Reply #34: Well, increasing homework won't necessarily increase test scores. [View All]

Unless the district is focusing on rote learning, which in the end won't exactly help. I assume that the testing standards are somewhat uniform across the country - in 4th grade, the kids take a writing assessment. Rote learning won't help. Truly, it won't even help pound in much in the way of math (other than, say, multiplication tables).

It just seems like they're going about it wrong. Probably tied to funding, though. Our district is heavily funded by private money so we can have small class sizes and all of the extras. The net result is that we have a fairly long (comparative to other districts) school day in which the kids can learn at a reasonable pace. Often times, my kids bring home two pieces of homework which takes all of ten minutes total.

If I were you, I'd get a bit pissy with the school. Is there no danger to your child being held back? Is he/she getting the material but is finding that he/she has to spend way too much time filling out worksheets at home? If so, then I'd simply say something along the lines of...sorry, my kid has this concept. We spent 10 minutes on parts of it to make sure he/she has the concepts down. We view the rest as just busy work, and our family time isn't going to be interrupted for busy work.