Making Homework Central To Learning - Hanover High School Library

MakingHomeworkCentralto LearningIf grading homework sends thewrong signal about its purpose,what can teachers do instead?Cathy VatterottLast year, a Texas high school decided it was nolonger going to grade homework. Students, focusing only on their grades, thought that meant they nolonger needed to do homework. They failed to realizethat neglecting homework might affect how well theydid on their exams. At midterm, many more students thannormal received Ds and Fs on their report cards. Parents were60Educational Leadership / November 2011Vatterott.indd 60upset, and the school was forced to revisit its decision.This cautionary tale reveals two flaws in U.S. schools’ typical practice of grading homework. First, both students andteachers tend to view homework grades as rewards for working rather than as feedback about learning. Second, studentsfail to connect homework to assessments, not realizing thathomework is “practice for the game.”U.S. teachers lead the world in their predilection for grading homework. In a study of educational practices in 50 Christian Jacquet/getty Images10/3/11 8:26 AM

countries, almost 70 percent of U.S.teachers said that they used homeworkassignments to calculate student grades,compared with 20 percent of teachers inCanada, 14 percent in Japan, and 9 percent in Singapore (Baker & LeTendre,2005). It’s worthwhile to ask whetherthe hours spent scoring student homework and calculating it into grades payoff. This study said no; in fact, it founda negative correlation between gradinghomework and increased achievement:Not only did we fail to find any positive relationships, the overall correlations between national average studentachievement and national averages in thefrequency, total amount, and percentageof teachers who used homework in grading are all negative! (pp. 127–128)As schools move toward standardsbased grading, more teachers now viewhomework as formative assessment andchoose not to count it toward students’overall grades (O’Connor, 2009). Yetthe practice is so entrenched that manyteachers and parents are uncomfortablewith not grading homework. Why?Three Reasons Teachers Continue to Grade HomeworkTeachers commonly give several reasonsfor grading homework, most of whichreveal confusion about both homework’s role in learning and what gradesshould represent. Let’s look at threeof these reasons and the questionablefoundations underlying each one. Then,because homework is important, let’sconsider three grounded practices forkeeping homework a central part oflearning.“If I don’t grade it, they won’t do it.”This is a common teacher lament. Manyteachers believe grades cause students todo homework. One could argue that thestory about the Texas school proves thatgrades are an incentive to do homework; I argue that it really shows thatteachers have oversold grades to students as the indicator of a task’s worth.We often say students are addicted togrades, but many teachers and parentsare equally addicted. Teachers equategrading with valuing a task; parents saythat grades reinforce the message that“assignments should be taken seriously,”revealing an attitude that only gradedtasks are worthy of serious effort.But many ungraded tasks are clearlyvalued in U.S. schools. We expectstudents to take notes during lectures,do group work, and participate indiscussions, yet we don’t grade all thesewho don’t do homework. But, like giving points for bringing classroom supplies or selling candy for the fund-raiser,rewarding students for doing homeworkinflates their overall grade so that itdoesn’t truly reflect learning.“Homework grades help studentswho test poorly.”Homework grades also reward students who work hard but, for whateverreason, cannot master assessments.These grades often enable students whoconsistently turn in homework (donecorrectly or not) to receive passingBoth students and teachers view homeworkgrades as rewards for working ratherthan as feedback about learning.actions. They are expectations, just as,in many other countries, completinghomework is an expectation.The belief that the carrot of a gradeentices students to complete work isan illusion, one with roots in behaviorism and a negative view of learners(Vatterott, 2009). At its core, it negatesstudents’ intrinsic drive for mastery(Cushman, 2010; Pink, 2009) andimplies that homework is inherentlydistasteful. As Daniel Pink (2009), putsit, “We’re bribing students into compliance instead of challenging them intoengagement” (p. 174). In addition,grades only motivate students who aremotivated by grades—and some students couldn’t care less.“Hard work should be rewarded.”Closely related—and also behavior istic—is the belief that effort should berewarded and that grades are the way todo so. Grades allow teachers to rewardcompliant students and punish studentsgrades even though they haven’t shownmastery of the content on assessments(Vatterott, 2009).This defense of grading homeworkis particularly troublesome becauseit reveals three problems inherent inthe bigger grading scheme. First, ifgrades are averaged, high scores forhomework completion tend to maskpoor performance on other measures.Second, when homework is counted ina student’s grade, we mix practice andchecking for understanding (formativeassessments) with actual demonstrations of learning (summative assessments) and produce a murky picture ofprogress. Finally, many teachers havea limited view of options for assessinglearning beyond homework and tests. Inworking with schools, I find that manyteachers have little insight into howclassroom assignments can be used asassessments or how to analyze them tocheck whether learning has occurred.In one school that stopped gradingASCD /Vatterott.indd 61w w w . ascd . o r g6110/3/11 8:26 AM

