Word: ills
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...over homework is about even larger issues. Schools in the 1990s are expected to fill so many roles--and do so with often paltry resources and ill-qualified teachers--that it's no surprise more work gets sent home. For baby-boomer parents homework has become both a status gauge--the nightly load indicates the toughness of their child's school--and an outlet for nervy overbearance, so that each homework assignment is practically theirs to complete too. Yet the growth in dual-income families means less energy and shorter fuses for assisting the kids. And all the swirling arguments...
...middle-class Americans to keep their children at the head of the class has never been more intense. The teachers who assign mountains of homework often believe they are bowing to the wishes of demanding parents. Says Jeana Considine, a fifth-grade teacher at Elm Elementary School in Hinsdale, Ill.: "The same parents who are complaining that they don't have enough family time would be really upset if their child didn't score well." Pepperdine University president David Davenport, father of a fourth-grader who clocks two hours of homework a night, sees a chain reaction: "The pressure...
...hard to blame parents like Alexis Rasley of Oak Park, Ill., if they occasionally get too involved. Last fall a homework assignment for fifth-graders at the public Horace Mann School was to build a mini-space station that accounted for food, water, waste treatment, radiation shielding and zero gravity. Rasley's son Taylor, 10, spent countless maddening hours toiling at a basement countertop surrounded by cut-open soda bottles. "He just kept sitting there saying, 'I don't know what to do,'" Rasley says. "When the frustration level gets that high, you say, 'O.K., I'm going to help...
...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 from some teachers and too little from others. So a committee of teachers, parents and administrators spent several months devising a formal policy that requires "meaningful and purposeful" homework at all grade levels but limits the load according...
...academic. They want to get their kids over the potty hump with as little disruption as possible. And despite Rosemond's contention that they're going about it all wrong, his "back-to-grandma" movement hasn't yet attracted much support. Says Becky Tamblyn Pence of Crystal Lake, Ill., mother of Emily, 5, and Michael, 3: "There are so many things to fight about just to get through the day. At least let them have control over this...