Homework is receiving a lot of attention these days. Are kids getting too much? Is there value in piling it on? From New Jersey to Florida questions fly as fast as the assignments.

By SARAH WHEATON

Is Utopia actually Piscataway, N.J., of all places?

The school board there is one of several around the country that has responded to parents' concerns over their children having too much homework. The board limited weeknight assignments to 30 minutes in elementary school and 75 minutes to two hours in middle and high schools.

The idea is that with a smaller homework burden, students will have more time to participate in sports, take music lessons and just enjoy their childhood in general. In addition, the board encouraged teachers not to assign work over the weekends, and initially they could not grade homework or use it as punishment.

Are you turning green yet? Well, don't be too envious. This paradise is not actually reality. Twelve-year-old Susan Maisack is in the seventh grade at Theodore Schor Middle School in Piscataway. In a telephone interview, she said she still does the exact same amount of homework as last year, which was about two to four hours a night. Susan says she still has "too much" homework and it cuts into her social time.

"When my friends call, I can only speak to them for . . . five minutes," she complained. Yet Susan, who aspires to attend either Yale or Harvard and become a globetrotting veterinarian, admits she thinks homework is more important than playing outside and talking to friends. She believes that homework "helps you understand," and she does all of her assignments and even did so when the teachers did not grade them.

Since the initial school board ruling in Piscataway, the rules have been changed again, due to more parental input. After a meeting a few weeks ago, homework now counts as 10 percent of a student's grade instead of not at all. Susan's mother, Debbie Maisack, is a substitute teacher who says she is glad the school board revised the policy.

Before the recent revisions, Mrs. Maisack explained, "If [students] did not do the work, they could get away with it."

The situation in Piscataway is a reflection of the heightened national scrutiny homework has received lately. Are teachers assigning too much? Is it of any value? Are students losing out on important extracurricular opportunities? Who should be calling the shots? Educators argue all sides of the issue.

Dr. Ralph Cline, coordinator of the International Baccalaureate program at Palm Harbor University High School, says, "No school board should make such a decision (like the one in New Jersey). They might be right in their ideas about homework, they may not be. Educational research is inexact at best."

IB programs are notorious for a heavy workload of home assignments and studying. Although Cline concedes that "none of us have any real fact" regarding the value of homework, he says, "Meaningful homework is a great way to learn."

Ideally, he explains, homework should prepare students for thought processes they will have to go through before the material is presented in class, and force them to remember or apply the material afterwards. He cites the role of short-term recall in cementing facts in the memory. A student's "academic career is her first priority" over extracurricular activities, Cline said.

Around the corner, Center Academy in Palm Harbor operates on a completely different philosophy. Teachers at the private school, which caters to the needs of children with attention deficit disorder, assign essentially no homework. Mrs. Holly Wilson, principal of Center Academy, says that even for students without ADD, in most cases, homework is "redundant. It's meaningless; there's no purpose to it." As a parent, she says, she sees homework make adolescents frustrated, creating "just another battle." Homework made her son hate school, Wilson recounts, and he was doing pointless assignments instead of reading books or playing the drums.

"There needs to be a balance," Wilson says. She pointed out that adults' lives have many focuses, from work to social and even parental. Similarly, for kids, "Life is not all just schoolwork. Life is not all fun and games as well."

Yet, regardless of whether homework really is worthwhile, Cline believes it is here to stay. "It is as traditional as the school bell, and many people would feel cheated without it."

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Sarah Wheaton, 17, is in the 11th grade at Palm Harbor University High School.

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