Originally Posted by ultramarina
... Is this at all typical for first grade?? 4 pages of reading/writing homework a night? ...
Unfortunately, that actually sounds light for some teachers/schools/districts. In preparing to advocate, here are some thoughts and possible talking points regarding content, and scheduling.

Content
Part of creating a society which accepts one-size-fits-all standardization is to overwhelm with more quantity and less quality. Some have noticed more food providing less nutrition, more news with less information, more schooling with fewer new challenging concepts. Libraries may tout more offerings but the collection may be entirely digital becoming much easier to censor and to track reading times for each reader. Transparency may shrink at various levels of government while personal privacy is sacrificed to data collection. Content is being removed in many aspects of our lives, substituted with fluff, filler, repetition, and tracking. The effect is disempowering people.

There are counter movements focused on content over quantity in many areas, including nutritionally (pockets of emphasis on home gardening, organic foods, farmer markets, whole foods, gluten-free cookbooks), news (getting news from Non-USA media sources), healthcare (alternative/natural/herbal), and education (charter schools, homeschooling, alternative schools, and advocacy).

Some possible talking points regarding advocacy based on content may include: how the assignment supports the student learning objectives, the level of repetition needed if the student has mastered the particular objective, and the grading of the assignment.

Scheduling
Regarding the 12-page packet, has the teacher/school shared an estimate of how many minutes of homework are deemed appropriate per day? Have they shared an estimate of how many minutes the 12-page packet may take to complete, on average? NEA offers a Research Spotlight on Homework, which suggests an average of 10-20 minutes per grade level. Some teachers/schools have re-interpreted that as 10-20 minutes per grade level in each subject.

Doing the math... a 12-page packet, if distributed on Monday and due on Friday... allows 4 evenings for completion on the student's own schedule. Completed at a rate of 3 pages per night, spending about 4 to seven minutes on each page would be within the 10-20 minute guideline. At 4 pages per night, this would be about 2-1/2 to 5 minutes per page.

Some have found that distributing a homework packet with several days for completion is best practices (as compared with assigning homework due the next day) because it offers the relative advantages of allowing flexibility, encouraging time management, increasing a sense of personal ownership and accomplishment for one's own education, raising the likelihood that a parent may see/review the homework, and does not penalize students who have an activity on a particular evening which may make a due-next-day homework assignment overly burdensome.

Some possible talking points regarding advocacy based on scheduling may include: how many average minutes of homework per night the teacher/school deems appropriate, the average amount of time it takes a student to complete the packet.

Good luck with this!