Schools

LAUSD Flunks New Homework Policy

The suspended policy would have limited teachers to weighting homework as no greater than 10 percent of a student's grade.

Three months after it was passed, the Los Angeles Unified School District has suspended a new homework policy that limited teachers to giving homework no greater than a 10-percent weight in students' grades.

In a May 20 bulletin that announced its passage, Chief Academic Officer Judy Elliott said that the policy was intended to align the weighting of homework with the district's move toward standards-based reporting.

"Studies have shown that by limiting the weight of homework towards a student’s academic grade, a truer picture of the student’s knowledge will be reflected in the achievement grade," Elliott wrote.

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The bulletin continues: "Varying degrees of access to academic support at home, for whatever reason, should not penalize a student so severely that it prevents the student from passing a class nor should it inflate the grade. Because of the formative or practice nature of homework, it is now LAUSD’s policy to limit its weighting in a student’s academic grade. No more than 10 percent can count towards a student’s academic grade."

However, in officially announcing today that the policy would be suspended, new Superintendent John Deasy said that, while well-intentioned, the homework weighting restrictions were not sufficiently vetted by parents, teachers and board members.

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In an official release, Deasy said the policy would be revised through a more public process under new Deputy Superintendent of Instruction Jaime Aquino, with a tentative deadline for a new draft policy set for the first of the year. 


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