homework, a teacher asked, “What willwe do about retakes now that all gradeswill be tests?”What to Do InsteadWhen justifying why homework shouldbe graded, teachers often say “Buthomework is important.” Yes it is, butbehaviorist solutions such as grades failto validate the most important purposeof homework—to help students reachtheir learning goals. The Texas storytells us that educators have failed tomake the connection for studentsbetween doing homework and reachingparticular learning goals. It’s not abouthomework’s value for the grade, buthomework’s value for learning. It’s notabout the student’s responsibility for atask, but the student’s responsibility forhis or her learning.In schools in which homework isn’tgraded, it is still marked for correctness,and students still receive specific feedback. Students are still responsible forcompleting assignments outside class—and some students still fail to completethem. Such schools use interventionssimilar to those employed by schoolsthat grade homework. Teachers maycall parents, pull students from otherclasses to complete their work, or makeavailable after-school programs in whichstudents can catch up on homework.Even though teachers at Glenn Westlake Middle School in Lombard, Illinois,no longer count homework in students’grades, students still understand thathomework must be done, teachers stilldocument which work has been completed and when, and teachers still givelearners feedback about their homework. Explaining this fact to parentswas a big part of the transition. GlennWestlake’s principal, Phil Wieczorek,met with parent groups several times:The parents had a lot of mis conceptions.We had to explain to them this did notmean there was not going to be62FIGURE 1. Sample Monthly Feedback Form for English 11This form shows a partial list of the assessment tasks one student performedwhile taking English 11 at McNally High School. The middle columns show thestudent’s score on each task, the number of points possible on each task, andthe percent this student got correct. The final column shows the class’s averagescore on each task. These formative tasks count as “0” toward the final grade,but the form gives students an overall picture of their performance. Summativetasks are weighted at the end of term based on teachers’ professional judgment.Classroom ble45Percentcorrect56%Classaverage onthis taskReading comprehension0.0Forrest Gump persuasive0.0Personal response topoetry0.055100%78%Catch Me If You Canliterary exploration0.0192576%66%Persuasive response0.0121580%65%Literary response to text0.0202580%65%Oral presentation0.011.51296%69%1553%57%Summative assessmentsSource: McNally High School, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Used with permission.homework. Homework would stillbe looked at, kept track of, and givenfeedback. It just wasn’t going to beaveraged into the student’s grade.The first draft of Glenn Westlake’snew report card gave students a gradefor their academic work in each subjectand an O, W, or N for homework, participation, and organization in that subject(O indicated often demonstrated skill, Windicated working on development of skill,and N indicated needs improvement). Theschool has now switched to one columnfor the academic grade and one columnlabeled Responsibility for learning, inwhich students receive a 1, 2, or 3. Eachdepartment at each grade level decideswhich learning tasks are included inthe Responsibility for learning section. Insocial studies, for instance, students areevaluated on note taking, number andquality of homework assignments completed, and group projects.If teachers are to move away fromgrading homework, they must take afresh look at the purpose of homework.Three practices, which some pioneering schools are now trying, can helpus move toward a learning-focusedmind-set.Practice 1. Evaluate each assignmentto determine whether to grade it.Schools that still wish to grade somehomework should separate homeworkinto formative and summative assessments. Formative assessments, such asEducational Leadership / November 2011Vatterott.indd 6210/3/11 8:26 AM

practice with math problems, spelling,or vocabulary, should not be factoredinto the overall course grade. Summative assessments, such as researchpapers or portfolios of student work,may be. Many district policies outlinethese differences in their grading andhomework policies, such as this guideline from the Rockwood School Districtin Eureka, Missouri:Homework is an important part of teaching, learning, and parent involvement inthe Rockwood School District. Studentwork should always receive feedback tofurther student learning. Teachers willexclude homework from the course gradeif it was assigned for pre-assessment orearly learning guided practice. Homeworkassigned as a summative assessment maybe included in the course grade based oncurriculum guidelines.It’s not abouthomework’s valuefor the grade, butgrading topics for nine years; it designedthe decision tree because questionscontinually surfaced about how muchhomework should count in a grade.homework’s valuePractice 2. Tie homeworkto assessments.The easiest way to tie homework tofor learning.assessments in students’ minds is toThe Washington-Saratoga-Warrenallow them to use homework assignHamilton-Essex Board of Cooperativements and notes when taking a test.Educational Services, which providesAnother method is to correlate theeducational programs and services toamount of homework completed withschool districts in New York, created atest scores. One teacher does this by“Homework Decision Tree” (availablewriting two numbers at the top of eachat www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/test or quiz—the student’s test scoreed lead/el 201111 Vatterott Flowchart and the student’s number of missing.pdf) to help teachers decide whichhomework assignments. This not onlyhomework to grade. This group hashelps the students see the connecassisted districts with assessment andtion, but also shows the teacher whichASCD /Vatterott.indd 63w w w . ascd . o r g6310/3/11 8:26 AM