Middle School Homework

irvinehomeowner

irvinehomeowner

Well-known member
So I have a couple of friends who have kids in middle school and they say the amount of homework is ridiculous.

They said their kids stay up until midnight sometimes working on it.

They are from TUSD and IUSD. I didn't want to call them out on it... but are their kids slow (they seem pretty smart)? Or is there really that much homework in middle school?

This must be some Common Core thing right? :)
 
Yes, that sounds about right. I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately, too, Iho. I have also been told by our future middle school principal that homework can take basically an ungodly amount of time to complete at night. I think he said to expect like 5 hours, iirc, or something ridiculous like that. He said if it's too much, let the teacher know and they will ease up but to first make sure the child is actually focusing and not wasting time saying they are working when they really are just dawdling. I will say 6th grade has been difficult. We've had a couple nights were my son was up past 11 p.m. I wondered if he was really focusing or not even though he said he was. But then the next day when he came home from school, he reported many other classmates were up that long or even until midnight. Some even just gave up, went to bed, and went to school with incomplete assignments. I was not happy to hear that. I am scared what middle school will bring. He has outstanding grades but it has not been without a lot of work by him and planning & persistence by me. Is your eldest heading into middle school?
 
That has not been our experience-  our child is just finishing 8th grade and averaged about 2 hours of homework each night.  She is a pretty well organized student and we limited the distractions (no texting, TV, etc while doing homework).  She maintained a 4.0 both years.
 
I have a 7th grader.  She does have a good amount of homework, but nothing like staying up until midnight.  I will say that her humanities and world history classes have been the most challenging.  She's in the GATE class and there were a ton of projects. 
 
I just asked my son how many hours of homework did the middle school principal say to expect. He said 2-3 a night. I guess I was off when I said 5 earlier. It must have felt like 5 when he said 2-3. haha. Well, once you add in an after school snack, homework, dinner time, more homework, a shower, and some reading, it becomes a long night. And that's before any real downtime if they want to be a kid and play. I think the hardest times come when the teachers don't take into account what was assigned by all the other teachers. Like some nights for 6th, he'll have pretty light homework. Then they will all assign long assignments on the exact same day and it's the perfect storm. Those are the "up 'til midnight" nights for the kids. It's so frustrating when that happens. Next year, for 7th, the kids will have a lot of REALLY cool electives which are very exciting but at the same time, a bit unpredictable. We'll see.
 
2-3 hours average seems to be right. No, no need to stay up till midnight.
That usually won't happen until junior/senior year of high school unless you are doing some crazy number of ivy-oriented activities.
But I heard some middle school have more homework (e.g. Sierra vista Gate program) than others.
 
I must have went to some bad schools, I never had homework that kept me up until midnight, even in high school... and then I did most of my homework between classes or on the bus.
 
irvinehomeowner said:
I must have went to some bad schools, I never had homework that kept me up until midnight, even in high school... and then I did most of my homework between classes or on the bus.
Click to expand...

I have a feeling its just a ridiculous inflation in the amount of work nowadays. But my concern is, is it just busy-work that kids have to kill themselves slogging through (e.g. the Kumon approach to schooling), or does the HW promote deeper thinking and understanding?
 
Many AP classes will require 2+ hr homework time each block period. So if you have 3 period each day, you will easily spend 5-6 hour in homework/project often.
The other thing is that make sure your kids are actually doing homework not spending too much time chatting with their friends or surfing the web. I feel that internet is the biggest distraction to kids during their homework time.
 
Speaking of AP classes, has anyone heard that NHS is changing the grading point for AP classes? I heard that an A in AP would only get 4 points from now and that the Chinese parents are once again whining.

Dis Gon B Gud.
 
What the hell is going on in schools. 5 hours of homework in middle school. That is absurd. Where are other school activities, etc.  It wasn't that long ago that I went through high school (10-15 years) but I don't know that other then a few random assignments, I ever needed to stay up real late (unless you were studying for tests or something along those lines). 6th grade homework was so easy, it took like 30 minutes. Middle school was easy too...you could just do it in between classes or even during class (not saying that is the preferred approach and I wouldn't want my kids taking my approach but still, totally doable). 

High school you might have some, but normally each classes was about 30 minutes each and it wasn't all due next day so you stager that and you are talking 1-2 hours a night, which to me is the reasonable amount of recurring homework with some longer term projects and tests that might mean you have a few crammed weeks per semester. 

Anything more then that just sounds like absurd and basically not teaching (just pawning off busy work). Even college, although I just studied accounting but did have high GPA, it wasn't bad (in fact it was way easier then anything I did in high school because their was almost no homework, which was great cause I never really did homework much...not my thing). 

I would be beyond pissed if my kids had 5-6 hours of homework a night in 7th grade. I guess one bright side is that gives them less time to do anything stupid. But to me, 1-3 hours, with balance seems reasonable for middle school and high school.
 
I have a little cousin in 8th grade who used to always get good grades. Recently his grades dropped to B/C's and his reason was "I go to an Irvine school, it's harder."  ???
He's noticeably happier now though because he hangs out with friends instead of getting holed up at home doing homework but just thought his comment/excuse was interesting.
 
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