Word: coopered
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...argues that the amount of homework is a better indicator of how students perform than the size of class or the quality of teachers. But his study was limited to students in junior high and high school. What about younger children? In 1989 University of Missouri psychology professor Harris Cooper reviewed more than 100 studies on homework and concluded that while benefits from homework can be measured starting in junior high, the effect of home assignments on standardized test scores in the lower grades is negligible or nonexistent. "Piling on massive amounts of homework will not lead to gains," Cooper...
...with hours of homework is pointless and probably damaging to their self-esteem and desire to learn. But in reasonable amounts, homework has value for students at all grade levels. "Homework has benefits that go well beyond its immediate direct impact on what's going on in school," says Cooper. Doing homework is important for honing organizational skills, learning how to manage time and developing the ability to learn autonomously...
...question of the day, of course, is what is the right amount? Cooper recommends 10 to 20 min. nightly in first grade and an increase of 10 min. a night for each grade after that. But the point is not simply to fill up a set amount of time. For preoccupied teachers, admits Michelann Ortloff, a Portland school official and former elementary school teacher, "it's always easy to pull a few things out of the workbook, give them to students and say, 'This is your homework.'" Too many teachers send kids home with mind-numbing math worksheets that...
...American parents should worry less about the precise number of minutes their students devote to homework and more about the uneven and poorly conceived way in which it is assigned. "What defines the homework problem in the U.S. today is variation," Cooper says. Less than one-third of U.S. school districts provide any guidelines to parents and teachers on how much homework children should receive and what purpose it's supposed to serve. In places that have instituted formal homework policies, a semblance of sanity has arrived. In Hinsdale, Ill., parents often complained that their children got too much homework...
...think there was an emphasis [at those meetings] that we don't need to be writing them, which could be interpreted as discouragement," says L. Andrew Cooper '99, who is writing a thesis on literary theory. "I think that they are discouraging people from feeling like they have to write a thesis, but not discouraging people from writing...