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How Much Homework Is Too Much?

STUDIO CITY (CBS) — How much homework is too much? Parents and teachers have been arguing this subject for years, but Thursday night at a meeting of the LA Unified School District in Studio City, officials got an earful.

LAUSD is considering a new homework plan and it's already got its detractors.

Suraya Fadel, reporting for CBS2 and KCAL9, attended the meeting.

Administrators and teachers argued that a lot of homework is essential for learning and for teaching student's discipline and success.

Parents, meanwhile, told Fadel that so much homework is wrecking family life at home. And they said homework needs to be more fair.

Franklin Newby, a 14-year-old student, told Fadel that it wasn't just the homework -- "it's the projects that get stacked up on each other...and it's all the homework that gets stacked up on top of that. It all adds up. It's like there is no time to do anything else."

Parent Sheri Derohanian sympathizes with her twins. "They do their best to get their homework done," she says. "But at 6:30, when I go to pick them up, they're tired, they're hungry. And they have to be in bed by 8:00 p.m., so there isn't a lot of time for me to spend quality time with them."

Gail Murray concurs. "It really has diminished our family time. Our children don't participate in sports. They spend every single day -- they get up, they go to school, they come home, they sit and do hours and hours of homework."

Sixth grade teacher Sandra Desimone believes the added homework is essential for kids to maintain what they have learned during the day.

Tonight's meeting discussed potential new guidelines and the suggestion that there now be maximum homework hours established for various grades.

For elementary schools, the max would be between 10-50 minutes per day.

Sixth through eighth grade would see a 15-30 minute maximum, per course.

And, at the high school level the max would be approximately 40 minutes per subject.

Sixth grade teacher Rosie Vanzy says that still works out in many cases to 240 minutes a night of homework."It's still a lot less."

Fadel says the district wants to hear from more parents and teachers before they move ahead or implement any new homework policy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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