Jul. 31, 2000
The beach is a mile away, the July sun is shining. But at Beacon Day School in Oakland, Calif., it's the 212th day of classes (only 28 to go before the one-week summer break!), and a group of nine- and ten-year-olds is struggling through a spelling test on parts of the body--lungs, heart, stomach, brain. The afternoon math lesson isn't any easier: How many times does 6 go into 8,342? You might think these were 18th century Puritans. But the kids are all smiles. "School is really fun," says precocious Annie Marcuzzo. "Camps are boring."

Yes, that's right, with no prompting necessary. At Beacon, which sits on a quiet stretch of industrial land, the enthusiasm may be due to teachers as bubbly as the kids, or it may be simply that everyone understands the bonus that comes with this many days of school: no homework until sixth grade.

Everywhere but here, it seems, the clamor for higher standards has driven schools to assign more and more homework. Grade-school children now average well in excess of two hours of homework a night, compared with 85 minutes in 1981, according to the University of Michigan. Last year the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons reported that thousands of kids have back, neck and shoulder problems from lugging heavy backpacks. At Beacon the books stay at school; each day Annie carries only her bright blue lunchbox.

Founder Thelma Farley taught in public schools for 20 years before becoming fed up with what she calls the "rigid, bureaucratic monolith" of public education. Kids need to learn continuously all year, she believes, and schools need to stop invading the little family time Americans have left. So in 1982 she started Beacon, which in 18 years has grown from seven students to 300 on two campuses, with a wait list. The 240-day elementary-school calendar is not as daunting as it seems. Families can take vacation time whenever they want (a carefully individualized curriculum makes this possible), so most Beacon kids end up with about 220 days of school a year. "We try to preserve family life," says Farley, "and homework disrupts families."

Her sentiments are echoed in a new book that challenges the idea that homework helps students perform better. For years it's been conventional wisdom that homework teaches kids to manage time, organize and learn on their own. And there is some statistical evidence that, at least in junior high and high school, homework improves academic achievement. But, argue authors John Buell and Etta Kralovec in The End of Homework, "both research and historical experience fail to demonstrate the necessity or efficacy of ever longer hours of homework." Kralovec, an educational researcher and former teacher, and Buell, a political scientist, note that not a single study conclusively establishes homework's advantages. And, says Kralovec, think about the trade-offs--"all that time you didn't spend with your grandmother, doing community service, reading the newspaper, playing outside."

Preserving that time is one reason Annie's parents, who both work outside the home, were drawn to Beacon. Annie plays recreational soccer, does art projects with Mom using polymer clays (a favorite hobby), helps cook dinner, does laundry, cleans up after her hamster and still gets to bed by 8:30. "The kids aren't rushed all the time," says Annie's dad Peter. "Many of our friends have to force their kids to do the two hours of homework each night, the kids hate the parents, and the parents end up hating the school."

But aren't those kids better prepared for the discipline of high school and college? Farley says that's a myth. "Homework usually brings major family interference, there's downloading of book reports from the Internet, there's Daddy doing the science experiment. Who's getting discipline? I think it's the parents." It helps her case that Farley can point to Beacon's students' standardized-test scores, which rank among the best in the state.