In late June, a team of
nine educators and three parent/guardians, representing all of the elementary
schools in Amherst and Pelham, spent three mornings together drafting a
document intended to ensure that homework is aligned with best practices and
research and is consistent both across our schools and between grade levels.
The work was contextualized with an ongoing conversation about the role of
homework in our schools that began last winter. This Homework Inquiry Group
reviewed research about elementary-level homework and shared their experiences to
ensure that both scientific and experiential data sources contributed to the
draft report, which can be viewed at https://goo.gl/wLkxfW
(English) and https://goo.gl/aHWca3
(Spanish).
The resulting report
identifies the purposes of homework, the grade-level expectations, and the
responsibilities of different stakeholders. This draft report will undergo a
few rounds of feedback from different stakeholder groups. To offer feedback, please click on this link. We also plan to have a feedback session next month.
Once feedback has been collected and considered, the homework policy will be
finalized and an implementation date will be set to begin by January 2018.
