homework because, she said, teachers need to know when students need help.
"If [children are] having trouble, teachers should help them," Hamburger said.
Debbie Stahl and Karen Henry, both parents of fifth-graders at Herber, said it's very hard for them to refrain from helping their children with homework. Henry said she often has to remind herself that she isn't in school anymore. Also, letting her son get a grade a little lower than she would have liked -- or helped him to get -- teaches him that he has to work harder.
One of the reasons parents have such a hard time letting their children hand in work that they haven't perfected for them is that student performance reflects on parent involvement, said Stahl.
"It's hard to step back," Hamburger agreed, "but when they get to this age, we need to."
Is overtesting just a parental issue?
"With tests, it's just regurgitating information," said Henry. "The job of learning is gone."
The survey results showed that 63 percent of 10th-graders and 53 percent of fifth-graders reported that they thought they were tested a fair amount, and 23 percent and 26 percent of those respective grades responded that they're tested a little too much.
Parents, however, continue to say that testing takes away from their children's education.
"I things [state education] Commissioner [Richard] Mills went overboard with testing," said Hamburger. "They're not learning, just learning how to take a test."
Another concern of parents is that in the younger grades, students aren't emotionally prepared to handle the stress put on them to get good marks on the state exams.
"Kids are nervous for state tests because so much emphasis is put on state testing," said Stahl.
"Testing is a problem," said Hamburger. "Fourth- and fifth-graders aren't ready for them, and not even eighth- graders."
Because state test results are reported in area newspapers, they're used as benchmarks for measuring school- district quality, which in turn affects property values. Since the tests have so much meaning beyond determining how well students are learning, more pressure builds each year, which some say only detracts from the learning process.
"Teachers in New York state have a lot of pressure to prepare kids for state exams," said Singer. "It interferes with the ability to present exciting curriculum."
