The Case Against Homework How Homework Is Hurting Children and What Parents Can Do About It

What if everything you thought you knew about homework turned out to be wrong? The Case Against Homework draws on the latest educational research to reveal that there is almost no evidence that homework helps elementary school students achieve academic success, and little evidence that it helps older students. Yet the nightly burden takes a serious toll on America's families, robbing children of the sleep, play, and exercise they need and turning learning into drudgery. Now this book gives you the tools and tactics you need to restore balance in your child's life. You'll find out: Which assignments advance learning and which are time-wasters, How to set priorities when your child comes home with an overstuffed backpack, How to talk and write to teachers in persuasive, nonconfrontational ways, How to organize other parents to improve the homework situation at your child's school, How to persuade school administrators to revisit their homework policies. With the step-by-step methods in this groundbreaking book, you'll be able to stop acting as "homework cop" and your child will once again have time to explore, think, and dream. Book jacket.

Sara Bennett is a criminal defense appeals attorney and was the first director of the Wrongful Convictions Project of New York City’s Legal Aid Society. She is an expert in the post-conviction representation of battered women and the wrongly convicted, and lectures widely. Sara and her cases have been featured in the New York Times and on 60 Minutes II, Dateline NBC, and the Today show. She successfully challenged and changed homework policies at her children’s schools. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Nancy Kalish is a former senior editor at Child and columnist for Redbook, Working Mother, and Selecciones. She writes often for Parenting, Parents, Real Simple, Reader’s Digest, More, Ladies’ Home Journal, Health, Prevention, and other magazines. While writing this book, Nancy put several of the strategies to work for her own daughter, always with positive results. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.


From the Hardcover edition.