Elementary School Abolishes Homework Assignments

Gaithersburg Elementary School [Maryland] has abolished homework. Instead, students are being asked to read a book for about 30 minutes a night.

When Stephanie Brant came aboard as principal two years ago, she and her staff conducted a review of homework assignments.

“We really started evaluating the work that we sent students home with,” explained Principal Brant. “We started looking, and really, it was a lot of worksheets. And the worksheets didn’t match what we were doing instructionally in the classroom. It was just: we were giving students something because we felt we had to give them something.”

So, Brant got permission from the school district to implement a radical experiment: the only homework assigned here is reading.

Fifth grader Ann Urrutia got regular homework here as a second-grader; then it went away. We asked her if she misses doing those math problems at home.

“We do [the math problems] in school,” she explained.