This month's Atlantic has an article about excessive homework. It has all the usual suspects and some other stuff too.

For example, the author's daughter also loses points on her homework if she doesn't put her answers in the right places. This suggests to me that teacher is only looking at answers and not at the process used to get there.

For math class, his daughter had to calculate the distance from Sacramento to all other state capitals (in miles and kilometers). When dad protested that the assignment seemed somewhat less than useful, the teacher argued that his daughter needed to learn her state capitals. When he said, "But that's not math," she told him that combining subject areas is popular these days.

Looks like my DD's Ms. T. isn't the only one. How sad.

frown