I do miss the good old days as I don't believe that I would have done as well under the current regime. However, our district's approach is more difficult than just an issue of completing/delivering homework. Sure, if you completely blew off homework, you would end up with a B or below since homework is worth between 10% to 20% in most classes. The numbers vary from teacher to teacher but as a general rule tests/quizzes plus homework together constitute only 40% to 50% of the total grade. The other 50% to 60% are based on work completed during class immediately after a lesson is taught. This means that if you didn't immediately understand a concept or algorithm or you happen to have more than a few off-days, you would not be able to get an A in that course. These classwork assignments are not called quizzes but they effectively are and they are more challenging than standard unit tests, which tend to take more of a survey approach, and on which almost all kids in our GT classes can manage to score 80% to 100%. This current approach makes it challenging in the sense that you pretty much need to be "on" almost all the time. On the other hands, it makes my kiddos more accountable on a daily basis. Organization, executive functioning, and discipline are required and on average, girls tend to be a bit better than boys at least at the younger ages.
