The Lunbecks and Schwarzes live at opposite ends of the same block, but they're on the same page when it comes to homework.
"All I do know is," says Axel Lunbeck, "compared to my brother and sister, I get a lot less homework."
Axel, 11, is a fifth-grader at Ensign Elementary School. His brother John, 14, is a freshman at West High School. Sister Emma, 16, is a senior at West. The "h" word makes for one quiet house most weeknights.
It's the same down the street for 6-year-old John Schwarz, who averages less than a half-hour of homework a night in first grade at Our Lady of Lourdes. But older sister Maria, 11, who also attends Lourdes, will sometimes spend four hours after school on homework.
"Some nights it's overwhelming," says her dad, Marty Schwarz.
As children in both families get older, the more homework — or, sometimes, "busy work" — they report having. Studies support their claims that homework increases exponentially over the elementary and high school years.
It cuts into social time with friends and family. It cramps extracurricular activities. It causes stress.
But in the next breath, these same students say it forces them to be better organized. And admittedly, like having a favorite subject, there are some kinds of homework they actually enjoy doing.
Still, it's not often you hear, "Teachers don't assign enough homework."
So, when do teachers assign too much homework — or do they? How much is too much?
Serves a purpose
Yes, despite what some children or parents may think, there is value in homework.
According to an Education World article, homework helps students to:
Review and practice what they learn;
Prepare for class;
Learn how to use libraries and reference materials;
Put more time into learning about a particular subject.
But too much homework equals no time to be a kid, some would argue. The latest research, though, says students in this country have it easy compared to other countries.
The Brookings Institution in Washington, RAND Corp. and Brown Center on Education Policy analyzed data that shows, out of 20 countries, U.S. students had one of the lightest homework loads. Students in France, Italy, Russia and South Africa report spending twice as much time on homework as those in the United States, according to the Third International Math and Science Study.
And a 1999 survey by the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that a clear majority of children aged 9, 13 and 17 reported having less than an hour of homework each night.
Getting too much homework, Brown Center director Tom Loveless reports in a Brookings press release, is not a common problem.
Setting guidelines
So, how do education experts decide what's right?
The National PTA and National Education Association have guidelines on the amount of homework to be expected at various levels of education.
Both agencies recommend 10 minutes of homework per night, per grade. Second grade — 20 minutes per night. Eighth grade — 80 minutes. Senior — two hours a night.
More surveys show those numbers keep going up as the decades progress — parents who were students in the 1980s had less homework than their children have now.
"I don't think I had that much," recalls Beth Ann Schwarz. The same goes for husband Marty.
But not too many parents are complaining.
A national survey taken in 2000 by the nonprofit group Public Agenda showed 64 percent of parents said their child was getting the "right amount" of homework. Twenty five percent said "too little" and only 10 percent said "too much."
Still open to debate is just how much impact homework has on achievement levels and standardized test scores.
Yet the Lunbeck and Schwarz kids are there every night, ploughing through assignments.
From the front lines
John Lunbeck procrastinates when it comes to homework. It's often a distraction or obstacle in the way of doing what he loves.
John reads on average about two books a week, just for fun. He also has his own Web site where he posts movies he makes.
There's no TV in the Lunbeck house and — except for not seeing "The Simpsons" — the three siblings don't miss it one bit. They prefer books. Emma, who is applying to colleges like Yale and Columbia, has a 3.9 grade point average, and her brothers are A/B students.
John says math homework can become repetitive, doing the same problems over and over. "And we really don't need to do that," he says, squinting through glasses.
Emma rolls her eyes about busy work, time-consuming stuff so easy she says it could be done in her sleep.
"It is excessive," she says.
And the consequence?
Axel pipes in, "She doesn't have a family life."
Emma nods in agreement. Sometimes there's so much homework, it doesn't all get her best effort — there's just not enough time.
The plus, says her mother, Julia Reid, is that a lot of homework tends to get parents involved in their child's education. "Is that a bad thing? I don't think so."
But she has seen her kids in tears over the amount of homework they get. "It really makes me sad." She quickly adds, "actually, angry."
The Schwarzes are a two-parent household where Marty helps out with math and Beth Ann assists with language arts. But Marty knows it must be harder for single parents with more than one child in school — inevitably, one child will get more attention than the other.
"It's a full-time job for both of us, sometimes," he says.
Daughter Maria takes it all in stride, though. "I just try hard," she says. And she usually gets all A's.
One solution to avoid those four-hour homework nights, Marty Schwarz suggests, would be for teachers to somehow coordinate with one another so a big project in one class doesn't conflict with a different class's workload.
Up to teachers
The State Office of Education stays out of the homework debate. There is no policy or guidelines.
"It's something that ought to be considered at the school level," says Superintendent Steven Laing.
And so it is.
Scott Crump, a social studies teacher at Bingham High School in South Jordan, was just named the 2003 Utah Teacher of the Year. He certainly didn't get the honor for being soft on homework.
"I just think it's a vital component of any educational process," he says. "I just could not teach what I do without having homework."
Crump ranks himself close to the top in terms of the amount of homework he assigns.
Crump's regular classes get one-half hour to an hour of homework per week, honors classes get about two hours a week and advanced-placement classes are assigned about three hours each week. That's just for one class.
Students tell Crump, "Your class is so hard, you expect so much homework." His response is, "They're raising themselves to the level they need to be in." And by the end of the year, many students say they learned the most in his class because they were challenged the most.
Crump says that coordinating among teachers to avoid homework logjams would be nearly impossible. He solves that problem by giving students their schedule of homework and project assignments weeks or months in advance.
"It works for me," he says. "It might work for other teachers — I would suggest that."
But he also sympathizes with students.
"One of the problems with homework is that students nowadays are working longer hours and doing so many things that sometimes homework isn't done as well as it should be," he says. "Kids now have jobs, they're so busy with extracurricular activities — if they're going to be successful in today's life, they need to have a lot of organizational skills."
If students and their parents feel homework is excessive, says Utah PTA president JoAnn Neilson, they need to approach teachers on an individual basis.
"Sometimes, what is too much homework for one student is not too much for another," she says. "Children are just so different."
Even some school districts steer clear of issuing any policy or guidelines on homework.
Salt Lake City District spokesman Jason Olsen said schools in his district govern themselves on the subject of homework. His own personal philosophy? "If it's just busy work, then don't assign it."
So, it comes down to the teacher.
Elaine Tzourtzouklis, a former teacher and now president of the Salt Lake Teachers Association, says she used to adjust homework amounts to individual student ability and that teachers commonly practice that approach today. "They're looking to do what's best for the kid."
E-MAIL: sspeckman@desnews.com