Employers care about conformity, diligence and reliability, not just smarts. If grades are more useful to them if they contain a homework component, that's an argument for basing grades on more than exam results. It's my impression that few employers look at high school transcripts -- either you graduated or did not. But some employers do look at college transcripts, and college grades depend on "homework" (problem sets and term papers), not just exam scores. My eldest son got A's on all his final exams but in only about half of his classes, because of missing or poorly completed homework. He is very smart, but employers and therefore colleges would be rational in preferring someone equally smart but who also has his act together. I turned the corner in 7th grade, which he enters this fall. I hope he will too.
I agree. Homework can be useful and helpful. There is really no way to be good at higher level math without butt in seat doing problems. Even those who are intrinsically excellent at math need to do problems. Science LABS need to be written. These are not busy work and need to be done and the teacher SHOULD take off for not turning them in. Learning to write a well designed project is a useful skill for college classes & the working world.
My son didn't have too much what I would call "busywork" this year. The homework load was really not that high until the last 3 weeks with the end-of-year S.S. project. Although that is another issue.. that project took my son 25-30 hours and was only worth as much weight as the final that he studies for 30 minutes. It was more this processing and/or anxiety that was getting in the way. For example in Spanish the homework that wasn't turned in was an assignment to "write 8 sentences using some rule" (like vocabulary for a chapter, or a in certain tense.) He couldn't do this without my talking him through the project. He seems to have a good grasp on the grammar and vocabulary. This is why were are looking into the processing issues. This problem was really consistent problem in all but his math class.
