By Maysen Marolda
Staff Writer
Ed Council, a committee of selected administrators, created a wellness document which entails improvements that will ideally reduce student workload, including a new homework policy. Despite its positive intentions to reduce stress for students, this new policy has flaws that cause students to be less prepared for the future.
Ed Council organized a committee to look at areas relevant to student workload. They then assembled a subcommittee of Ed Council members to look at some of these issues; specifically homework policy, workload, electronic policy and extra and co-curricular activities.
According to Costa Principal Dr. Ben Dale, the purpose of a homework policy is to make sure all teachers have a standardized definition of homework, as it it is important for the school and staff to make sure it is issued for the right reasons. By making sure all teachers are on the same page in regards to homework and to ensure one teacher does not give redundant amounts, student’s can have a balanced amount in each class.
According to the wellness document, homework is defined as an individual assignment that is graded and counted in the homework percentage of a student’s final grade. It is normally required to be turned in the following day or the following few days. Although, work such as such as writing papers, completing projects and creating presentations will not be considered homework in the new policies. Papers, projects and presentations are often easy points to raise a students grade, so now they will not be able to contribute to the homework percentage,
As stated by Dale, new rules for the electronic policy state that all teachers must use the same class website to prevent students from having multiple accounts and passwords. By using one website for all students at Costa, if the website were to crash, no one would be able to access their homework, creating chaos and confusion in regards to whether or not to do an assignment.
One component of the document is that teachers will no longer be allowed to make homework due on Monday’s, in order to create “homework free weekends,” and to eliminate busywork that is usually given over the weekends. However, teachers will still be allowed to assign homework due Tuesdays, so the policy is defeated. This is detrimental to students as they will be given more homework on Fridays to complete throughout the weekend and Monday.
Another aspect of the homework policy is that homework will not count for more than 25 percent of a student’s grade, and homework percentages will not vary by more than 5 percent in like courses. For students who have teachers who give rigorous tests, the homework category often provides the opportunity for more points to boost to their grade. However, now the homework percentage will only represent a slim margin of students grades, causing the tests to have a bigger impact on their final grade.
Narrowing the disparities between different teachers counting homework as different percentages, condensing how much the homework can count and enforcing “homework free weekends” will help lower student anxiety levels. Even though homework would not be completely eliminated, it would be administered in a convenient way that would decrease the amount of stress that comes with too much homework and not enough time.
In college, professors often assign homework over the weekends, so not assigning homework over the weekends would not prepare students for the rigor of college. Students should be exposed to college expectations and learn how to manage their time over the weekends in order to develop necessary time management and planning skills.
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