A child’s fantasy: No more homework

CALGARY, Alberta — Sherri and Tom Milley were exhausted by the weepy weeknight struggles over math problems and writing assignments with their three school-aged children. They were fed up with rushing home from soccer practice or speed skating only to stand over their kids tossing out answers so they could finish and get to bed.

And don’t even get them started on the playground that daughter Brittany had to build in the third grade from recycled materials, complete with moving parts. Or the time son Jay was told to cut pictures of $1 million worth of consumer goods from a catalog.

So this month, after two years of trying to change the homework policy at the children’s school, the two Calgary lawyers finally negotiated a unique legal contract: Their kids will not have to do homework again.

“We have struggled constantly as a family with excessive amounts of homework,” said Sherri Milley, who left her practice to stay home with her children. “We just blindly accepted the way it was.”

But after many long, stressful nights of getting 18-year-old Jay through his high-school homework, they weren’t prepared to repeat history with Spencer, 11, and Brittany, 10. Being lawyers, she and her husband decided to make it official.

The “differentiated homework plan” spells out the responsibilities of the students: to get their work done in class, to come to school prepared and prep for quizzes. But their teachers will have to mark them based on what they do in class, and cannot send work home that goes into their grades.

For the Milleys, this means a school year that would make many homework-stricken parents envious: they are free to hang out as family without long-division and English-comprehension questions hanging over their heads.

“It was a constant homework battle every night,” Sherri Milley recalled. “It’s hard to get a weeping child to take in math problems. They are tired. They shouldn’t be working a second shift.”

It’s not as if, the couple pointed out, they don’t value education. They know firsthand the work involved in earning university degrees. But they wanted the academic work done at home to be on their terms, based on where they knew their children needed help. Brittany, for instance, was struggling with spelling, but “we never had any time to focus on that because she had so much homework,” Sherri Milley said.

And there were plenty of frustrating nights, she said, when her kids were so tired, “we’d stand over them, saying, ‘Write this, write that.’ ” If that’s what families are doing, she asked, “How do the teachers even know whose work they are marking?”

Two years ago, Sherri Milley began collecting studies on homework, most of which suggest that, particularly for younger grades, there is no clear link between work at home and school performance. Working with the staff at St. Brigid Elementary Junior High School, she formed a homework committee, although no firm changes resulted. This fall, the couple began negotiating the legal document that decided the matter.

“We think it’s a parent’s right to choose what’s in our children’s best interests,” Sherri Milley said. “But we’re thankful the school did the right thing.”

Prompted by issues raised by parents, the Calgary Catholic School District is officially reviewing its homework policy to create more concrete guidelines for schools. Other parents and teachers have worked out homework deals, although more informally. “We know it’s not one-size-fits-all,” said Tania Younker, a district spokeswoman.

The contract the Milleys and their children signed doesn’t go just one way. While preventing teachers from giving penalties when homework isn’t done, it also puts clear expectations on the students and their parents — to practice a musical instrument, for instance, and read daily.

And the parents agreed to make sure their children have “opportunities” to review class work and study for tests. (Although that may as well be homework, Sherri Milley observed wryly, noting that, by her count, Spencer has had roughly 28 quizzes and tests in about 38 class days of seventh grade.)

Bottom line: The Milley kids won’t be doing any school-assigned work at home anytime soon, although Jay, now in his first year of college, must resign himself to being a trailblazer for his younger siblings.

“Why were we putting our family through that stress?” wondered Sherri Milley. “If we don’t want it all, we shouldn’t have to have it.”