Brooklyn Technical HS Parent Association (Brooklyn Tech PA, fka PTA)

Homework

At the Thu, Dec 13, 2018 PA meeting, Mrs. Nottingham gave an informal overview of Tech's homework policy:

There have been media stories recently about schools reducing or eliminating homework. Tech is not considering eliminating homework. Homework is necessary at a high-performing school.

Tech's guideline is that a high school-level class should not regularly have more than 30 minutes of homework per night.

This guideline is per class, e.g. if a student has homework in four classes, that could be two hours of homework. The guideline is to be interpreted reasonably. If a student occasionally takes, say, 35 minutes to complete the homework in a class, that's OK.

Medium- to long-term projects are meant to be done over multiple days and therefore can be more than 30 minutes in a night if a student does a lot of the project in one night.

If a parent observes their student regularly spending more than 30 minutes per night on a class, the parent can speak to the teacher or Mrs. Nottingham. Please be specific when describing the situation to Mrs. Nottingham, including giving the name of the teacher. Mrs. Nottingham will not reveal your or your student's name when discussing with the teacher.

Before raising an issue, please be sure that the student is actually spending more than 30 uninterrupted minutes on homework. For example, a student doing homework with his phone next to him could easily take two hours to complete an assignment that would take 30 minutes otherwise. Don't be fooled -- most assignments do not require students to communicate continuously with classmates! [Historical note: Students were indeed able to do their homework before cellphones were invented.]