Homework: Just another excuse not to clean your room

MetLife released the results of a survey of teachers, parents and students this week, "The Homework Experience" (warning: 207 pages of pdf). It's part of The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher series.

Some of the results are very interesting; for example, 30% of secondary students describe homework as 'busywork'-- compared to a whopping 74% of such students who said that in 2002. (What's going on with that?!)

But I can't figure out what the practical application of this survey is supposed to be.

Will teachers (24% of whom think the quality of their schools' homework is 'excellent') care that 33% of parents think their child's school gives only 'fair' or 'poor' quality homework? Should they care? What is quality homework?

91% of teachers say that 'doing homework helps students learn more in school'; 86% give homework to 'help students practice skills or prepare for tests.' So you do homework to pass tests... does that mean you've learned more? (I can't pass up a link to an enormously intriguing book on this subject: Alfie Kohn's "The Homework Myth.")

Separately, a small group of teachers and school administrators discussed challenges related to creating, assigning and evaluating homework, and its relationship to the bigger picture of education. Chapter 6 of the survey's report summarizes their discussion and offers some hope of application. One of their main conclusions was that homework should be 'relevant to the day's lessons." Wheeee!

I'm married to a teacher, so I'm sympathetic to the problems teachers face: no homework assignment will be perfectly relevant for every child in a classroom, but who has time to create (and then assess the results of) 2, 3, 10, 50 different assignments for the same concept? And who wants to deal with explaining to 100 students (and their parents) why Tina got a longer assignment than Tony, while Tito didn't get any assignment at all?

If I had easy answers, I'd quit my job and run for the School Board (...er, on second thought: no.) I don't think "The Homework Experience" survey has any easy or astonishing answers, but it is certainly good food for thought for anyone interested in education.