3 ms·

Your personal experience notwithstanding, this is not the broad trend in education. Mileage will vary between states, districts, and even schools, but the big

Your personal experience notwithstanding, this is not the broad trend in education. Mileage will vary between states, districts, and even schools, but the big current trend is towards “standards based grading”. This means grades are based entirely on test, projects, etc. Individual work meant to assess competence. Homework, practice, group projects, class participation, etc count for token credit if at all. This is a huge, recent shift in direction, and probably came after your time in HS. I don’t have data for this, but expect public districts to lag charters, rich districts to lag poor districts (la cañada USD has no incentive to rock the boat), and privates to be the Wild West. But anyway homework has been on the way out for a little while now. This is great! Most homework is worthless.

loa_in_ 3y ago
I would like to point out that US education isn't exactly a paragon of quality compared to other countries, where this approach also (maybe coincidentally) isn't practiced.
whimsicalism 3y ago
> This is a huge, recent shift in direction, and probably came after your time in HS. I am probably younger than you think and 'standards-based' approaches were a big fad at the time. Standards based grading in highschool ("SWBAT"-style) absolutely does not mean grades based entirely on test, projects, etc, and in fact generally translated to heavy weighting towards random classwork worksheets.
com2kid 3y ago
> Most homework is worthless. Math says otherwise, my mastery of math in college came through hours of slogging through problem sets (which the answers are often provided for!) until I understood all the many ways to apply a concept. Prior to college I had skated by w/o doing homework (I understood what was said in class, so why bother?) and it bit me really hard. Understanding what it said during a lecture is one thing, internalizing that knowledge, and knowing how to apply it, means actually putting in the time and effort.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  I agree with this absolutely in college, but the homework doesn't have to be graded :)

loa_in_ 3y ago

I would like to point out that US education isn't exactly a paragon of quality compared to other countries, where this approach also (maybe coincidentally) isn't practiced.

whimsicalism 3y ago

> This is a huge, recent shift in direction, and probably came after your time in HS. I am probably younger than you think and 'standards-based' approaches were a big fad at the time. Standards based grading in highschool ("SWBAT"-style) absolutely does not mean grades based entirely on test, projects, etc, and in fact generally translated to heavy weighting towards random classwork worksheets.

com2kid 3y ago

> Most homework is worthless. Math says otherwise, my mastery of math in college came through hours of slogging through problem sets (which the answers are often provided for!) until I understood all the many ways to apply a concept. Prior to college I had skated by w/o doing homework (I understood what was said in class, so why bother?) and it bit me really hard. Understanding what it said during a lecture is one thing, internalizing that knowledge, and knowing how to apply it, means actually putting in the time and effort.

whimsicalism 3y ago
I agree with this absolutely in college, but the homework doesn't have to be graded :)