Moms with older, school-age children, please weigh in... How much homework do you think is resonable for a 9 year old?

How about for a kid in middle school?

What about in high school?

In general, I mean -- each kid and each school and each subject is different, of course... but is two hours resonable? An hour? More? Less?

Okay, can I chime in even though I don't have school-age children? I think it should be less than an hour and none over the weekends. Piling on the homework when I was in school just made me hate the work, the school and the teachers. Shouldn't kids be able to relax or pursue other interests after school? Would love to know what other moms think about this issue.

My 9 year old is a GATE student and generally has about an hour's worth of homework per night. I wish it could be less, but my DH is a teacher and he explains that with the increasingly competitive world, our teachers must cram more and more work into their already short days.

My Kindergardener has about an hour of homework per week. I don't EVER remember having homework in Kindy!!!!

I would like to see the school day extended a bit to accomodate for the increased learning needs. I think mine may be an unpopular opinion, but seriously, I'd rather have my kids in school for an extra hour (I'm at work anyway) and have them learning a little more or working on special projects then having to spend "family" time working on school work.

Karla - i totally agree! my little one isnt in school yet (just daycare, no homework there yet thank goodness!) but i am not looking forward to homework! i also think year-round school would help with this since you dont lose so much over the summer...

Lylah - to actually answer your question

i think 1-2 hours is pretty typical for highschool on average. i think some of the time it takes depends on the kids. i used to get mine done as soon as i got home so i could get it out of the way! my sister would dwaddle around and often not finish because she just didnt like it or the control that someone else had for 'making' her do it! lol

Okay, well I am going to weigh in here since I teach school part-time. I think elementary should never have more than about 1 hour. Middle and upper school, my school really shoots for no more than 2 hours. Here is what I see though, I work very hard to allow some amount of time 10-15 minutes for students to start on their homework while in class with me so that I can answer questions. There are those students who do not use their time wisely. These students usually have the parents who are complaining about homework load because the student goofed off when they could have been working at school. Also, high school will depend on how many AP classes a student is taking. Well, that is my two cents.
Debra
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